A CHALLENGE

Our book table at the Women's Conference - it was fun to set it up and to sell the books, but it was not fun taking it down! 

Our Women's Conference took place at Cornerstone on Friday night and Saturday of this past weekend. Janet Pope was our speaker. I really enjoyed her - she was challenging to me. She has memorized fourteen BOOKS of the Bible in the past sixteen years along with many other chapters in between. She recommended that we read, meditate, and memorize God's Word. She also recommended that we memorize whole passages so that we don't take verses out of the context and so that we get the whole picture of what God is saying. What I thought was so good was when she said that it doesn't really do any good to just memorize the scripture unless in doing it we are seeking to know the HEART of God. She mentioned that many Christians feel a "disconnect" with the Lord because they don't really know his heart. She gave the example of our relationships with friends. Some people are our friends but we don't "connect" with some the way we do others. It usually takes knowing something of the person's heart for us to connect with them. She also said that just KNOWING God's heart is not enough. We have to HAVE God's heart and then DO the things that God has planned for us to do in the world.

The speaker recommended that we start with Psalm 1 to memorize and ask God to show us what he wants us to learn from it as we learn a verse a day and then take about a week to review it every day. Here it is:  

"Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his DELIGHT is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish."

This was challenging to me - when Janet recited scripture, she just made it so alive - she knew it well, and it was obvious that she knew the Lord well, too!