Women of the Word

What word are you a woman of?

Off the top of my head...

• I am a woman of MANY - many words, many emotions
• I am a woman of BUSY - being busy gives me a sense of importance & accomplishment
• I am a woman of ANGER - I hate that this is true, but anger often gets the better of me, wait... rather, I often let anger rule my emotions
• I am a woman of PRAYER - I have recently rekindled my ongoing conversation with God & find myself praising Him for loving me enough to bring me to my knees.

What words define you?

We are called to be Women of the Word... as in Word of God. Scripture. This is important. As I sit here going over your prayer requests & finding scripture that pertains to them I find myself thinking often that there are so many scriptures that apply to each issue. I could fill pages & my issue quickly becomes how to not create a 20 page volume of prayer for one aspect of our lives (ie: your bible study group).

How do we become Women of THE Word?
You know the answer. Quiet time. Devotions. Reading your Bible. MEMORIZING Scripture. Knowing God's will for your life.

YBH?
I heard a teacher once who wrote YBH in her Bible when she agreed with something, but didn't yet know how to put it into practice. Yes, But How?

So, very practically... what are you going to give up? I ask this because we are all busy. We all find things to do with our time. I personally am a huge fan of TV. Yes, I know, not having actual TV/Cable in my home for something like 13 years means I go about it differently, but I have discovered that technology has found many ways to bring this tantalizingly entertaining time waster into my life. (This commercial kind of sums it up). So this past week I've had to look at how I spend my time and let go of some things; re-prioritize.

Make A Decision
Decide that your Bible reading, prayer, quiet time are a priority. Take stock of what you will eliminate in order to capture quality time for you and God. Cutting down or cutting out TV time is an easy answer. Multi-tasking some things could help…like: returning important phone calls on your cell phone while you power-walk or drive. Be creative.

Work particularly on eliminating time wasting, energy sapping activities …as many as you can identify. This will leave enough space for productive, necessary things; leaving you more time to hear what God is saying.

A Blessed New Habit

Restructure your time and you will be blessed going in and blessed going out. (Deut 28:6)
Less stress & more peace will ensue. Remember it takes 30 days to make something a habit so that is your first goal.

You want God's word & prayer to become a natural part of your thinking and your knee-jerk response to any situation.

Knee Jerk Response
I love this... I read it on this blog. Build a knee-jerk response that is Godly. Read & memorize scripture, pray without ceasing, talk with God constantly, meditate on God's word and you will begin to have a different reaction to life.

When fear trys to creep in, you'll banish it by focusing on God.
When anger threatens to take over; you'll call on the Holy Spirit to calm you & give a calm response.
When lonliness wants to befriend you, you'll remember that God is always with you.

Perhaps God will change your heart. You'll look at things differently and see prayers being answered. You'll reach out to others who are going through similar issues. You will start having powerful knee-jerk reactions instead of condemning ones.
Gosh, this is exciting!

Transformation

What we spend our time doing and who we spend our time with will have a profound effect on who we become.

As we spend dedicated time in scripture meditation and in prayer, we are spending time in the presence of the Lord. And, that will determine, more than anything, who we are to be.

(In future days/weeks I am going to be posting selections from pray-the-scriptures.com on prayer, quiet time and drawing close to God)