Every journey has certain requirements, like maps or passports. For your inward journey toward intimacy with God, one essential is His Word. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah explains why it's impossible to know the heart and mind of God without studying the Bible. To help you make Bible study a habit in the new year, here's David with the conclusion of his message, the inward journey.
And I thank you for joining us as we bring this year and this month to a conclusion. We're setting our agenda out for the new year, and part of that is this inward journey that we believe God is leading us to as we start 2026 together. This is the best way I know to get ready, and thank you for making it possible for us to share this information. We'll get into our study from the Bible in just a moment, but I want to continue to give you some last minute Opportunities to get a copy of A Closer Walk with Jesus, which is our 2026 devotional. I can't tell you how beautiful this book is.
It is just really, it's a gorgeous book with a lot of beautiful color on the inside, but mostly it's a book full of important information that will help you grow in your faith and stay focused in your walk.
So I'd like you to have this book. Here's what you do: you send a gift of any size today, and tell us that you want to help support Turning Point and you'd like to receive the devotional, and it will be on its way to you. I promise you, you're going to love this and you're going to use it. It's not one of those things you put on a shelf and forget about. Every day, something new for you, and quite often just what you need.
And I've discovered that along the way. You will too.
So I'm Giving you a last moment here. I have a couple more days to do this, but I'm running out of time to tell you how great this is, and I do hope you will take advantage of it while there's still time. Here is The Inward Journey, Part 2. You've heard me quote him often because I greatly respect Mark Patterson. He's an incredible writer.
And in one of his books, he was talking about the importance of solitude, and he cobbled together the solitude strategies of some very famous people. I thought I'd tell you some of these. In 1956, environmentalist Sigurd Olson built a small cabin on the banks of a lake in northern Minnesota. The naming of lake homes is customary in the land of 10,000 lakes. And most of the names are rather predictable, but Olson.
Was a little more intentional. His objective in building the cabin. And he wasn't a Christian as far as I know, but his objective in building the cabin was to, quote, hear all that was worth listening for.
So he called his cabin the listening point. And he would just go there and be quiet. And listen. Susannah Wesley raised 17 children. in a very small cabin.
So solitude was hard to come by. Her whispering spot was a rocking chair in the middle of the room. and she would throw a blanket over herself. It turned into her tent of meeting God. Perhaps that's what inspired her son John.
to kneel next to his bed and give his life to ministry and become the John Wesley about whom we have all read. Thomas Edison He had a thinking chair. Alexander Graham Bell had a dreaming place. Overlooking the Grand River, Henry David Thoreau skipped stones on Walden Pond. Then there was Ludwig van Beethoven.
He sat at his desk until early afternoon and then took a stroll to reinvigorate his mind. He carried a pencil and a few sheets of music paper in his pocket to record anything that might occur to him musically, and he would write it down. Your whispering spot, your listening spot. will be as unique as you are. But you need to find a time and a place to escape the frenzy of the world.
so that you can be still. And no. Who God is. Why do you think most people get up early to do this? It's the only time they have control over.
And so they get up early when no one can mess with them. and take time. for the Lord. The discipline for frenzy is solitude and prayer.
Now, the discipline for familiarity is Bible study. And I know you're going to say, well, Dr. Jeremiah, we expect you to say that. That's what we pay you to say. Listen carefully.
The journey inward is not possible without the Bible. The Bible itself is not the answer. It is our use of the Bible that makes the difference. We have to allow the Bible's truth to wash over our minds and thoughts and fill the emptiness in our hearts. Paul told the Romans that the only way they could recover from the pull of the world upon them was through the renewing of their mind.
He said, don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind so that you can determine what's right. What does it mean, the renewing of your mind? I liken it to a spiritual transfusion. You know, you don't get rid of Worldly, negative, sinful thoughts by making up your mind to get rid of them. You get rid of them by replacing them.
You force truth into your mind and that forces all of the junk out. The renewing of your mind is to absorb your whole spirit. with the Word of God so that the ugly meaningful things. Go away. And There's a great statement about that in the Bible, and I want to finish my message with that in just a moment.
We live in a world that is more and more negative. Where good information of any kind. is becoming rare. I don't know how many. stations you have in your television system.
Many have 150.
Some well over that, cable systems, two, three, four hundred, and then the movie channels. You would think that on a given night you could find something somewhere That was worth watching. But there are many nights when you just want to sit down and relax and watch something wholesome. When you go through the whole channel thing and there's not one thing Worth. Watching.
Can I get a witness? Amen. You gotta figure out something else. If you're going to get positive input, there's only one place I can promise you you can get it, and it's in the Word of God. And Paul said, you renew your mind.
And you renew your mind by the Word of God. I got to tell you something that I discovered is really cool. There's a company, they develop little journal books. And this is built upon a passage in the Old Testament where it says the kings. of Israel In order to get ready for the kingdom, they had to write out the Old Testament law in their own hand.
Did you know that?
So They would write out, they had their own personal handwritten copy of the law, which would be basically the first books of the Bible.
So this company came up with the idea that We should write our own copy of the Bible. And they have a book for every book in the Bible, and they have the verses and the chapters. And you take this book, and in one hand, you're reading the scripture, and in the other hand, you're writing the scripture in this book. And I'm going to have my own handwritten copy of the book of Romans.
Now you say, why would you do that? Because when you write something, It has an impact on you that nothing else has. There's something about the end of your fingers and a pin. that absorbs what you're writing right through your spirit and into your heart. I think we're at a point in time, men and women, where we're going to have to start coming up with some things like that to fill our minds and hearts with God's truth so we can overcome.
The ugliness of the world in which we find ourselves. Just think about that. getting the word into your heart, renewing your mind. There's ways to do it, listening to tapes, there's all kinds of ways, but if you want to overcome Familiarity, so that you get away from just the stuff everybody expects from you. You've got to come up with the new things that are in the Bible.
The Bible says God's truth is new every morning, and I found that to be true. How many of you know that sometimes there's a little verse, and I don't mean this. in any other way than it's just pregnant. 1 Thessalonians 2.13 is a pregnant verse. It's a verse just begging to be born in your life and in mine, and it's just chuck full.
So I'm going to give you a little outline of 1 Thessalonians 2:13. And this is what the Bible says we should do with the Word of God. Let me read the verse. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, You welcomed it not as the word of men. But as it is in truth the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.
Here's what we are challenged to do with the Bible. according to 1 Thessalonians 2.13, were to accept it. You received the word of God which you heard from us. We hear the word of God today through preaching and reading and watching and personal testimony. And we listen to it, but how many of you know the hearing of the Word of God is becoming more and more rare?
Even in many churches, the Word of God is given just A lick and a promise. It's incidentally involved in the service. But our church services ought to be all about the Word of God. Amos the prophet said. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
Amos said, There's coming a day when there will be a famine of the hearing of the words of the Lord. We have discovered that people want the word of God. We cannot give them something inferior that will ever satisfy them. Over the years that I've been doing this now for almost 50 years, I have been just doing the same thing. I've avoided all the cul-de-sacs, all the detours, all the Let's try this, let's try that.
No, there's only one thing you can do: the Word of God. Comes with a promise that it will never return unto God without accomplishing his purpose. We need to accept the word of God. Here's the second thing. We need to anticipate the Word of God.
He says, you welcomed the word of God. That is the idea of Getting excited that it's going to happen. You didn't just listen to it, you were anxious to hear it. You wanted the word of God in your life. The two words used in this verse are quite different.
The first one means to hear with your ears, but the second one means to hear with your heart. When you came to the Word of God, you had an anticipation that God was going to say something to you from this book that was going to mean something to you in your life. Do you come to the scripture like that? Do you come to church like that? Do you pray as you come to church?
Lord, help Pastor Jeremiah to say something today that will help me understand the situation I'm in. Direct me to a scripture that I, and you know, God does that. He does it in a way that's just amazing. I can preach on something that has nothing to do with what's going on in your life. But incidentally, I will say something, and God will use that to help you get through your situation.
How do I know that? I read letters about that every single week. And I think to myself, when did I say that? You accept the Word of God, you anticipate the Word of God, you appreciate the Word of God. not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God.
Paul was rejoicing that these Thessalonian believers, when they read the Word of God, they didn't read it like it was a book written by men. They read it as a book coming from God. This book is not. Human. This book is supernatural.
This book is God's book. And when you read it, it's not going to have the same impact on you as if you're reading a novel. This book will come to you in a way that is It's just amazing. We should never approach the Bible as we approach other books that we read. The Bible is different in origin and in character and in content and in cost.
The Bible is the Word of God. It is inspired by the Spirit of God. It was written by men who were controlled by the Spirit of God. People say, well, when the Bible is inspired, that just means the guys who wrote it had an inspiration. No.
The word inspire means to breathe into. And 2 Peter 1.21 says it this way. Prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
So the Bible is a book that was written from God. But he wrote the book through the personalities of the writers so that while it was still the word of God, the personalities of the 40-some writers is clear in their writing. It's an amazing, incredible book. One of my great teachers in seminary was a guy named Charles Ryrie. I've told you about him and how intimidating he was.
If you went in his class, and you know if you've been in any graduate schools or any upper level learning situations, there's always some people in the class who want to ask questions not because they want the answer, but they want you to know how smart they are.
So they'll ask these deep intellectual questions. I don't know how he knew, but Charles Ryrie could ferret those out. And if you ask a question like that, He would nail you to the wall. He was a brilliant man. He would embarrass you so much.
I got to confess, I never asked one question in his class. I knew better. He wrote some tremendous books along with his study Bible. Here's what he wrote about the Bible. This is instructive.
He said, not many years ago, all you had to say to affirm your belief in the inspiration of the Bible was that you believed the Bible was the Word of God. That was it. But as people have sliced and diced and criticized and hacked the Bible to bits, or tried to. it became necessary to add that you believe the Bible was inspired. It's the inspired word of God.
Later, you had to include verbally inspired. which means every word is inspired. And then to mean the same thing, you had to say plenary. Plenarily inspired means that it's inspired from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. Today, you have to say, I believe the Bible is plenarily, verbally inspired, and it's the infallible word of God.
That's what I believe. That's what we believe. But now you've got to do it because so many people have tried to undermine God's word that you have to be really clear about what you mean. I believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God. Word of God.
That's what we teach and preach. That's what we believe. So, you accept the Word of God, you anticipate it, you appreciate it. And then, in the same verse, here's an incredible little phrase: you apply the Word of God, most important of all. Which also effectively works in you who believe.
Do you see that in the text? He says, You accept the Word of God because it is working in you. It's energetically working in your life. Let me ask you this question: Is God's Word energetically working in your life? Is it making a difference?
When Paul says that God has an effective work in the hearts of those who believe. He is saying that when anyone, anytime, anywhere believes the message of the Bible, something will happen in his life. This is A dynamic book. Hebrews says the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. Theologian Robert Weber said some time ago I was biking in Michigan.
And I met another biker who, like myself, was a professor of theology. In the course of our conversation by the side of the road, he said something I will never forget. He said, Bob, all I really want in life is for the Word of God to take up residence inside of me and form me into Christ-likeness. Weber said, I think that statement hit me hard because my seminary training in the Bible was never that personal. We were always asking, what does it say?
And seldom, if ever, made the step into a deep personal application. How can that truth? take up residence in me. That's so critical men and women. If we just have the Bible to read so that we're smarter, we know more, we can tell you all the stuff that's in the Bible, that doesn't help us.
The Bible needs to be energetically working in us. That's what will make the changes in our life that we're seeking. That's what will make us different people. And I know that some of you say, well, Dr. Jeremiah, I've been reading the Bible all my life, and.
Where's the change? J C Ryle said Do not think you're getting no good from the Bible. merely because you do not see that good day by day? The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise. and are most easily observed, the greatest effect of the Bible is the often silent, quiet, and hard-to-detect at the time thing that is producing in your life.
Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more going on in your life because you read the Bible than you are taking note of. Let me tell you something. You cannot read the Bible and study the Bible.
As we've described from 1 Thessalonians 2.13, and not have it change your life. over a period of time, little by little. the renewing of your mind and the renewing of your heart. Let me close with a story. The island of Manhattan consists almost entirely of bare granite.
A very hard and strong type of rock. To carry the weight of a 75 or 100-story skyscraper. builders use foundation anchors called piles. Piles are concrete or steel columns hammered into the ground until they penetrate the solid rock of the foundation. For especially tall buildings, listen to this, some piles are driven 25 stories below ground.
The heavy weight of the skyscraper is then distributed through each of the piles. and together they support the structure's enormous weight. If foundation piles are drilled and driven in poorly, Cracks will eventually appear in the structure. Entire buildings could lean. And then they have to be torn down or lifted completely.
so the piles can be reset. The same way men and women in our lives is true. If we don't have a strong foundation, We're going to be in trouble, and especially at a time like this. What I've been talking to you about today is mirrored in the New Testament by the words of Jesus. Listen to these words.
Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew the beat on the house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them. will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. and great was its fall. I want to tell you two things about this story that you may never have heard before because I never thought of them quite this way.
First of all, the blessing or the The curse of your response to the word of God is not whether you heard the words or not. Notice what it says. Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them So, the issue isn't whether or not you heard the Word of God. The issue is whether or not you do the Word of God. If you hear it and you don't do it, That doesn't make any difference.
Now, I want you to imagine with me that the two houses in Jesus' parable. are on the same street. They're actually next to each other. They were built by the same builder, and you can see the similarity of the houses. And you don't know there's anything different about these houses, because they look the same.
They're almost mirrors of each other. And then one day The Bible says the storm came. And the rain came down, and the floods came down. and the house that was built here on the rock is standing strong. But the house that was built on the sand crumbles and great is its fall.
Here's what I want you to remember. Whether or not you build your foundation strong, is your choice. And you may be able to go through life and nobody will know whether you're doing that or not, but one day, and maybe it's happened already. This storm will come. And the storm will not make you what you are.
The storm will reveal what you are. The storm is Very Non-discerning of who we are or what we've done. The storm hits everybody the same. And the difference is Whether or not You've built a strong foundation.
So As we go into this new year, as lovingly as I can. Without making this a guilt trip, because it's not. I just want to encourage you as to how you can make this year the best year you ever had. Don't get blown away by the frenzy around you. No matter what goes on in life, frenzy can grab hold of us.
If we don't find a place to be still and know that God is there. And familiarity, we're all Victims of that. The way we overcome that is to get a fresh word from God every day. And know that God is He's not static. He's dynamic.
And you can be dynamic if you let the Word of God fill your life.
Well, thank you so much for being a part of what we're doing at the end of this year. I hope it's helping you have the right thoughts as you face 2026 and that your goals are God's goals for your life. And we'll have a couple more things to say to you Tuesday and Wednesday before the new year actually happens.
So be sure and join us tomorrow as we look at a passage in Ecclesiastes that tells us everything is beautiful in his time. A wonderful thought process for us as the new year approaches. You know, Turning Points magazine is a wonderful asset if you're a follower of Christ because every month it brings positive information from the Bible into your home. Against the backdrop of so much negativity, what a great thing to do to set yourself up, to receive something in the mail that will really lift up your spirits, help you in your spiritual growth, motivate you to do what God wants you to do. And we'd like to send this magazine to you every month if you'll just ask for it.
Okay. You can do that through the internet or through a letter, through the phone. Just get word to us that you want to be a part of the Turning Point magazine list and it'll be on its way. See you next time. Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr.
David Jeremiah. We love hearing how God is using this ministry in your life.
So please write to us at TurningPoint, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new 365-day devotional for 2026, A Closer Walk with Jesus. Yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet, or search in your app store for Turning Point Ministries to access our content. Visit davidjeremiah.org/slash radio for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for another inspiring New Year's message on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
I'm going to use a bottle of the same method.
