When you look at the beginnings of the early church, one of the things that the leaders of the church were confronted with were so many ministry and mission needs to the degree that they were being pulled in many different directions. This led them to pause and ask what was most important. We cannot give up the things that are most important, that actually help all the other aspects of disciple-making: devotion to prayer and to the Word of God. So they committed to continue to prioritize these things.
Why Are These Things Important?
We express our dependence on God through regular times in the Word and in prayer. Prayer is our way of saying that we need God, and draws us to stay in dependency on Him. Similarly, reading the Word of God expresses that we need God to speak. In this brief article, I want to discuss how we can grow in reading the Word of God, letting it shape and speak into our lives.
This will be especially important to consider in disciple-making and as people in our communities come to faith in Jesus. Please take time to establish people in how to read their Bible.
What Should Be Our Posture As We Read God’s Word?
2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” Another way of saying that is that it is God’s inspired Word. If we go to another place, 2 Peter 1:20-21 tells us, “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
That’s really important. The Bible isn’t man-made; people didn’t make it up. “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” In other words, God was guiding and leading the words that were being written down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who made sure all that happened.
When we get to Hebrews 4:12-13, we hear that the Word of God is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
These passages tell us that God gave us His Word by His Spirit, inspiring men to write down His very words, and carried them along to ensure that what we have is the very Word of God.
It’s inspired by God and it’s God-breathed. When we open, read, and submit to God’s Word, the Spirit of God speaks to us. It’s living and it’s active. It can actually get to the innermost part of who we are and reveal what’s right and wrong, the very nature of what we believe or don’t believe rightly about God. As we read God’s Word, we do not sit in a posture over God’s Word to determine what we think about it and discern whether it’s good or bad, but rather we sit under God’s Word because it’s His Word, it’s His authority, it’s His way of speaking into our life.
Start with Submission
When you open His Word, I encourage you to start with asking God to speak with you. Ask God’s Spirit to make known to your heart the very thing He intended when He gave us His Word. Ask Him to speak, to confront you, to encourage you, to comfort you, to exhort you, to reveal Himself to you, to speak through His Word to you. Like Hebrews said, we are naked before God. He sees everything and He wants to speak into what He knows about our life, what we need in that moment, through His Word. And He’ll do that. He really will. The Bible has the power and authority to do that, and it is important to approach it with that kind of sobriety and humility.
Every time you read God’s Word, if you will listen, God will call you to step out in faith in something. You need to talk to your brother about this. You need to call your neighbor and ask them to forgive you for the way you treated them. I’ve given you some resources I want you to give away. You haven’t been honest about these things with your spouse. That is going to happen every time you read the Word if you’re open to it. And God will tell you what to do next. And training in righteousness is saying, now I want to actually obey God.
God, tell me what to do. Give me the power to do it. Help me to walk out the fruit of true repentance through obedience.
The beauty is God’s Word has great instruction on how to do it as well. You’ll find that if you study His Word and open yourself to His Spirit to speak, He will actually tell you what to do and how to do it. Because the very wisdom of God is found in the Word of God. Wisdom is the truth of God applied to a particular situation in the right way. And God wants you to know that and to walk in that, and He wants you to find it in His Word. In this humble posture, you’ll find that God’s Word doesn’t just inform—it transforms your heart, your thinking, and your life.
I have written a guide that is ideal for those desiring to learn, or in teaching others, how to study the Bible. It contains tools and tips for how to read and apply the Bible to our lives.
Click here to access Basics of Bible Study by Jeff Vanderstelt, now inside your Saturate membership.
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