Read your Bible like your life depends on it... because it does!
“Your soul will wither and die without your Bible” – Matt Smethurst
Wow. That hits different, doesn’t it?
I’ve recently been reading the book “Before you open your Bible” which talks about 9 different heart postures for approaching God’s word. It’s quite a sobering book really. It’s hard to read because it addresses some of our human habits that keep us closer to this world rather than closer to God. But that’s also what makes it so good and makes me come back to it every morning because it highlights parts of my life that I need to radically change if I want a deeper relationship with Jesus.
The third chapter talks about approaching your Bible desperately. We shouldn’t only be opening our Bibles every day, because it’s part of our morning routine, or because we are looking for a quick and ‘magical microwaving of our cold hearts’ as Matt puts it. “For the word of God is living and powerful” (Hebrews 4v12) and we should wake up desperate to read our Bibles, desperate to hear from him and spend intimate time with him. Moses would agree as he says, “these are not just idle words for you – they are your life” (Deut. 32v47).
The Bible is meant to be like our food. We should physically long for, feed off of it, and consume it every day. Peter helps us understand how vital the Bible is to our spiritual growth by using the imagery of a newborn: “desire God’s pure word as newborn babies desire milk. Then you will grow into your salvation” (1 Peter 2v2-3). God WANTS to meet with you, he WANTS to communicate with you – why else would he have given his holy word to us!? And the reality is, is that if we don’t feel any sense of urgency to do so, it’s because we are satisfied with something else other than him. And that is crucial and should demand our attention and urgency to open up our Bibles.
Here’s a question for self-reflection, and what prompted my writing above: “Is it more accurate to say that I am willing to hear from God, or that I am desperate to hear from him?”
- Sille Knudsen
