Use the Internet for Him
Well, hello and welcome to Coffee in the Word with Sherry. It has been a while since I recorded a devotional for you, but I want to give you a little bit of history and background to Coffee in the Word with Sherry and then we will do a five to 10 minute devotional, always biblically based with practical application, always based on scripture. But I have been doing Coffee in the Word with Sherry now for 15 years, and the background is very complicated in a way, but God just gave me this amazing call at the end of 2008 to use the internet for Him. And I felt the Lord saying, it’s going to be used for everything else, so please use it for me.
Background behind Coffee & the Word with Sherry
And so I started out with BlogTalkRadio, and Coffee in the Word with Sherry has taken many forms since then. It was BlogTalkRadio for many years. I had it in written form, so a blog. There have been everyday videos, Facebook lives, Instagram lives, recordings, all kinds of different formats.
But right now, I feel the Lord calling me back to doing a weekly, on Wednesday mornings, 10 a.m. Pacific time, a weekly devotional for you.
And again, just five to 10 minutes based in scripture, and with some practical application, a devotional that will hopefully help you get going in your day, encourage you for your day, give you something to think about as you go through your day, and contemplate, meditate on, and always, always, always encouraging.
Sherry’s Background
So I’ll just give you just a little bit of background about me. If you have not listened to any of my teachings before, or if you’ve not been on my website, you can find me at Sherry Poundstone.com (www.sherrypoundstone.com). You can also find me at Sherry’s Holistic Health.com (www.sherrysholistichealth.com), Facebook, and all kinds of social media. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Twitter, all of those things. But I am a minister, ordained minister, and I have been teaching women now for well over 25 years.
And we are just heading into kind of a new season for myself. And that is that I have really been led to explore in depth the biblical health aspect of our lives as Christians.
And so that’s another story I will go into that I’m another, another devotional, but today I want to just tell you that it doesn’t matter where God is pulling you or calling you – go, follow, don’t wait, don’t hesitate, don’t argue, don’t put it off.
If you feel like God is calling you into an area of ministry, whether it be writing or speaking or blogging, whatever it might be, you know, reach out and find people who are already doing it and get some help.
I always want to encourage you to start because a lot of times you might be watching me right now going, well, I could do that, and I’m called to do that. And so just don’t hesitate. So I’m jumping back in, in this format.
And again, Wednesdays, 10 a.m. Pacific time. Now I have trained Christian speakers, I have written some Bible studies, I’ve led tons of Bible studies in my home and online.
And again, Coffee and the Word with Sherry for 15 years. And I really want to impress upon you that this is just a jumping off point. In other words, these are designed to give you that start.
So if I’m teaching on gossip or if I’m teaching out of the Book of James and going through it verse by verse, whatever it might be, ask the Holy Spirit to highlight to you what He wants you to get from that teaching, from that devotional.
Where does He want you to go deeper? Where does He want you to study? Because I always say it’s great to listen to people like me or to go to church and to listen to sermons, but we get the most out of it when we sit down on our own with the Word and maybe a cup of coffee or tea and dig in to the Word and definitely look for yourself and find for yourself.
All right, so that’s a little bit of history and background. We’ll talk a little bit more about Biblical health as I go.
What does Coffee and the Word really mean?
So let’s just talk about this Coffee and what word? I mean, what does Coffee and the word even really mean?
Well, let’s read from 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong with our lives.
It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work”. Again, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17.
So the Bible is an incredible book of history, yes, and facts that prove there is a God that created all things. Most important of all, though, the Bible is the Word of God.
It contains the mind of God and His will for each of our lives and we just need to get into it, commit to digging in. So that’s why the Bible was given to us.
Scripture inspired by God
Paul the Apostle says in the scripture I just read, that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness.
In other words, to teach us and to show us truth and also for guidance in our life. So first of all, the Word of God is infallible, so that’s the main thing we need to understand.
There is no error in God’s Word and so the law of the Lord is perfect, concerning our soul and what He wants us to know. So the testimony of the Lord is not only infallible, it is inherent.
Proverbs 3:5 and 6 says, every word of God is pure and that is, whoops, every word of God is pure and He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
Scripture is Complete
Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar. So the purity of His Word does not need anything added to it. That doesn’t mean that we can’t take His Word and apply it to our everyday life and share with others, “Hey, this might help you with this or this is what happened to me”, which is a testimony. But we can add or take away from the Word because He really warns us to not misinterpret His scripture. All right, the second thing I want to hit on today is the Word of God is complete.
So the Bible does not need any new chapters or verses, it doesn’t need anything added to it. It is all given to us already, isn’t that good? So a lot of cults add their own books or commentaries in the Bible to the Bible, rather.
So we don’t need any of that. All we need is God’s Word because it is the Holy Word of God that’s complete. Now that’s not to say that I don’t use a Study Bible or that I don’t use a commentary by people that I really trust and understand the way they speak.
A lot of the time the older commentaries are harder for us to understand, so get it into a commentary that you can actually understand in everyday language if you want to say that.
But we aren’t going to add anything to it or take away and there’s nothing that’s needed because it’s complete. God’s Word is complete. So in Revelation 22, let’s read that 18 and 19, God’s giving us a warning here it says,
“For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to these things, God will add to them the plagues that are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the book of life, from the Holy City and from the things which are written in this book.”
In other words, we just don’t add and we don’t subtract. Now, that doesn’t mean that again, as we’re going along, we can’t look up commentary, we can’t look up words in the original language that was written, all of those things, that’s all study, but we’re not adding to it, we’re just investigating if that makes sense.
Scripture is Authoritative
All right, and the third thing I want to hit on is the word of God is totally authoritative. The book of Psalms, actually Psalm 119:89 says, “forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven”.
So the word of God is the only source for absolute defined authority. And this defined authority is for you, it’s for me, it’s for all of the church that’s following Jesus, servants of Jesus Christ.
And when the Lord says, or when someone says, “I have a word from the Lord for you”, write it down, you can receive it, if it feels right to receive it, write it down, take it to Him and ask him if that word is correct.
So a lot of times, people will say with using the authority of God, that they have a word for you or they have some advice for you, whatever it might be, just make sure that, you know, his word is authoritative, check the scriptures, make sure it doesn’t go against anything that he said, and then, of course, take that word to him in prayer.
God’s Word is Sufficient for All Our Needs
And I could teach for hours on that, but right now, we’ll just move on. The fourth thing I want to hit on is that God’s word is totally sufficient for all of our needs. Everything we need to know and everything we need in our life is found in the book of God, in the Word of God.
So let’s read this again, 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good word.
We need to be secure in setting the word because it’s God’s plan for our life and so it might correct us. So we can have an idea of, oh, hey, I think this situation’s right, or maybe you’re offended.
Let’s just take a little quick, quick example. Maybe you’re offended by something someone said to you, and you go to the Word and you read, oh, “all offenses will come, but we cannot hang on to them”, or you might go to a scripture that talks about forgiveness.
What that does right there is take our flesh and our soul and our reaction and go, no, this is the way God is instructing us to handle it, so it can correct us, it can instruct us, it does encourage us, it does all of those things, depending on what we’re reading in our situation.
Applying God’s Word to My Life
So I always say this, when you go to the Word of God, every verse that you read, ask, okay, “Lord, how can I apply that to my life”? Is this applied to me right now? And if so, show me where, you know, and we can rest assured that we will always be encouraged or instructed.
Okay. And the very last thing I want to hit on today before we run out of time is the Word of God will accomplish what are promises. So if God told you something will happen and you wait, it will happen.
Now, again, we could talk a long time on prophecy, prophetic words and words of knowledge and that kind of thing, but let’s just read from Isaiah 55:11 right now. It says, “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” So God sent his word to accomplish his perfect will in our lives. So if God makes a promise to you, he will fulfill it in his own time.
Bible Promises
There are so many promises throughout the Bible, I’d like to actually do a whole series on that in Coffee and the Word coming up. That would be really a fun one and a really encouraging theme to have for coffee and the word.
But what happens is these promises reassure us, right? So the word can instruct us and it can correct us and it can encourage us and it can reassure us because there are times in our lives where it gets a little bit tough, doesn’t it, to hang on sometimes to our face.
A Challenge for You
So I challenge you today to take time to study the Word of God and the Lord will show you wonderful things and your life will change. So what I would like to challenge for this week is you pick, pray, you pick the Word of God.
You pick the chapter that he wants you in or maybe it’s one verse he wants to have you concentrate on for a week. Maybe a whole book in the Bible, maybe a chapter, whatever it is, pray and ask Him and then spend time every day, even if you only have five minutes in that book or that word wherever he has guided you and really begin to study, pick it apart, ask the Lord to show you how does this apply to my life and why did you want me to read this one and what’s going on here.
So in the nutshell, that is the word. That is why coffee and the word with Sherry is always Coffee and the Word of God with Sherry. All right, God bless you and I will talk with you next week.
