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Good Morning! Yesterday we looked at that all familiar passage in John 15:8 where we read "Herein". That is to say, "IN HERE!" "is my Father glorified." And he listed only one thing: "that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples". The disciple that Christ is looking for bears much fruit. We learn in this passage that there will be no fruit in our lives unless we abide IN the Vine. For without Him, that Life giving Vine, we can do nothing.

This is the goal of every disciple of the Lord Jesus, then, to bear much fruit. It comes as a natural result of abiding IN Christ. But what does it take to abide in Christ? It will take strong discipline to reject the things of this world that we may choose the life that IS Christ. To be a disciple is to be a disciplined one.

Our discipline is not to do the work, but to submit to the work that needs to be done and His grace will sufficiently do the work. We will experience His empowerment when energies and excitements are missing. To be disciplined is to "continue in the things that you have learned". Consistency is the key to discipline. However, how consistent must we be in order that we may be the disciple that He is looking for? Well, there are only four things that God has listed that must be done with such consistency that He indicated they should be done daily. We want to look at the first of those four daily disciplines today.

If God indicated that there are only four things that should be done daily, then obviously each of these daily disciplines are going to be extremely important to our lives and must be considered of utmost importance and relevance. Our first daily discipline is that we must be disciplined and submit with consistency in order to "search the Scriptures-Daily!"

"These (people of Berea) were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Acts 17:11

The two things that I want you to notice is that they received the word with all readiness of mind. The word readiness means promptly. They needed not to decipher if what they were hearing was true for they had a working knowledge of the Word. They were ready to accept or even reject any error that they were hearing because they had "searched the Scriptures daily". This daily search of the Scriptures gave them an advance preparation that allowed them to accept teaching more quickly; for what they were hearing was running parallel with what they were reading.

The second thing I want you to notice is that they searched daily. The word search means "to examine and probe through a diligent study". That means they studied the scripture in order to prepare themselves to be "ready" in their mind. That "readiness of mind" came from their preparation for meditation. That meditation came from studying the Bible and that studying of the Bible came from a daily exercise in reading the Bible.

So we see that God's goal for His word is that we might read, so we can study. We study that we may memorize. We memorize that we might meditate. We meditate on His Word because that is what God has promised to prosper (Josh. 1:8, Psalm 1:2, 3). God never promised to prosper Bible readers. He promised to prosper Bible meditators. But in order to meditate your mind must be ready. Readiness of mind comes from searching the Scriptures daily.

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine (what's right), for reproof (what's not right), for correction (how to get right) and for instruction in righteousness (how to stay right)". The Bible tells us what's right and what's wrong that we may live in soberly and righteously. When we choose to do wrong, the Word is there to tell us how to get right with God and when we choose to obey and get right, the Word is there to tell us how to stay right with God.

What a valuable resource for us to search and to do so daily. It is only one of four things that God tells us to do daily.

"Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart:" (Jer. 15:16)

Whenever we eat something, even His Word, we become full but it soon digests. Some of the food passes through and has very little immediate benefit. But a portion of what we have consumed feeds the body with its much needed nutritional nourishment. Without this daily exercise of eating, we would soon starve to death.

Even Jesus searched the scriptures by going to the temple the Bible tells us EVERY SINGLE DAY (Mark 14:49). All we have to do to search the Scriptures is to go pick up one the many Bibles we own and sit down with it and a journal of sorts and comfortably obtain our "readiness of mind".

God said to do four things every day. That's not too much to ask. Four things: not brush teach, comb hair, bath ourselves and get dressed. That's four things that Ma told us. But our Father told us to search the Scriptures-Daily! That's not too much to ask. So shall ye be MY disciples.

A QUESTION FOR TODAY'S MEDITATION: "Why don't we read our Bible's every day?" On a separate sheet of paper list all the reasons why you can't read your Bible daily. One day, we may need to read that checklist off to God and we want to be sure we remember all our "good" reasons--if we have any!