To be a mighty woman of God takes the melding, the miraculous melding of two things.

Grace and grit. I want you to turn with me to Ephesians chapter one.

Ephesians chapter one.

And I have thought and thought and thought how in the world to tell you, I like to explain

how a particular theme came to my heart and what God used to bring it and stir it. And I can

usually answer that in a pretty quick way, but I can't do that this time. And so the more I've

wrestled with, how can I put this in a nutshell

so that they will understand what brought me all the way to our theme this weekend?

I just felt really stirred in my spirit that I was supposed to just go with it

and tell you the longer story of it instead of the short story of it. I have been memorizing out of the

book of Ephesians. Now, I want to tell you something about the Word of God that you cannot find

any place else. You go get you a wonderful poetry book. It will not be the same. You go get you

any other text from any other religion. It will not be the same. You go get you any other text from any other religion, it will not be the same.

What I'm going to tell you stands apart about the Word of God is because it is divinely inspired.

The Word of God tells us that it is God-breathed.

There's something about the way it takes life that just about the time you think it would get old to you somehow, it just gets to be a bigger and bigger and bigger raging fire within you.

I don't know anything else like that.

And this happens to me continually in memory work.

So I really began doing it because I wanted to renew my mind and it did that.

And then I really wanted to do it because of the spiritual discipline of it,

because I wanted the scriptures to really live in me and abide in me.

I wanted to know him. So I did it for that reason.

...