Open my eyes that I may see...

I was just browsing around on John Piper's blog, Desiring God, and found a GREAT sermon on why reading our bibles regularly along with seeking God in prayer is what really GROWS us in our spiritual walk with the Lord. John Piper puts it so simply that I just had to share this bc hopefully, if you are a Christian, you want to be growing in your relationship and your understanding of the Lord and who He is and what He wants to do in your life. It is hard to be disciplined to do these things, and we all fall short, but it is worth making it a priority. It's all about what matters most to you in life. And God reminds us that this life here on earth is like a vapor....it will be gone before we know it, compared to ETERNITY!! When you stand before God someday at the end of this short time here on earth, will you be able to stand there, knowing, by the grace of God, you lived your life in a way that brought glory to the Lord, and was pleasing to the Lord bc you had purposed in your heart to seek Him and follow Him with all you had?? We only have one life here on earth, only ONE! I became a Christian when I was 9 years old, in VBS. I was blessed to have parents that raised me in church. I went on lots of youth trips and was really involved at our church. I remember the first bible verse I memorized was Ps 56:3 "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee" bc I have always struggled with fear. When I went to college I started going to some different churches and started learning some things about being a Christian and about God's word that I had never known. God used different circumstances while I was in college to really make me lean on Him and depend on Him....and it was during these times that I grew the most and could feel God's presence. I signed up to do summer missions in Gatlingburg one summer and God REALLY opened my eyes to see more of Him and taught me alot through friends I made there. That summer is when I knew for sure that I wanted to be a missionary. I really didn't intend on sharing all this this morning, but I guess I just think back on my life thus far and I can see how God has grown me at different times, and the times I learned the most or experienced His power the greatest were usually tough times when I had to cling to God's word and hide it in my heart. I have experienced the power of God's word in my life, and I just want others to experience it too. Even when life is good, I want to be hiding God's word in my heart. I think it's one of those things that you don't realize what you are missing until you experience it. I am doing a Precepts bible study with my church right now, and I love it. I realize now more than ever before that there is SO MUCH I don't know about the bible and that I WANT to learn.....and there will always be more to learn and understand. As Christians, we never "arrive" and are done with learning. We should always be seeking to know God more and understand His word better.
We have been so encouraged at our church here in Bristol. So many people truly love the Lord and you can tell that they are spending time with God on a regular basis.......they know God's word, they encourage one another, they pray for one another. They are real and they are dependent on God. They have been such a blessing to us.
Ok, so, like I said, I just want to encourage you to make spending time in God's word and spending time communicating with Him a priority this year. He will transform you and He can show you and teach you things you never knew. I am going to post an excerpt from John Piper's sermon....but I will post a link to the actual sermon and you can read it for yourself. He just says it SO WELL. Praying God will use all this to glorify Himself in your life and mine. Here's the excerpt:

Jesus put it like this in his great prayer for us in John 17:17, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth." "Sanctify" is a Biblical word for making a person holy or godly or loving or pure or virtuous or spiritually wise. And these things I want for myself and for my children and for you. So what then should we do this year? If we are sanctified by the truth, and the Word of God is truth, what should we do?

If a doctor says, "You're very sick and may die of your sickness, but if you will take this medicine, you will get well and live," and you neglect to take the medicine - too busy, the pills are big and hard to swallow, just forgetful - you are going to stay sick and you may die. That's the way it is with sin and spiritual immaturity. If you neglect what God tells you will sanctify you and make you mature and strong and holy, then you will not be mature and strong and holy. Reading, and meditating on and memorizing and cherishing the Word of God is God's appointed way of overcoming sin and becoming a strong, godly, mature, loving, wise person.

Psalm 119:18. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." This verse combines prayer and the Word, and we need to see how, so that we can combine them this way in our lives and in our church. There are three things that we learn from this verse.

• One is that there are wonderful things in the Word of God. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." The word "law" is "Torah" and means "instruction" or "teaching" in this psalm. There are wonderful things in God's teaching to us. In fact, they are so wonderful that when you really see them, they change you profoundly and empower holiness and love and missions (2 Corinthians 3:18). Which is why reading and knowing and meditating on and memorizing the Word of God is so crucial.
• The second thing we learn from this verse is that no one can see these wonderful things for what they really are without God's supernatural help. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." If God does not open our eyes, we will not see the wonder of the Word. We are not naturally able to see spiritual beauty. When we read the Bible without the help of God, the glory of God in the teachings and events of the Bible is like the sun shining in the face of a blind man. Not that you can't construe its surface meaning, but you can't see the wonder, the beauty, the glory of it such that it wins your heart.
• Which leads to the third thing we learn from this verse, namely, that we must pray to God for supernatural illumination when we read the Bible. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." Since we are helpless in ourselves to see spiritual beauty and the wonder of God in the teachings and events of the Bible without God's gracious illumination, we should ask him for it. "Open my eyes."

Here's the link to the entire sermon: it's printed out so you can just read it.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1998/1024_Open_My_Eyes_That_I_May_See/