12.03.07

Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. - Isaiah 2:3.

Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day. - Psalm 25:4-5.

You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess. - Deuteronomy 5:33.

Have you ever wanted to lose weight and get into shape? We can read about losing weight. We can read all of the many diet books but what happens if we never put any of that information into practice? What happens is nothing! Well that may not be true because we may be headed in the wrong direction putting on weight.

I have had some health problems over the past several years and at the first of this year, I was told in the words of one doctor that my sugar level was “a wee bit high.” I finally stopped eating sugar and I am losing weight and feeling better. I have already been able to stop taking one blood pressure medication and reduced another. I stopped reading about it and applied it to my life and something is now happening that I have wanted to happen for a long time. Only when I began to put into practice what I knew I needed to do did it finally happen.

To stop reading or talking about doing something and to start actually doing it requires what? It requires a decision, a commitment to actually do it. The doctor told me at the first of the year that I needed to stop the sugar but it took me until September to put it into practice. Why did I start doing what I should have done months before? It happened on an afternoon in September when it suddenly came to me that I needed to do this and I was able to begin doing what I knew I should do. Why? As I told Jeanie, I think it was because someone prayed for me. I wanted to change, I wanted to stop eating the wrong things but something happened which can only be explained by prayer. Someone prayed. Maybe it was you? I don’t know but I am thankful.

The application in the spiritual is that if we are to actually grow to be more like our Lord and Savior we need to do more than to read His Word. We must go beyond reading and studying about His ways to actually practicing His ways applying His Word to our lives. James tells us in James 1:22-24, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”

What will it take for you to commit yourself to actually applying God’s Word to your life so that you can walk in His ways? What will take to go beyond being a “hearer” to being a“doer”? If you would like prayer, send me an email. Someone prayed for me and I will be glad to pray for you.