infuse - What Does The Bible Have For Me?

Email article to a friend. What Does The Bible Have For Me? By Anika E. Sandy-Hanson Life never ceases to amaze me. Just when we think everything is flowing smoothly, a bump comes up and throws our reality into a cyclone.
The question becomes, "what next"? What will be the next problem, what will be the next solution, what should we do next? I rarely know the answer to the first two questions, but I have learned the answer to the last one. It may seem hard, because we are taught to solve our own problems, but the Bible should guide our actions. It took me a
few years to really learn the meaning and application of this statement, but hopefully some of you will be able to master the technique early enough to save yourselves a lot of headache. There is a scripture that says there is nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:9 to be exact. I sometimes imagine that problems are unique to my situation and I am the only one dealing with some of these things; and indeed I sometimes find myself in very special predicaments. Yet, I have learned even these problems can be boiled down to issues that are common to many people on earth today and many situations in the Bible. I recently had a disagreement with my executive board (I take student leadership very seriously and I am currently the Coordinator/President of my University graduate student government). I had a disagreement with several members and I was very angry they voted against me on this matter when we could have worked out the situation in a better way. After thinking about the issue for a while I realized one of the officers was not elected properly and I could get rid of him by applying the correct voting procedures. In the midst of my planning, I happened to slip in a prayer while finalizing my strategy. I don't even remember if my prayer included a request for guidance, but I do know God provided it. I met with both of our organizational advisors and they helped me to see that enacting this "solution" was an attempt at revenge and would be much more damaging to everyone involved than if I just left things alone. That strategy took much more prayer, and that's when I decided to consult our little "handbook," the Bible. I have to say I didn't find a single scripture to support my original plan. In fact, the Bible told me to do the opposite. In other words, I could have saved myself the time and aggravation of meeting with human advisors by consulting our spiritual advisor, Jesus and His Word, the Bible, in the first place. I still cringe to imagine what would have happened if God had not lead me to talk with these two people. This event made me think about the Bible and what it truly means to be a follower of Christ, Joshua the Messiah, and what things we can do to be effective in our daily Christian walk. I am sure once you see my list you could probably add rules of your own and I look forward to reading them on the message boards. Life takes on a whole new perspective when we focus on living life for God, our father Yahweh. It can be easy to find just the scriptures we need when we need them, especially if we have the right tools. Making time for our spiritual health is the only way we can have good health in any other area of our lives. Rule 1: Ecclesiastes 12:13 reads, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." This scripture is not the only one to give us this perspective on life's priorities. Many people search their whole lives for a "purpose". We all search for our calling and the careers we should be working toward. Well, the Bible already gives us our mandate. We should make our salvation and living for God the most important thing we do. This should be our focus--everything else is a derivative of this goal. For example, now that I know my priorities, I can tell an organization I am not going to attend an important event on the Sabbath and not even worry about what might happen. Growing up in the church meant I always kept the Sabbath, but depending on what was going on I would worry about what I missed and think I might be letting people down. Now, I only think about the importance of the Sabbath and how obeying this command is important to God and to me. It is not only one of the components of living for God, it is one of the things that gets me through life; having a weekly rest saves me from the stress that dominates my friends' daily lives. Focusing on a Godly life makes decision-making a lot easier as well. I don't have to ask myself some really intricate questions when making a plan because my choices should only be those that would improve my relationship with God. This lifestyle does require some adjustment and it takes getting used to, but the reward, a contented life, is much better than the alternative. Rule 2: The second item, finding the right scriptures, is even easier. Try to remember the time you just wanted to know how to forgive someone, or you had no clue how to tell someone you didn't want to do something you knew was wrong? Well that's when the Bible becomes your guide, but most of us don't have the Bible memorized so sometimes it's hard to find the right scriptures. I have found that a concordance is the most helpful tool for studying the Bible. I use the Strong's Concordance, which is huge, and heavy, and intimidating, but it is excellent. Basically, it can list every word contained in the Bible, from "a" to "Zerrubabel". So if I am looking for forgiveness I look in the concordance and find all the scriptures dealing with that subject, sometimes the good old back-of-the Bible concordance is just what we need to find those scriptures that speak to our situation. But a concordance is even better and it's a great investment. Rule 3: The last bit of advice ties back into the first two. If If we want to have good outcomes in any other areas of our lives we need to work on our spiritual health. Praying every day and reading our Bibles will help us in making split-second decisions. When we have a good spiritual foundation we can make decisions and react to life's challenges in a Godly way. There is no need to fish around and try to think of the best thing to do, we will be used to doing the right thing and our mind will be lead to the right solutions. It is true that practice makes perfect and if we practice we can become used to living God's perfect way of life. The Bible is one of the only tools we have for navigating this eventful life. Advice from family and friends can be helpful, and our mental abilities assist in our decisions; however, the biggest challenge is finding that one place to which we can always turn. That place is to God through our prayers, to His Word through the Bible, and to His guidance through His Holy Spirit. When we use these strategies we can be guided in our daily walk and we can find that it is much easier to ride the waves that are a part of our earthly lives.