S2S Sisters: "The Power of the Word of God to Renew Our Minds" by Christy Kenaston

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power.

Welcome to Strength of Strength, sisters. So good to see all of you who have joined, and we're excited about another talk today. My name is Mariah Frost, and I'll just introduce myself since I'm new to the admin team.

I come from— I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with my husband Joseph Frost and our two young children, Thaddeus and Marily. And we enjoy attending a small church here called Disciples of Jesus.

And we are excited to introduce Christy to you today. She is our speaker, and I'm just going to read her bio.

Christy Keniston has raised her family of 4 children on the mission field. She and her husband, Daniel, have been living in West Africa since 1999. For the first 10 years, they focused on church planting among the Kankomba tribe of northern Ghana, living at the level of their people in a tropical mud hut, taught Christy many valuable life skills and priceless spiritual lessons. It was in the village of Bunbon that she learned the benefit of ingesting the Word of God. Its truths have been a safeguard for her against the deceptive, emotional, and mental onslaught of the enemy.

So we're very excited to hear what Christy has to share with us. Her talk is entitled "The Power of the Word of God to Renew Our Minds." She says, "Whether at home or abroad, we women often face a battle in our minds. There are days when the thoughts— when thoughts fight against our very soul and threaten to undo our faith and confidence in Christ. But the Word of God is powerful. It can transform our minds and cut through confusing lies."

So we are going to get right into the talk here in just a second. I do want to say that there will be a Q&A time after this talk, so be prepared with your questions and comments afterwards. That would be great.

And you won't be recorded unless you speak, but this call is being recorded. So welcome, everyone who's joining. It's so good to see everyone. And I'm going to turn it over to you, Christy, in just a second, but first I'd like to say another prayer before we get started. Let's pray.

Dear God, thank You so much for this time we're able to have together. I just— thank You for all the people that are joining in, Lord, to listen. And I pray that You would anoint Christy, Lord, and just fill her with Your Spirit, and anoint her tongue as she shares. I pray that this talk would reach many lives and encourage us all as we strive to advance Your kingdom. And I pray that You would be with Christy this— in this moment, Lord. I pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank You so much. God bless you, Christy. Thank You. All right. So I thank all of you for giving this time— your time, your busy time— to gather together as sisters and have a Bible study. So I'm just imagining all of us in the same room.

When I have Bible study with my girls tonight, they will be gathered in my living room. After this class, we will go and have a Bible study with all of my sunshine daughters. So we call our extended family the sunshine family.

Currently, I have about 25 children dorming in the rooms here at our place, and we treat them like family, even though they're not adopted children. They are just children who need to go to school in the city here where we live, and we take the opportunity to disciple them while they're with us for the years of their junior high and high school years. Some of them stay on through college. But yeah, we're a big family. So I gather my girls together tonight, every Saturday night, to study the Word of God. And it's honestly one of the highlights of my week, to study the Word of God. So thank You for this privilege. God bless you, Mariah, for hosting this talk tonight— in my tonight.

Okay. So I felt like when they asked me to talk on the Strength to Strength platform here, I felt like God has given me a passion for encouraging us to get into the Word of God. And I would like to share a little bit about how it has completely transformed my life. When I was a young married woman, when we moved to Ghana— I was married just a few months before we moved— there was a lot of things that I faced: loneliness, expectations on my husband or on the mission field that didn't meet up to my expectation. And one of those was becoming a mom. I had wanted to be a missionary alongside my husband and do missionary work, evangelizing the villages.

And that didn't happen. I was able to go with him in the beginning, but once I started having children, I needed to stay at the house with the children. So the complete disappointment was something that I had to face while my husband was gone, 3 nights a week to the villages.

That's where my heart was. My heart was in the villages. And what was I sitting at, the house, my little mud hut, grassroof house? What was I doing in Africa if I wasn't going to be evangelizing? So that discouragement settled in on me, and I had to do something with the loneliness, with the disappointment. And God just kept pressing on my heart, "Come to me. I'm here. I'm always here." And His truth really grounded my emotions during those times— my mind, my thoughts, the confusion of, "I thought I was going to be a missionary. I don't want to just be a missionary's wife. I wanted to be a missionary myself." So God and Daniel were very patient with me as I learned to find fulfillment in being a wife, being a mother on the mission field, and all that that entails.

I face a lot of the same things that you women face in the States. Likely, I face a lot of some of the same things that you missionary wives face in other parts of the world. But I had to make a choice, and that's what I want to talk about tonight. I had to make a choice. What am I going to base my outlook on? Am I going to base it on the onslaught of my feelings, my thoughts, my emotions?

Or am I going to base my life grounded on the Word of God and grounded in Christ? And praise God, I chose the Word of God and Christ. So it has brought so much strength and so much stability in my life. When I talk with some of my friends and they talk about some of their mental struggles and their confusion and their discouragement, whatever it is, I always put a smile on and say, "But the Word of God— the Word of God is strong enough to keep us with its power, because the Word of God is powerful." So the title, "The Power of the Word of God to Renew Our Minds," let's talk about that a little bit.

It transforms our lives. It transforms our thought patterns.

It is power of itself, because this power comes from God. He is the source of the Word of God. So the first point I would like to discuss is, number 1, God's Word is power. And how do we know that it's power? Let's talk about it. First, let's look at how powerful the Word of God really is, and then we can see how this power affects us.

In John 1:1, it says, "In the beginning, the Word already existed. And the Word was with God, and the Word is God."

The— sorry, I should say here before we get started, the Bible translation that we use here in Ghana is New Living Translation, so that's what I will be using here.

Psalm 29 tells us that the voice of the Lord is powerful, it's majestic, it splits and shatters the mighty cedars. His voice strikes like lightning. It makes the earth quake. It shakes the wilderness. It twists the mighty oaks and strips the forests bare. This is how strong and powerful the Word of God is.

Now, when I say the Word of God, I mean the actual Word of God that comes from His mouth, and we get to hold it in pages that can be read, in audio that can be listened to. It's so powerful. So we can't separate the voice of God from the Word of God. It is the same. God used only His spoken Word to create galaxies full of wonders.

When we think about creation, Psalm 33 says, "The Word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything He does." The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the Word, and all the stars were born.

Verse 9 says, "For when He spoke, the world began." It appeared at His command. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that awesome that our God's voice is so powerful that it just breathed out stars and galaxies and the world and everything that we know around us? It just came from His voice.

This is a powerful Word that we hold. And I'm so excited that the Word of God is given to us in our language. In English or whatever language you speak, it's in our language and being translated every year.

Genesis 1 gives us the familiar account of creation. We all know it. We were taught it as children if we grew up in church. But let's not lose the wonder of our powerful God to speak into existence anything He wills, including in our own lives.

And sisters, this is amazing. So when God speaks truth into our hearts, lies have to disappear. When God speaks light into our hearts, darkness has to run away. So this is something that, in my recent years, I have really been excited to see how powerful the Word of God is in my life and seeing it in the lives around me. It's transforming my children. It's transforming unbelievers to become children of God. And as we press into the Word of God, it opens up so many powerful victories and overcoming power over sin. It's just amazing. Number 2, God's Word produces wonderful results.

So now we come to ourselves. After looking at God's power all around us, now let's look at God's power personally. Isaiah 55:10 and 11 says, "The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer." It is the same with my Word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit.

It will accomplish all I want it to do, and it will prosper everywhere I send it. That's a promise from God. So when God sends His Word into our hearts, He promises it will produce. And that is such an amazing promise from the Lord. I know that all of us want the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. All of us want to see patience and love and kindness and gentleness, selflessness coming from our lives. Well, God says, "It is the same with my Word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit."

My Word will accomplish all I want it to do, and it will prosper everywhere I send it. So let's claim that promise, dear sisters. Our initial change of mindset and thought happens when we believe the good news, when we heard the Gospel for the first time, and when we embraced it for our own saving power. So we are truly saved by faith and by the Word of God. So when we open the Word of God, when a preacher expounds on the Word of God, and we hear the Gospel, the good news, and we embrace it by faith, this is when the seed is planted into our hearts. And this life of faith is a journey away from our human nature, and we venture into walking in the life of the Spirit.

So this seed of God's Word planted in our hearts, it starts to move and shake the depth of our being, our mindset, our thoughts, our emotions, our plans, our very outlook on life. It is so powerful. It changes even our hearts.

The Bible says in 1 Peter 1:22 to 25, "You were cleansed when you obeyed the truth." And your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living Word of God. Your new life will last forever, it says, because it comes from the eternal living Word of God. Verse 25 says, "For the Word of the Lord remains forever." It never changes. So when you read the Word of God, it doesn't change. We change. And that is so beautiful to me. That is what excites me, is that my sinful nature is being pushed away as I accept and receive and drink and eat the Word of God. It just delights my soul.

The words of God are powerful enough to train us in right ways of thought and behavior. And it also rebukes us when we start to follow wrong thoughts. 2 Timothy 3 says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives."

Sisters, don't we want to know what's true? Don't we want to realize what's wrong in our lives? We don't want to walk throughout life thinking we're doing the right thing and not doing the right thing. That's why God's Word is so important to take in regularly the Word of God so that it trains our thought patterns and, "Oh, that's right. I shouldn't be thinking that way. That's right. I shouldn't be saying this or doing that." It helps us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. Praise the Lord.

Verse 17, "God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work." So God uses His Word to prepare us, equip us for every good work He asks us to do. This is just so necessary. I feel, as a missionary on the field, I feel like I need God to equip me for what He asks me to do. And I know that you, dear sisters, feel the same way where you are. God, I need You to equip me for what You need me to do today in my family, in my church, in my neighborhood, in ministry. The words of God are powerful enough to train us in right ways of thought and behavior.

So this is just really encouraging to me to know that God is using His Word. And may I add that when you open up the Word of God, it's not just like any other book where you read and you're inspired. This is something different. I like to view the Word of God when I open up its pages and I look at it. I like to envision with physical eyes—I can't see with physical eyes—but I like to look at the page and envision the Holy Spirit moving within the letters of the page, moving within the sentences and the paragraph separations and the chapter separations. The Holy Spirit is hovering in those pages, ready to speak to us as we read the Word of God or as we listen to the Word of God, as we memorize it.

It's not like a devotional book or an inspirational book. This is not something that will just come alongside you and say, "Yeah, good job. You're doing well." This is a book that has more depth to it than any other book in the world.

And I'm excited about that because no matter what language it's translated in, the Holy Spirit is there. When a heart is open to learning, when a heart is open to seeking God in the pages of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit can use every language in the world to now speak life into that very soul.

So, dear sisters, I really want to just encourage your heart to keep pressing into the Word of God. The Word of God is so powerful. It can distinguish between intention and desire, between our flesh and our spirit. It can expose our deceitful heart. God's Word is so powerful. It can help us navigate our many thoughts and feelings.

The Bible says in Jeremiah 17, "The human heart is most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked."

Who really knows how bad our hearts are? "But I, the Lord, search and examine secret motives." The Lord is here helping us to decipher between, was that a wrong motive or a right motive? Was that a wrong action or a right action? Was that thought something I should accept or something I should reject? He is there with us. God says, "I search your heart."

There's a secret to unlocking the code and figuring out how sly our heart actually is, how it works, how it acts, how it thinks. And this is it. The Word of God is alive and powerful. It's sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

This is Hebrews 4.

The Word of God can take a confused mind and just give it peace and give it an answer of rest. And I would really love for all of us women to run to the Word of God rather than to any human resource that we have at our fingertips, but run to the Word of God, the pure Word of God, and let the Word of God, in its very nature of healing and life-giving, let it decipher what we're trying to figure out and give us wisdom in every situation.

It's very powerful. It's God's Word, God's voice to us. It has spoken, and it will not change. It has spoken. We will change. Amen? Number 3, God's Word is liberating. Keeping our minds fixated on the Word of truth will set us free from our own shifting and unstable deceitful thoughts.

We have so many thoughts that come at us, come towards us from our own thought patterns or from the enemy trying to tempt us. So we need the Word of God. We really need the Word of God to help us stay on the right path, to follow and actively pursue God's will in our life in this situation that we find ourselves in right now, at this moment.

Proverbs 4 says, "Don't lose sight of them." That's God's Word. Let His Word penetrate deep into your heart, for they bring life to those who find them and healing to their body.

How many of us need healing in our body, in our hearts? We need life, and we need healing. And this is so precious that God promises that His Word brings life. His Word brings healing.

In Joshua 1, it says, "Study this book of instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night, so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do." This is my command.

Be strong and courageous, dear sisters. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. "Study this book of instruction continually," is what it started out by saying. "Meditate on it day and night."

The Lord your God will go with you wherever you go. One of the most common ailments or complaints of Christian women is that they've lost interest in the Word of God or they don't have time the way they want to spend time in the Word of God. How can we fix this lack of interest, lethargy, spiritual illness? How can we fix this? Deuteronomy 6 tells us, "Listen, Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to the commands I am giving you today." Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at home and when you're on the road, when you're going to bed or when you're getting up.

Tie them to your hands. Wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gate. You must diligently obey the commands of the Lord your God, all the laws and decrees He has given you. In the future, our children will ask us, "What's the meaning of these laws, decrees, regulations that the Lord your God has commanded you to obey?"

Then you must tell your children, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt." And, dear sisters, haven't we been slaves of a terrible master before? Let's give our children the testimony that we have of God taking us away from slavery and giving us freedom in Christ. I'll continue. "But the Lord brought us out of Egypt with His strong hand. The Lord did miraculous signs and wonders before our very eyes. And the Lord our God commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear Him so He can continually bless us and preserve our lives as He has done to this day.

For we will be counted as righteous when we obey all the commands the Lord has given us." This is advice. How can we fight against the lack of interest in the Word of God? There was a command given to the children of Israel.

One, meditate and study and obey the Word of God. Two, teach them to your children. And not only just meditate on it, but meditate on it everywhere you go. Going out, coming in, rising up, going down to sleep. All day long, even in the night, meditate on His Word. Let His Word be on your walls, on your doorposts, at your gate. Be reminded of God's Word.

So God really would like us to be in His Word. He knows how beneficial it is for our lives.

This kind of life that we talked about in these verses here in Deuteronomy 6, this is purposeful meditation and reflection. It is purposeful ingestion of the Word of God into our hearts and into our children's hearts day and night. Sisters, let's commit to doing this same thing in our lives and in our families' lives.

I know that there are promises, there are commands, there is direction, there is guidance, there is comfort in the Word of God that you will find nowhere else.

The Lord says, "I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Don't be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.

God Himself will guide us through His Word." And that's Psalm 33.

If the truth of God can guide us or set us free from our own mental entrapments, then how can we unlock the power of the Word if we don't even know it or respect it enough to read it, listen to it, or memorize it? This power, how can we even accept this power if we're not willing to put the work into accessing it? So accessing the power is through the Word of God, and we need to get into the Word of God more, and we need to believe in its power. So I have a question. Where does this power come from?

And the answer is this power comes from the Word of God. Sorry, this power comes from God Himself. What does this power offer me is the second question.

The power of the Word of God, the power of God's voice offers me life. Now, there are verses that I could put with every single one of these answers, but for time's sake, I will just say what it offers us. Life, in every form of the Word. As we incorporate God's Word into our very being, we will see life springing up in our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.

Light, it offers us light. We will receive insights, revelations, wisdom, divine focus, and clarity, perspective all from the powerful Word of God. These things are treasures that we will find as we dive into the Word of God, as we pray through the Word of God, as we meditate on the Word of God, memorize it. These things that we're discussing here, you will find them. You have been finding them. Keep finding them. So what does this power of the Word of God offer me? Life, light. Then we'll talk about freedom.

Freedom from our sinful human nature, freedom from temptation, freedom from the opinions of others, freedom from the lies of Satan, freedom to detach one's heart from this earthly life and be free to long for eternity.

What does this power offer me? Fruitfulness. The fruit of the Spirit will be ripening in our lives. As we read the Word of God and obey it, we will start seeing more and more fruitfulness in our lives. We will be making an eternal difference for Christ in our relating to people.

Fruitfulness for God is not only fruitfulness in our life, like I'm becoming more like Christ every day, and I'm being more patient with my children, less angry, less proud. Not only that, but fruitfulness in bringing souls into the kingdom of God.

And that happens when we enter into the Word of God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, just grasping the Word of God as ours, my message from God Himself.

It's so precious. He will stir in our hearts a longing to bring more people into His presence in this life and in the life to come.

And the next thing I thought of was that the Word of God offers us confidence, the ability to stand on truth against popular thought patterns and opinions of this age. The confidence to continue to do the right thing, even if we suffer for Christ. Dear sisters, you live in a country that is so confusing that from this distance, I just cannot believe human beings can say such nonsense. It's just sometimes it's laughable, sometimes it's grieving to the point of indignation, like righteous indignation rises up in my soul. I cannot believe somebody would say something like that. So the confidence, the Word of God instills confidence in us because when we believe that the Word of God is the written voice of God, then we will take it with a serious consideration.

Everything it says, we consider it, and we believe it, and we know it's truth. And there is so much stability and, as I said, confidence that comes in believing the Word of God and going to the Word of God with different topics that are discussed in today's age and saying, "What does the Word of God say? Okay, that's what I believe." And there's so much freedom in that.

So yes, the Word of God instills and offers us confidence. Now, question number three. How can I access this life-giving, sin-dispelling power? How can I access that? How can it become part of my life? Well, Psalm 119:130 says, "The entrance of your word gives light and understanding."

So, dear sisters, let it enter. Let it enter more and more and more. Even if your mind says, "I'm tired of this," even if your heart says, "This is just another round through the Bible," continue pressing on. We press on with lots of things that are not important, like taking a walk every day. You could say, "Oh, it's very important." Not in light of eternity, though.

This is important. Continue, even if it's hot outside. Keep entering the Word of God in your mind. People who are dedicated to their walking or their exercise or their diet, there are days where they really, really, really don't want to do what they're doing, but they do it anyway because they believe it's good and it's right to do what they're doing. Now, dear sisters, if you are tired of reading the Word of God, you're on a reading program, or you just look at that big book and it looks overwhelming, press through. Don't give up. Keep going.

The entrance of your word gives light. Look at the end goal. You want light. You want understanding. You want life. So keep going, keep going, keep going. Don't think about how you feel about the Word of God today. Today's reading wasn't interesting. You read through Leviticus on your way through the Bible, and it's what is it in Leviticus that's interesting? It's not about that. It's about continuing. The entrance of God's word brings light and understanding. So keep going, dear sisters. Keep running this race of, "I must continue to enter the Word of God into my life in every way possible."

Question four. What forces are working against me as I pursue the power of the Word of God in my life? You may have some of your own answers. These are three major things that I thought of that work against us.

One, obligations. These come in many forms. Obligations can be family obligations, work obligations, ministry obligations, social expectations, and so on. These are real. These are things that are not easy to navigate through when it comes to the Word of God and my family, the Word of God and my work. We need to balance everything and make time for the Word of God.

Another thing is distractions. These are not the obligations that we must do. These are not our responsibilities. These are distractions. That could be hobbies, phone time, books that we're reading, podcasts that we're listening to, music, lots of things that can distract us. And then the third one is spiritual attacks. This one is very real, dear sisters.

One thing I know is that the devil does not want us to open the book of life. That is very true. He will have so many different things that he tries to convince us of. We can be uninterested.

So some of those things are partly our responsibility, and some are just temptations that are whispered into our souls. So we can be uninterested. The Word of God is just not interesting. Well, that's not true. It may not feel interesting, but it is interesting. As we get into it, it becomes alive. So yes, I did have years of uninterested in the Word of God or portions that were interesting to me more than others. And that still is true. There are still places that I tend to rush to more than others.

But the feeling of being uninterested, just an overall, "I'd rather pick up this distraction than pick up the Word of God." We face discouragement. I made an obligation to or I made a promise that I would read through the Bible in a year. Lots of us have done those kind of goals. And you will face discouragement along the way.

Maybe you took a three-day trip, and now you're behind on your Bible reading. Now Satan comes along and says, "Ah, just give it up. You were gone for three days or even worse, two weeks, and you didn't read your Bible. Just give it up." But dear sisters, who says that we have to finish in 365 days?

Why can't we just keep going where we left off? Why can't we just keep reading? Why do we need to have these expectations? And when we're not able to meet the expectation, then we just give up. Let's not do that. Let's keep going because the end goal is not to finish on December 31st. The end goal is to keep storing the Word of God in our hearts. Amen?

Laziness is another thing. Just feeling lazy. I don't feel like reading the Bible. I don't feel like listening to the Bible. Lack of priority. That's another one. Being overwhelmed with how huge the Bible is. It's a lot of reading. It's a lot of pages. And some of us aren't fast readers like myself.

Very slow, methodical. I even read the punctuation. It's very interesting to me to read punctuation. See where the commas are. See where the periods are. That's a question mark. That's an exclamation mark. So for fast readers, that may be frustrating, but to me, it creates a dialogue. It creates conversation, and it comes alive to me when I read slowly. And yeah, I just cannot read fast. I find myself skipping ahead and not really understanding what I read. So I have to back up and read back over those three sentences again because it's like, "What did I just read?" So it's okay if you're a slow reader, but don't be overwhelmed by how big the Bible is.

That's one of the spiritual attacks is that this is so huge, you can't do it. Satan wants to make it look impossible. Evil forces or our stubborn flesh, I'm not sure which, sometimes it's one or the other, tells us lies about how impossible memorization is or how impossible reading through your Bible is or meditating with a busy household of ministry or children. Those are lies. It's not true. It really is not true. It is not impossible to memorize. Even at almost 50 years of age, I am finding memorization to be one of the best ways to meditate on the Word of God. And it's just so exciting. When I finally get my repetitions through the chapter and I'm able to now quote it almost perfectly to the end, I don't know how many times I have to go through a chapter before I can quote it perfectly.

Probably hundreds, I'm guessing. But when I get towards the end, then I wake up with thoughts of the Word of God on my heart. Like the chapter is going through my mind and I lay there before I go to bed or wake up. It's one of the first things that comes to my mind when I wake up. And this is a stage in my chapter memorizing that it's like, "Oh, wonderful. I'm at the stage where I wake up with the Word of God right there in my thoughts." But if I read a chapter, I'm not one that can read a chapter and then meditate on it throughout the whole day. I could possibly take a verse, but a whole chapter, I cannot do that.

But memorizing, I can. And that's exciting to me because my mind gets so distracted with this needs to be done, that needs to be done. Oh, this time cramp is coming. I need to get this done. So memorization is just one of those wonderful things. So then I have plan of action. I've stored up your word in my heart so that I will not sin against you. Psalm 119, verse 10 and 11.

So this is the plan of action. Dear sisters, listen to the Word of God. Read the Word of God. Memorize the Word of God. Meditate. Pray. Sing. Believe and obey. All of those on the Word of God. So let me say those again for those of you taking notes.

Listen.

Read.

Memorize. Meditate. Pray.

Sing. Believe. And obey.

Remember, obedience to God's word is one of the main keys to unlocking the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So if we read and we forget to obey, the book of James tells us that it's like looking in the mirror and you forgot what you even look like. Your hair needs to be combed. Your face needs to be washed. If you look in the mirror and you forget what you look like, that's how it is to listen to the Word of God and forget what you heard. We need to listen to the Word of God and be committed to obeying it. And then it just becomes a part of us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The story that Jesus gave about the wise man and the foolish man who built their house on the rock and the sand, I was excited that God showed me I guess as a child, I just thought, "Oh, the unbeliever and the believer.

Christ is the rock and the sand is our own means of trying to get to heaven." That is not what Jesus said. Jesus said that the wise man who built his house on the rock is like a man who builds his life by obeying the Word of God. And the man who hears the Word of God and does not do it is the man who built his house in a very unstable, very risky way, and eventually his life just crumbled and fell. So that could be some of the reasons why we see some of our Christian friends losing their way. It could be that they weren't obeying the Word of God. They were reading and listening and saying amen at church, but actually obeying the Word of God gives us stability to stand against the storms, the temptations, the troubles, the cares of this life that come at us sometimes at very high speeds.

Obeying the Word of God is what the wise man did. He listened and obeyed. And that's why his life did not crumble. So dear sisters, let's obey the Word of God. As we listen to it, as we fill our hearts with it, as we store it up in our lives, let's live it out so that it becomes a part of us.

Let me quickly, before I close here, let me quickly give you personal examples of how the Word of God has helped me to overcome my own sinful nature and my own thought patterns. So the intents of the heart, the thoughts of the heart, think about it before it actually becomes an action in our lives. So when the Word of God enters, that's where it makes the change. And that's why our actions can be different when we fill our hearts with the Word of God.

Let me talk about a situation where I was harboring bitterness against one of my dear sisters. And my dear sister did not even know she did anything that offended me, but I picked up an offense and I was bitter at her. Now, what do I do with that bitterness? Because I've promised God I will not hold bitterness. What made me say that I don't want to hold bitterness? Well, it's the Word of God that told me, "If you want to be forgiven by God, you must forgive." Right? So that's a truth from God's Word. Now, it clashed with my heart that wanted to be bitter. So I told God, I said, "God, I've tried to forgive.

I've tried and I've tried. I cannot just stir up the forgiveness in my heart. You know that I don't want to be bitter. Please, Lord, forgive her through me." And I waited on God. And I actually had a heart that was like this, "Lord, where's the forgiveness?

Where's the forgiveness? I don't have it yet. Please give it to me." And I waited on God. I didn't continue to feed the bitterness. It was there already. The root had sprouted, but I didn't feed it. I just waited on God. And it took about six months for me to say, "God, please don't forget about me because I need your forgiveness. Please help me to forgive." And do you know what? God did. He filled my heart with forgiveness. But it was knowing the Word of God that helped me to realize I cannot be bitter.

Secondly, another example is when I have been discouraged in times of interacting with my children or interacting with the people here, I can feel discouragement. Like, "God, I want to see results in their lives. I want to see what I've been working so hard to teach them to be or do." And the Lord just says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength, Christie." So now I have to take that and I have to believe it. Now I have to take that truth from God's Word and believe it and act upon it. Now I have to walk in joy when I'm seeing discouraging things around me.

When I'm looking at something discouraging, I have to just remember, "No, walk with the joy of the Lord."

Let's see.

Trying to decide which one here. Okay. Let me talk about earthly attractions. Back when I lived in the village for 10 years, there were times where my life felt very remote. It felt very dusty, dirty. My mud walls would crumble down and make a lot of sweeping for us. Grass would fall down on our beds at night.

Sometimes a little critter or two would fall down through the grass. There were times where I was reminded of how earthly my home was because literally if I walked away from my home for five years, it would turn back into soil again. It would just decompose back into dirt. So I realized how temporal my living conditions were. But you know what happened? God gave me a longing for heaven through those years. God gave me a real tangible love for eternity and my home there, knowing that my King Jesus, my heavenly fiancé, is building my mansion for me in heaven while I live here doing his work. And it gave me so much anticipation and joy knowing that he's busy working there while I'm busy in the fields harvesting for him here.

And I was okay with that. I was okay with not owning anything of real value and knowing that I'm investing in what Jesus considers very priceless. And that's human souls. So knowing the Word of God and applying it into our lives and living it and convincing our mind that this is true, what I'm reading in the Word of God is true, and what you're feeling is not actually true, it's just a figment of my imagination, really gives us a power that can change our minds and our hearts and our lives. So that's what God put on my heart today. I just want to encourage you, ladies, do not give up on storing up the Word of God in your life.

It is powerful. It is changing lives. It's changing your life and it's changing mine. And that's exciting. So thank you so much for your attention. And I just hope to be a boost of encouragement to all of you.

Thank you so much, Christie. That was definitely a boost of encouragement for me. Wow, there were so many things that stuck out to me and so much encouragement, yeah, to just get in the Word and how important it really is to spend time in the Word. Sometimes it's easy to just say that there's too many other things pressing right now. Life is busy and it is for all of us. But yeah, we do make time for what is important to us. And I'm just very encouraged that, yes, God's Word needs to be of most importance to me.

I like how you said, "Run to the Word of God instead of other resources." It's definitely easy in our day and age, of course, to always Google things or there's so many resources out there. And I just think, wow, we need to, yeah, ask God. I mean, his Word has many answers for us. If we would just take some time to look into that, press into that, he would actually give us an answer, maybe instead of just quickly getting one from ourselves.

Yeah, I think we're going to open it up for our Q&A time. Thank you again, Christie. That was very encouraging. I'm sure everyone here was encouraged as I was.

So for our question and answer time, it's nice if you all would turn on your video, whoever's going to ask a question or a comment. Or there's also a chat box if you want to drop a message in the chat and we can read it.

So I'll just open it up now. Go ahead. Thank you so much, Christie. It was a pleasure to listen to you today. I have lots of notes here. And I feel a little convicted that I gave up on my one-year Bible reading this year.

A couple of years ago, we did it and we did it with a group of people. So you felt like you really needed to stay on top of it because other people are reading it as well, the same thing that you were. But this year, I wasn't reading it with a group and I got pretty far behind and I gave up on it. There was a couple of times I'd get behind. And anyway, I don't know if it was a lack of priority or distractions. I was in my first trimester of pregnancy and not really feeling good and sleeping in a little bit. Anyways, all these are, of course, excuses. And I love your encouragement to just keep going.

Why does it matter if we end on December 31st? God's the creator of time and there's no time in heaven as well. It's just this worldly thing that we live our lives around. So that's a good encouragement and conviction, I guess, to me just to keep pressing in and keep reading it and ingest that Word, especially even the parts that maybe don't feel as useful to your daily lives. It's still the Word of God and it's still his story and story of humanity and to keep going. So you really encouraged me in that. So thank you.