The Bible – What is it?
- Instruction manual?
- Helpful tips on good living?
- List of commandments
- Book of good moralisms?
- Little helps for one’s life?
- Word of God?
- A “prop” to support your thoughts and opinions?
- A “shotgun” to destroy other’s thoughts and opinions?
How you answer that question is everything!
Your answer will likely determine if you will read the Bible or toss it aside. And, if you do read the Bible, then your answer will determine how you will read the Bible.
It is one thing:
- …..to affirm and acknowledge the Word of God (mentally), it is quite another thing to see it as ones authority and thus submit to it (functionally) in all areas of life.
- …..to say I love Gods Word and then not submit ones life to it.
- …..to read the Bible, memorize a scripture or two, or hear the Word preached, it is quite another thing to seek to apply that word that you have read, memorized or heard preached.
At the end of the day, we all have to ask ourselves: “what do we believe about this book?” Is it the very Word of God? If so…. what does that mean in how we approach it or if we approach it.
Did you know……?
According to Jesus, it is the difference between a fool and a wise man.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
(Matthew 7:24-27 ESV)
The Bible (God’s Word) No Other Book Like It! It is God’s Word. How amazing is it that the Creator of the universe has given us His Word. He is not a God in hiding. We have His Word because He wants us to know Him.
He is a God who wants to be known!
Amazing – we can know the Almighty God!! Reading God’s Word is not a duty to be performed, it is a joy to pursue. It is in God’s Word that we come to know God – as He is – as He makes Himself known to us on every page.
I don’t know about you… but, I don’t want a God who I conjure up. A God who is made up in my mind and in my image. I want to know the living God – As He is – I want to know Him. Friend, if that is the cry of your heart there is no better place to go than the Word of God.
“The evangelist or the preacher opens his mouth and utters a word, God’s Word. But the Word doesn’t sound just once. It echoes or reverberates. It reverberates through the church’s music and prayers. It reverberates through the conversations between elders and members, members and guests, older Christians and younger ones. God’s words bounce around the life of the church, like the metal ball in a pinball machine.” Jonathan Leeman Reverberation
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. James 1: 23-25
Amen. Thanks Tim!
Thank you Tim. This is my prayer for the Church.