Staying Full of God

Scripture:
“When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened" (Romans 1:21)

To continue a little about how to study the Word of God in this post I would like to look at two different techniques or tools that we can use to help us see truths in Scripture.

The first tool we can use is simply outline a passage of scripture. This can be done on a whole book of the Bible or on only one verse. There are many outlines on the books of the Bible already available in resources books and on the Internet and it is very interesting to see how others outline a particular book of the Bible. However, I would suggest that you outline a book, or a passage, for yourself before you look at someone elses outline, then, if you want, you can compare your outline and see others.

This is a good exercise for four reasons;

1. That is by studying a book by yourself, the Scriptures will open up to you in a very real way. The Holy Spirit will lead you to see things you have not seen before and percieve spiritual understanding from the perspective where you are right now in your Spiritual life.

2. If you read the scriptures over and over multiple times, as described in a previous post, the scriptures will almost open themselves for you by themselves

3. When you study the Scriptures with the specific intent to "divide" the scriptures, in this case outline, you will see links and relationships between spiritual thoughts that you may not see by just reading it.

4. If you do it yourself, for yourself, it will be more "yours" and you will be able to relate more to a passage of scripture and be able to more readily find truths that you can apply to your life.

Another technique is to "reverse" a concept or principle that you find in scripture, without changing the meaning. For example, if we say, "for God so loved the World that he gave His only son, that whosoever believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life BUT whosoever DID NOT believe in Him WOULD perish and NOT have everylasting life." Now granted, one needs to be careful with this as not to change the meaning of a passage in Scripture that was not intended, however, sometimes there is a strong implication of the reverse being true in Scripture when something is stated.

Now I chose these two techniques to specifically apply them to today's Scripture verse to share something that I am recently learning. First of all if we apply an outlining technique to this passage we get something like this:

A. They knew God but
1. did not Glorify God
2. did not Thank God
B. Thus became
1. empty or without value in their thinking (imagination)
2. darkness in their heart (foolish)

Now this is a simple outline but what would Scripture be saying if we "reversed" this passage of Scripture. For example, "They knew God and the DID glorify God and the DID thank God and thus became FULL and with PURPOSE in their thinking and LIGHT was in their WISE hearts."

Thus the application of this verse can be seen in two ways;

1. as a warning if you don't thank God and give him Glory you may end up thinking with emptiness and without purpose and feel darkness and be foolish

2. as an admonishion to thank and glorify god and you will not be empty and foolish but full and wise.

Request:
That God would reveal to us truths from His Word that will help us grow in him and be full in His Spirit.

Prayer:
Dear Lord, continue to give us a thirst for your Word and fill us with Your understanding. Flow from our hearts all that You put there as we study your Word and use us to help heal others and bring you closer to their lives. In Jesus name. Amen