April 28 2013 How To Bring Change Into Your Life

HOW TO BRING CHANGE INTO YOUR LIFE
Philippians 2:12-13
Continue to work out your Salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.

* Work out: This is our part.

* Your Salvation: It’s our responsibility.

* God works in you: This is God’s part.

I. God’s part in changing me.

3 TOOLS HE USES
1.) God uses the Bible.
II Timothy 3:16-17 - The whole Bible was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives, it straightens us out and helps us to do what is right. It is God’s way of making us well prepared at every point.

2.) The Holy Spirit.
Romans 8:11 - Once the Spirit lives within you, He will bring to your whole being new strength and vitality.
I Corinthians 3:18 - As the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like Him.

3.) Circumstances.
Romans 8:28-29 - To those who love God and are called according to His plans, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good. For God chose us to bear the family likeness of His son.
Proverbs 20:30 - Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways.



My part in changing me.

3 CHOICES
1.) I can choose what I think about.
Proverbs 4:23 - Be careful how you think. Your life is shaped by your thoughts.
Ephesians 4:23-25 - Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way.

2.) I can choose to depend on God’s Spirit.
John 15:4-5 - Take care to live in Me and let Me live in you. For a branch can’t produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever lives in me and I in him shall produce a large crop of fruit.

3.) I can choose to respond correctly to my circumstances.
James 1:2-4 - When all kinds of trials crowd into your lives, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. Realize that they come to test your faith and produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed and you become people of mature character, people of integrity, with no weak spots.
Romans 5:3-4 - We can be full of joy right here and now, even in our trials and troubles. These very things will give us patient endurance. This in turn will develop a mature character.

YOU CAN BRING CHANBE INTO YOUR LIFE