Today's Passage - Acts 17:10-15

Acts 17:10-15   As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. When the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. The men who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. Here it says that the Bereans received the message with great eagerness and studied the Scriptures every day.  It is very important to read God's word every day. When we read God's words regularly, our thoughts are our spirit will be refreshed each day.  If we do not have God's word as our foundation, our thoughts day and night will be filled with trash.  This is why many people are filled with thoughts of anxiety, resentment and fear.  If you want your thoughts to be positive, you need to feed your mind with the word of God.    Many people pay close attention to their diet every day.  They eat at fixed times, in fixed portions and they even count the number of calories in their meals.  However, when it comes to reading God's word, they are a lot less disciplined. They read more chapters of the Bible when they feel like it, and when they do not feel like reading, they do not even pick up the Bible. Very often, we pay much more attention to our physical needs, our environment, whether our food is contaminated, more than our spiritual contamination.  Many of us have a mind that is completely open to the world, and we allow the world to tempt us with various things.  Yet, we spend little time coming before God, and allowing God to use his word to influence us.  May the Lord help us, not only to care about counting calories in our food, but to be concerned about getting sufficient spiritual "calories".    You must set aside time each day to read the word of God.  Whether it is day or night, we need to arrange for a time to spend time with God.  It does not have to be a long amount of time.  15 minutes every day can allow you to experience the truth in God's Word.  There is a secret to maintaining the spiritual discipline of reading God's Word - it is to be prepared.  If you want to read God's Word in the morning, make sure you clean your desk the night before and flip to the passage in the Bible you want to read.  When you wake up the next morning, you will naturally read the word of God and His Word will be your help and strength!        Pray with Pastor Tong   Lord, we pray that you will give us the desire to read your Word daily, just like deer panting for the water.  We also pray that your word will be our help in our daily lives, the light to our feet and the lamp to our paths. We thank you and we pray in the victorious name of Jesus, Amen!       Participate in Shekinah Glory - ROLCC Building Expansion Project - by Donating a Seat for a future new believer!