Psalm 119

I just wanted to share with you a really neat exercise that we did on Tuesday morning for doctrine training. Usually, the guest pastor for the week goes through a teaching of one of the Great Commission Churches CORE values (found here) and some doctrine of some type. This week, the value was "Commitment to God and His Word" and the doctrine was...well... God. Haha

So, for the doctrine time, we all spent 25 minutes creating a word picture (example here

to the right) for God and each word we used was to have a verse related to it e.g. Holy (1 Peter 1:16) or Righteous (Psalm 11:7) or Father (Ephesians 4:6). Well, that was fun and we then had to defend one of our choices of words when Andrew Roberts (the guest pastor this week from Jacksonville, FL) "attacked" it from the world's standpoint. It was a neat exercise that I would encourage you to do as well to just find in scripture what describes God.

However, the real work was the core value training on God's word beforehand. Well, Andrew is not a traditional teacher in a sense that he sat us down and walked us through some written talk that he had prepared beforehand (as you might ascertain from the God doctrine exercise). Instead, Andrew had us pair up and read through Psalm 119. It's the longest psalm and I believe all but 1-2 verses are about God's word. So we paired up and just went out for about 50 minutes reading and praying through the psalm. Well, we were supposed to get through the whole thing and then afterwards talk with our partner about what stuck out before we got back into our whole staff/intern group and discussed it. Turns out that only one pair got through the entire psalm. Haha, it was an amazing time of letting God's word teach itself. I think I learned more about God's word from reading and praying through that psalm then I ever have before from any teaching.

With all that said, I think it would be one of the best experiences in your life if you just took an hour or so one day, maybe grab a brother or sister (where available) and walk, read, and pray through Psalm 119 together. The way Andrew and I did it (yes I got to pray with the ballin pastor) is one of us read one of the sections and then prayed about it, and if the other person wanted to pray about it too they did. If not, they just went right into reading the next section and then prayed about it. We just kept rotating and the whole time we were in fellowship with each other and God through the Holy Spirit. No breaks, just straight going hard in the paint! Haha, so yes. 

Do this! 

Get to know God's word! 

Be filled with His Spirit and enjoy this free doctrine lesson brought to you by JESUS!