Week 2: What’s the use in reading Scripture?

Memory Verse
{2 Timothy 3.16-17 – “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”}

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 1~
About the Author

I want you to think about the famous person that you admire the most. Maybe it’s Justin Beiber, Taylor Swift, TobyMac, or some movie star. Now imagine if they wrote a book for you that encouragement for you and stories about them and even more than that, secrets about themselves. Would you take time to read it? Absolutely!

Reread 2 Timothy 3.16-17.

Did you catch that first part…. BREATHED OUT BY GOD! Wow! We can know God through Scripture because HE is the AUTHOR! It is Scripture that we get to see many of His great works! He is truly is so good!

Read Psalm 119.27.

The more you read about Him, the more you see His true character. The more you see His character in history, the more you can trust Him now! God’s Holy Word is full of testaments to His faithfulness, goodness, mercy, grace, compassion, sacrifice, and most of all His LOVE! Don’t miss out on the chance to see God’s heart. To look into God’s journal. To witness His power. And to be transformed by His perfect character!

-          Ask yourself who you want to know the most in your life? There is one person in your life that you want to know more than anyone else… maybe it’s your boyfriend/girlfriend, best friend, or sibling. Maybe it’s Jesus! Be honest with yourself.

-          Pray. Ask God to make Himself your first desire of knowledge. Make a commitment now to spend more time learning about the Author of the Bible!

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 2~
The Real Deal

-KNOWING TRUTH-

In America, people who inspect money study what true money looks like AND what counterfeit money looks like. However Canada has the best success at catching counterfeit money…. Wanna know why? Canada money inspectors study the true money. They study the true money so much and so in depth that something that isn’t genuine immediately stands out!

Take a look at John 17.17

This verse clearly states it…. THE WORD IS TRUTH!
In Scripture we not only find the true character of God but the TRUTH in the GOSPEL! We see that Christ came to save us and that He loves us more than we comprehend! He is our redemption, our hope, and our true joy in life. The deal is though… when you find something, someone, someway that is that good… YOU HAVE TO SHARE IT!

-SHARING TRUTH-

Read Romans 1.16

Once receive the power of the Gospel, the power of Christ, we will want to give that power to others! How do we do that? By sharing truth!

-LIVING TRUTH-

Read Philippians 1.27

It really is an endless cycle. As you discover truth, you share truth, and you can help but LIVE TRUTH! If we want people to actually respond when we share truth we need to strive to live truth! Living a life totally worthy of the Gospel would be pretty much impossible! We need to try though! We want others to see Christ in us!

Spend some time evaluating all three areas:
- Do I spend time seeking God’s Word for truth?
- Am I making a point to share God’s truth with others consistently?
- Am I living a life that shows truth to others?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 3~
Check the Scale

My friend who wrestled for many years was explaining to me some disciplines of wrestling this week. Because a wrestler has to stay in a certain weight class, they are constantly watching their food and exercise to make sure they stay in the appropriate category. The true way to know when they are getting off track is by getting on the scale. That is what really counts. Scripture is the same way for us. The best way to recognize when we are getting out of God’s will is by getting in to His Word.

Read Hebrews 4.12.

Scripture corrects us in our wrong and guides us back to the right path. The cool thing is that the Bible doesn’t just convict us of our outward sin but also of the motives of the heart.
Don’t get all worked about this correction… it’s not a bad thing!

Read Hebrews 12.10-11.

He disciplines us for our good! Even though it seems difficult at the time, it is beneficial and necessary! Because God loves us, we can trust that His correction for us is good! Since it is good, we should DESIRE it!

Read Psalm 119.10

There’s that phrase again… “with my whole heart.” God wants us to see His structure and discipline for our life as a gift… so much that we crave it! We desire it! We welcome it!

-          Do you desire correction from the Bible with your whole heart?

-          Do you honestly see it as a good thing when God corrects or disciplines you?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 4~
Bloom

Think of a flower. It starts out as seed... I mean not exactly ugly but definitely nothing that would catch your eye or make you pause in its beauty. However, when it’s planted in the right soil with the proper care, its roots spread deep and it blooms into its full potential. We are the same way. Without Christ changing our lives we’re a seed… but when we really plant ourselves in Scripture and we surround ourselves with the right nourishment, our roots grow deep in Christ and we BLOOM to our full potential beauty!

Read Col. 3.15-17.

Can’t you see it in this passage?! As the bad is stripped away, Christ fills us with the things, attitudes, love of Himself! He pours into us, molds us and makes us something beautiful! The key is we can’t just read Scripture we need to practice Scripture!

Read James 1.19-25

We are seeds waiting to bloom, Seeds that see the possible beauty and need to get planted. How do we do that?? We seek the Lord… We seek His Word… We let it mold us… We become doers of the Word and not just hearers!

-          Do you want to be molded and grow into all God has designed for you to be?

-          If so how are you going to allow that through Scripture?

Suggestions: Taking a passage such as Col. 3.5-17 and mediating on one thing a day/week you want God to develop in you.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 5~
Hold Me Together

Read Psalm 119.130.

I don’t know how your version states it but mine says that Scripture gives LIGHT and UNDERSTANDING! If you’ve ever been through a very difficult time, you know that nothing seems to help. What I can tell you is that Scripture WILL! Throughout Scripture we can see God’s PROMISES!

Read 2 Corinthians 1.3-4.

He will comfort you. We also see God’s PROCESS!

Read Romans 5.3-5.

There are so many times in my life that the WORD sustained me. It encouraged me to keep going when it was all too much! God really started teaching me the truth in Romans 5.3-5 when my mom and stepdad went through their divorce. It was really hard time and I often wondered why God would allow my family to suffer a second divorce. He showed me that regardless of why it was happening, He was producing traits in me that I couldn’t comprehend. He produces perseverance and character and hope! These are lasting and will not let us down!

 

-          Reflect on a time when Scripture sustained you or a time that you wish you had sought the Bible for comfort looking back on it.

-          Thank God for providing you comfort and encouragement in hard times!

 

I pray that through these devotionals you see the importance in being in God’s Word! I pray that in the coming weeks you will commit to be in it and commit to let it mold you and commit to BLOOMING!

What are your thoughts? I want feedback. Feel free to send me any question responses. I would love to hear from you, answer any questions you have, and pray for your needs specifically. Feel free to share this, comment, email me at brandycaudill90@gmail.com, or facebook message me!

 

Week 1:  Seeking the Lord

Memory Verse
{Jeremiah 29.13 – “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”}

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 1~
All Your Heart

If you’ve ever played the role of the seeker in hide and seek, you know that to find you must first seek.  However there’s something you must do before you seek. Before you can look in all the sneaky spots or search every closet around, you must first WANT to seek. You have to make the decision to leave your counting spot and SEEK the hider. If you just sat there the other person would never be found.

If you’re reading this then there is already a part of you that wants to seek. You wouldn’t have even opened this if you hadn’t a tugging to seek the Lord. This same concept of hide and seek applies to our Christian walk. Scripture promises that when we seek the Lord, we WILL find Him. So to find we must seek, but before we seek we must want to seek! If you want to join in this pursuit you’re going to have to want to seek the Lord to know Him more. Once you want it, you have to put that in to action and seek Him. If you seek Him, I promise…. You will find HIM!

Read Jeremiah 29.11-13.

Go back… reread verse 13 one more time. Did you catch that? With ALL your heart. Wholeheartedly. We need to seek, search, look for God with ALL of our hearts. It’s in seeking Him and His ways that we can trust Him. We can search for Him trusting that He will guide us.

Read Proverbs 3.5-6.

Did you see it again? There’s that phrase “with all your heart.” We can trust HIM… not ourselves, not our understanding, not our thinking. We can trust HIM in knowing that when we do He will guide us. He will show us the path to take, the words to say, the actions to follow through with.  As I reflect back on my teenage years and even now, there are so many decisions to be made. There are so many situations to decide how to handle. Who better to seek guidance from than the LORD? Who can we trust more with our paths than the LORD? Imagine yourself on this journey months from now when seeking and trusting the Lord is so natural that He speaks and you listen. That situations arise and before you worry or consult your friend or your mom or facebook…. That you would immediately seek God and trust He will give you the right answer!

So seek HIM… Desire to seek Him. Set out to find Him. Seek Him with all your heart. Seek Him knowing that you can trust Him. Trust Him with all your heart.

-          Take some time to ask yourself: Do you really want to seek God? Pray and ask God to ignite that desire inside of you. Take some time to tell Him that you want to seek Him and ask Him to show Himself to you.

-          What area of your life specifically (relationships, friendships, family, school, etc.) doo you need to seek the Lord for direction and trust that He will follow through?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 2~
Raining Righteousness

In the theme verse 2 Tim. 2.22 it says “pursue righteousness.” What is righteousness and why would we want to pursue it? To be righteous is to be free from guilt or sin. Talk about a gift! FREE from guilt or sin. No child of God wants to have guilt or sin in their lives. Think back to the last time God convicted you about something and that yucky feeling inside of you… that is guilt. No one enjoys that feeling. I know I don’t. One of the greatest aspects of Heaven that I look forward to is when there is no sin and no struggle.

Take a look at Hosea 10.12.

Praise God! It says that as we seek the Lord, He will RAIN righteousness on us! NIV says He SHOWERS! I love how that word is used. It doesn’t say gives a little… it says RAINS righteousness! Think about a rainstorm in the middle of summer.  I am one of those strange people who LOVES rain! It’s refreshing to me. On a hot summer day, I love the feeling of getting totally drenched in a rainstorm. Think about God raining righteousness on you. Isn’t that a cool feeling? But just as we talked about yesterday… that seeking has to start somewhere. We have to WANT righteousness.

Read Matthew 5.6.

Here it uses the words hunger and thirst. Think about how you feel when you are so thirsty that you would pay 50 dollars for a bottle of water. That should be the longing we have for the righteousness of God. The awesome part about this verse is that it says we will be blessed when we do hunger and thirst. Why? Because He will fill us up! [When we do seek after Him, trust Him, pursue Him, hunger and thirst for Him, HE always fills us up!] He always satisfies! He never strikes out, fumbles, or misses the goal. He always satisfies! As we seek Him, He will rain righteousness on us! Praise God!

-          Do you think of being righteous as a burden or as a fulfillment? Often time people think of trying to complete a checklist to be righteous and this makes it seem like a burden. Spend some time searching your heart to see if you see it that way. Ask God to change your attitude to one of gratitude. Realize that as you simply seek Christ, righteousness comes and fills you up!

-          Spend some time thanking God for how He satisfies you and offers you the righteousness of Christ.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 3~
Where’s Waldo Wednesday

Have you ever played “Where’s Waldo?” If you have you know that on the pages where Waldo is hiding there are many things to distract you. You have to devote no attention to them in order to find Waldo. Seeking Jesus is the same concept….

Read Matthew 6.33.

We are to seek Christ above EVERYTHING! The world tries to distract us with all sorts of paths besides Jesus. Sometimes it is with temptation, sin, or simply laziness. Other times it tries to distract us with what seems to be good: relationships, responsibilities, even business. God knew the world would come after our attention and attempt to steal our focus.

Read Philippians 3.12-14.

Read 13 and 14 again. FORGETTING what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. We must lay aside everything that the world distracts us with to seek the PRIZE! It refers to seeking Jesus as a goal for the prize! He’s our trophy! When we seek Him… He is our reward!

-          What are specific responsibilities, sins, and/or interests that you need to lay aside to seek Him 1^st?

-          Are there things in your life that you are looking for more than Jesus? (ex: popularity, acceptance, success, relationship, friendship, knowledge)

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 4~
Finding the Pearl

Read Matthew 7.7-8.

From this verse and Jeremiah 29.13, we know that when we seek we WILL find. But what do we find when we find Him? 2 days ago you read about finding righteousness. Yesterday in our reading Jesus was referred to as the prize. Here’s a new perspective for today….

Read Matthew 13.45-46.

This refers to the reward as a pearl. But not just ANY pearl…. a pearl of great value! A pearl that is worth more than all you have! What’s the most special, precious, or valuable item you’ve ever received? Think about that and imagine how you would feel if you couldn’t find it. Nothing or no one would be able to keep you from looking. Think of how valuable it is to you. That value can’t even compare to the worth or the value we find in knowing Christ!

Read Philippians 3.8.

EVERYTHING is counted as loss compared to knowing Christ. So when You seek Him you will find Him. You will find righteousness. You will find your Prize. You will find the Pearl of great value. You will find that nothing compares to the joy of knowing Him!

-          Do you really think of Jesus as the pearl of great value? Is there anything you have that you would have a hard time giving up for the joy of knowing Christ?

-          Take a moment and ask yourself… do you think of seeking Christ as a duty or as an opportunity? Answer the question honestly. Either way you’ve been seeing it, spend some time thanking God for the opportunity to seek Him and grow closer to Him.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

~Day 5~
Got Faith?

Rewind your life to when you were a little kid. When Easter Sunday came along you got in your best clothes, probably went to church, and came home with great anticipation. Why? Because if your family was like the typical American family… you had an Easter egg hunt. Your parents or older siblings went out to hide all the dyed eggs that had stained your hands the night before and it was your mission to find them… every single one. Now imagine it’s two weeks later and one day you decide you are going to go looking for eggs….. but now one has hidden any. Wouldn’t that be absurd? No one thinking properly would do that. You have to know the eggs are out there. You have to believe that you can find them… or else you would never even start looking!

Read Hebrews 11.6.

This verse tells us that we must have faith. We must believe. On day one we discussed that to seek you must first want to seek. Before you can even want to seek, you must have faith that you will find. The verse doesn’t just tell us we should believe that He exists, there’s something else we must believe also. Read the verse one more time…. We must believe that He rewards those who seek Him!

Read Proverbs 2.2-11.

All throughout this passage God tells us time and time again that when we seek Him we will find understanding, wisdom, direction, HIM! First step is to seek Him. Read vs. 4 again. It says we should seek Him like silver. Just as we’ve talked about all week. We should seek Him as silver. Seek Him in faith. Seek Him as the Pearl of great value. Seek Him as the Prize. Seek Him above all else. Seek Him for righteousness. Seek Him with ALL your heart. SEEK Him and you will FIND Him!

-          Do you believe and have faith that you will find Him and you will be rewarded?

-          As you’ve memorized Jeremiah 29.13 this week and studied about seeking the Lord, how has your definition of “seek” changed?

-          How has your attitude about seeking Him changed?

 

I pray you’ve enjoyed your first week pursuing Him through His Holy Word. I pray that seeking Him will be a great joy and opportunity in your life. I pray that you will continue to pursue Him with me.

What are your thoughts? I want feedback. Feel free to send me any question responses (especially from day 5). I would love to hear from you, answer any questions you have, and pray for your needs specifically. Feel free to share this, comment, email me at brandycaudill90@gmail.com, or facebook message me!

Join the Pursuit

Welcome to Pursuit 22!

The word PURSUE has many definitions but there are four that stand out most to me:
* Chase somebody
* Continue with something
* Strive for something
* Follow route

I think if we could sum up the life description of a Christ follower it would include all 4 of those definitions. We must begin our journey by chasing after somebody… that somebody being JESUS! We can’t just start the chase though, we must continue in it. As we spend time with Him day after day, we will fall more in love with Him and desire to chase after Him continually. Pursuing Him will not just be a chase that continues but a goal to accomplish. We will seek to strive hard to follow Him and become more like Him.  By chasing Him, continuing with that chase and striving with our best, we will follow route. We will follow Him recklessly. We will love Him more deeply. We will be satisfied more fully. We will give Him more glory! So when you think of the word PURSUIT in relation to this blog, I want you to keep this definition in mind:

PURSUIT: the act of striving to chase Jesus continually day after day in order to follow His route for your life.

So what about the 22? There are two theme verses I want you to consider:

2 Timothy 2.22: “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”

Proverbs 2.2: “making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding”

The world tempts you with many “youthful passions,” but Scripture calls us to FLEE those. In turn we are to PURSUE …. RIGHTEOUSNESS, FAITH, LOVE, and PEACE. For those of you who are reading this and want to join the PURSUIT, you are going to be listening for God and seeking His perspective through His WORD!

Many of you are probably wondering “What is this ‘pursuit’ all about?”
I was recently given a burden for teenagers who desire to have a quiet time, who desire to seek the Lord and grow in Him, who desire to PURSUE JESUS…. But they don’t know where to start. My desire for this blog is that God would give you a place to start. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the help of God-centered friends I want to help you be in PURSUIT of Jesus.

Each Saturday a blog post will go out that contains 5 quiet times that should take approximately 30 min each. The week will have an overall theme and each individual day will have different passages, reflections, and questions related. There will be a focal verse/memory verse for the week that I would encourage to commit to mind and hide in your heart.

So here’s my challenge….

If you desire to seek the Lord and want to learn more about His Word and more about His plan for you, JOIN THE PURSUIT! Grab your Bible, a notebook, a quiet spot and set aside 30 minutes for Jesus 5 days a week. I can promise you that if you truly PURSUE Him, it will change your life. So get your youth group on board. Invite your friends to start. Pick a ‘buddy’ to keep you on track and help you memorize Scripture. Most of all, PURSUE JESUS! HE is the only ONE worthy of our pursuit and the only ONE we can trust with our journey!