Skip to main content

Personalize God’s Word to Change Your Life

Daily Hope By Rick Warren October 23rd, 2016

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Philippians 1:6 NLT, second edition).

God’s Word will never change your life until you let it become personal. It’s not about your neighbor, your friend, your spouse, or the stranger down the street. God’s Word must be applied to your life. The Bible won’t become dynamic until it becomes specific.

How do you make God’s Word personal? Try the personalize-it method of Bible meditation. Anybody can do it. You don’t need any special tools or advanced theological training.

You simply put your name in the place of pronouns or nouns in Scripture. For example, if I were personalizing John 3:16, I’d write something like this: “For God so loved Rick, he gave his one and only Son so that Rick would not perish but have everlasting life.”

Or, for Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in Rick Warren will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Put your name in the text, and you’ll strengthen your faith and encourage yourself.

You can also re-write the verse as if God is talking directly to you. For example, Philippians 1:6 would be: “I, who began a good work in you, Rick, will carry it on to completion.”

Do this, and many passages of Scripture will literally bring tears to your eyes. You’ll start to read the Bible as God’s love letter to you. It’ll be God’s gift to you! Reading your Bible isn’t just about getting to know the content of the Word. It’s about getting to know the author of the Word - personally!

Talk It Over
Have you ever thought about the Bible as a love letter to you?
What does it look like when you believe that God wrote the Bible just for you? What does it look like when you treat the Bible and your quiet time with God as a personal conversation and lesson for life?
How will you personalize what you’re reading today?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dominion Mandate Daily Devotional Thursday,March 3

THEME: You Can Create Whatever You Desire John 16:21-27 The instrument with which you exercise dominion over creation is your mouth.You can create whatsoever you desire by speaking that thing into existence.Whatever you say begins to exist in the spiritual form.Jesus said in John 6:63,"The words that I speak unto you,they are spirit,and they are life". In like manner,you create whatever you say and the things begin to exist in the spiritual form.What you create through words also have life and they continue to live until they find physical expression.  This is exactly what happens when you pray.The things you declare in prayer come alive and begin to exist in their spiritual form.They remain in that spiritual form until they are converted to their tangible equivalent through work. Jesus said,"until now you have asked nothing in My name.Ask,and you will receive,that your joy may be full" (John 16:24). Don't make the mistake of relaxing after you have pray...

Sin Stained...or Blood Washed?

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.  (Hebrews 10:16-17) The Bible tells us that under Levitical law, an animal had to be offered every year to atone for the sins of the people. That word atone means "to cover" and it's used continually throughout the Old Testament. But let me tell you something exciting. It's never used in the New Testament. The Greek word used to describe what Jesus did for us on the cross is a different word altogether. It doesn't just mean "to cover"—it means "to remit; to do completely away with something." Do you know what that means? It means there is no longer a sin problem. Jesus solved it! When you made Him your Lord, He didn't just cover your sins, He put you into right-standing with God and re-created you by the Spirit of God a...

Dominion Mandate Daily Devotional Friday, March 18th 2016

You Must Forgive Yourself Hebrews 12:1-11 You have heard quite a lot about forgiving those that have offended you – and that you must do. It happens often that the person you must really forgive is yourself. You may have committed an offence or a sin and your conscience has condemned you, just as the Holy Spirit has chastised you. You may also have repented of this sin, confessed it to God and resolved not to go back that way. But you discover that the heaviness, clouded vision, and the erosion of confidence occasioned by the sin you committed continue to weigh you down. At such moments, you need to make another type of confession to God in order to regain your liberty from the weight that holds you down. You have to confess your unbelief in His word that says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). When you have genuinely repented of a sin and confessed it to God; and you have pleaded ...