Date: April 20, 2016 (Training)
Bible Text: | Betty Swann
Series: Pillar One
Do you like to read the Bible? Do you find it interesting? Do you think it has the answers for your life, I have to read this thing. Do you read it every day? Do you read it, oh, once in a while? Does it speak to you? One time there was a man on an airplane and he was reading his Bible and this guy sitting next to him looked over and he said, “I find that book very uninteresting.” And the man looked at him and said, “The Bible is God’s love letter to Christians. You must not be one. That is what you get for reading somebody else’s mail.”
What is my story about reading the Bible? Well, I have been in church since I was in the cradle roll, I guess I was five or six weeks old. I have been in church all my life and yet church did not mean much to me, and I never read the Bible, ever. I hardly knew anything that was in it but as I got older, and I fell in love with my husband. I noticed he read his Bible. Now he was the only person I knew, I am sure there were a lot of people around me and I did not know it. He was the only person I knew that read his Bible all the time, and he read it every day. And I would think, “Well, I am the woman, I need to be reading it more than he does. Now why did I think that, I do not know, but I just thought that. I am the woman, I ought to read it more than him. I would try to read the Bible at night. I was teaching school and working all day and yet I thought that I had to read this Bible.
This is how I would read the Bible at night. I would pick it up and have no idea where to read. I had a Kings James translation. I would be reading and have one eye closed because I was so sleepy. One eye would drop, and then that other eye would drop. I would think, oh no, wake up. I would get an eye open and I would try to read it again. I would then just close it and go to sleep. I did not have anybody helping me. Somebody should have said to me, “Betty, night time is not the right time for you. You are an early morning person. You need to get up and read your Bible in the morning before you get started. That way God can speak to you all day long and you are prepared.” I went that way for quite some time, not really reading it or getting anything out of it. I cannot remember anything that spoke to me during that time.
Why don’t people the Bible? Why didn’t I read the Bible? Because it was boring, it did not speak to me, I did not know how and I had a translation I could not even understand. The King James version is beautiful in a way, but there are parts I just cannot figure out what it is saying. It is using language from several centuries ago. King James was in Scotland and it was his desire to make the Bible available to people. That was fine then, but it is not a modern translation. Maybe one of the reasons you have trouble reading the Bible is that you do not have a good, modern translation that makes it understandable to you so you can tell when God is teaching you something or speaking to you.
What would be good Bible translations to read? My favorite Bible is called the New Living Translation. Do you remember when the Living Bible came out and everybody loved it? They had a lot of criticism that it paraphrased it too much. They went back and wrote the New Living Translation and I love it. I read it every day. The Bible I use contains four translation: King James, Modern Language, New Living Translation and Revised Standard. When I read the Bible every day, I just pick an area but focus in on one of those translations. Sometimes I read out of the Amplified Bible. Somebody called it the multiple- choice Bible. I have also heard it referred to as the Joyce Myer Bible because she reads out of it all the time. But just do have more than one translation. Another version I read for just pure enjoyment is the Message Bible. It will shake you up. It is so real and so blunt that it will grab you when you read it. The New International Version and the New King James are also good ones. There are so many translations today. Find one to read that is just enjoyable and easy to understand for you.
Do you think there is a chance that you might be saying, “I don’t read the Bible because I think it’s out of touch. It was written thousands of years ago, how could it apply to me today? How could it have anything to say to me? I’m a young person. Why do I need to read the Bible?” Human nature never changes. People’ clothes and culture change, but humans are always the same. They have the same needs, the same issues, the same need for God, the same need for wisdom or comfort or encouragement. That is what the Bible is. It is a love letter to you from your loving Father who wants you to get to know him, wants to tell you about people He has known throughout the centuries. He wants you to learn from their lives. And then he wants to give you specific directions on how to have a good marriage, how to raise good kids, how to be very successful in your life and how to have the power of God in your life. If you are a new Christian and want to get to know Jesus, start reading in the book of John. Just read it and read it and read it, getting to know Jesus. If you want to have the power of God in your life more than ever, read the Gospels over and over and over and picture yourself in all of those situations.
When I read the Bible this morning, I saw the passage that said, “Jesus shouted.” I read a few days ago where it said, “Jesus wept.” A few days before that I read where it said, “Jesus was grieved in his spirit, frustrated.” And so you can know Jesus. It tells you how He acted, what He did, what He said and when. That is how you get to know Jesus the man. That is how you get to know Jesus the Son of God. You will realize that He is real. After you read the four Gospels over and over, read the Books of Acts. You will see what normal, average people who believed and stepped out full of the Holy Spirit did. You will learn what they did and what Jesus said to them. He told them not go out until they were filled with the Holy Spirit, until the Holy Spirit comes. Not to do it because they would be doing it in their own strength. But you can do miracles. You can pray and people will be healed. You can do signs and wonders. How do I know that? Because the Word says you can. Also Jesus said that you are not going to be the one doing it, just the body that He chose to use. He would be doing it through you.
Look at this Scripture in Job 23:12. Can you say this? Is this true about you? “I have not departed from the commands of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.” Have you ever missed a meal because you did not want to miss hearing about the Word of God? Have you treasured it as much as the food you eat? Do you understand that it is the only book in the entire world that is full of complete truth? There is not one lie in it. Skeptical people say, “Oh yea, oh yea, what about this? What about this?” If you get down and really examine it in the original language, whatever it takes for you to really see it, it does not contradict itself, it is truth. You can stake your life on it. Do we not all wish we had something in our life that we could count on to the very end? Well, you do. His name is Jesus and this is what he says. That is why you want to know it every day. Do you go through things every single day that you need wisdom for? You can depend on your own wisdom, but why not depend on the wisdom of God? You will get to know God, you will get to know yourself and you will have a wisdom that people cannot argue against.
Why do some people read it so much? They will tell you that it feeds my soul or they will say, “Betty, I was so worried, I couldn’t sleep, I was up with this problem, and I just sat down and started reading the Psalms. I finally came to one that gave me comfort.” Did you know that there are about 150 Psalms and you can read through there, there is somebody talking about exactly how you feel and you think. That thing was written thousands of years ago. How did he know I would feel that way? How did he know I would think that way? Because, I am telling you, first of all God knows man and second, mankind is the same all over the world, same issues. So Psalms is a really good place to read. I will tell you another good one, Proverbs. Have you ever wished that you could be known as someone who is very wise and had great understanding of how to handle issues? I have. Have you ever wished somebody said, “Boy that person has common sense? If you ever wanted to know what the common sense thing to do is, ask that person. And they will tell you, “Well I get it out of Proverbs.” What am I talking about? There are 31 chapters of Proverbs, and there are 31 days of the month. Whatever day of the month it is, that is the chapter of Proverbs you read. If you do that year after year, you begin to memorize them and not even know it.
I have had people say to me, “Betty, how long do you read the Bible every day?” I do not think there is a rule. Some people could sit for hours. Some people do not have the time, they have a schedule that makes it hard. It is hard for some people to sit still. How do you make sure you read the Bible every single day? This is what happened to me. About the time that I was thinking, “You know I do love Jesus. I do want to put him first in my life and I do not know the Bible. I need to start reading it regularly. A man came along at a seminar and he said, “I want you to consider something. I want you to consider making a vow to God that you will read the Bible for five minutes every day.” He said, “Now you may say, well I probably need to read the Bible longer than that.” He said, “But there will be days that you will be doing well to get that in.” And he said, “Maybe you’ll read it 30 minutes, maybe you’ll read it an hour, but for sure you’ll read it five minutes.” And I thought about that, and I thought I believe I am going to make that vow. Now, you know a vow is not a promise. You do not promise to get married and stay together forever, you vow to do it, you take marriage vows. You vow to become a citizen of the United States. It is very serious and you are held to it. When you do not stand by it, there is somebody saying, “You’re not doing the right thing.” And so when you make a vow to read the Bible five minutes a day, you have the Holy Spirit, you may have your Guardian Angel for all I know. I just know there have been times I would be laying in the bed so tired and there is that little nudge, you did not read the Bible today. You promised five minutes. Turn the light on. Sometimes it is like reading sawdust. I need to be honest with you. But I made the vow, so I am going to do it. Can you imagine how much of the Word of God He has put in my heart and filled me up with over the past 40 years?
This book has an answer to every problem you have in your life. You say, “Well, I don’t know about that. I mean there are things going on now that have not ever been around.” Well, God can give you wisdom from the craziest places in the Bible that it is still your answer. It is what you are looking for. Well, how do you know where things are in the Bible? If you do not know where to look for things, how are you going to get started? Try to get in a Bible Study, try to get in one that is so good you cannot stand to miss it. I have been in them like that. It is like I cannot wait to get there to see what is going to happen. What is he going to talk about? And from being in that, you will begin to learn where things are in the Bible. Another thing you can do is have a good friend that reads the Bible or a mentor and ask them, “Where is it in the Bible about such and such? How do you find it in the Bible about such and such?” For all you people who are use your computer all the time, there is a wonderful website called www.Biblegateway.com that I use almost every day. When you get on that website, you can pick a topic and it will tell you where it is found in the Bible. You can do a key word search. If you can remember where a Bible verse is located but you cannot remember all about the verse, you can type in a few words and it will bring up the verse. It will provide up to five different translations of the Bible if you want. You can cut and paste the verse into a Word document, print it off and there is that Bible verse you need to live on for a week. Put it up somewhere. It is just the handiest tool if you are used to the computer.
If you have a reason for reading the Bible, it makes sense that you would have more interest in reading it. Let’s say you are really struggling with a money problem. You can look up money on the computer or in a concordance. It will tell you all the Bible verses and other references you could look up. You could read that and know what God said about money. God talked about money, I believe, more than he talked about Heaven in the Bible. We all have to live by it. Let’s say you are struggling with fear. You can look up all the verses on fear where God says, “Fear not, for I am with you.” You can read all these verses and it will calm your fear. Maybe you are right now sitting in a waiting room at the hospital. Somebody you really care about is in great danger. I believe the Lord is telling you this right now and the Lord says, “If you brought your Bible with you, you could be comforting yourself with that instead of living in the anxiety you are living in right now.” That will teach you a good lesson because this is your food, this is your bread, this is your air, this is everything. When you read it, it meets those deepest needs.
Another thing you can do is read the Bible for the history in it. Do you like the history channel? They have interesting stories on it, sometimes they even have things on it about the Bible. Besides the Bible being a guide book for how you live your life, it also has wonderful character studies of people. God does not hide people’s sin in the Bible. He will tell you how it was. You can pick one person and follow his life through the Bible. You can see a man like Samuel who was faithful to God and to the call of God on his life, all of his life. You can go back all the way and read about when his mother was barren before she had Samuel. She could not conceive and begged God for a baby. The priest said, “By this time next year, you are going to have a son.” She had begged God so much for this baby, “I will give him to you, he can serve you. I just want a baby.” She probably never had any idea that this little baby she had would grow up to be one of the greatest prophets that has ever been. He served people, he served a King, he served a nation and he still serves us today. You can do great character studies and learn about people.
One of my favorite things to do is pick some obscure person. Then I do a search on them to find all of the places that that person is in the Bible and learn about them. It is almost like God has them hidden and it is fun. It is like treasure hunting. I will give you a name, Abishai. Look him up. See what you can find out about him. It is going to have good and bad. He is an interesting character.
Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature with God and man. Well, Jesus read the Bible. Jesus knew the Bible. Jesus had to learn the Bible. Did you know Jesus read the same Bible we read? It contained only the Old Testament at that time, without the New Testament. Jesus knew the Old Testament. The Book of John says, “In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God.” Jesus is the Word. He knew the Word. He quoted it when he was dealing with people that were coming against him. He knew that Word. He knew how to use it as a weapon against the devil, against people who were trying to destroy him. So you need to learn it, too.
This is what got me started reading the Bible. We were living in Ithaca, New York. A couple moved in next door to us. The man had burned his draft card in the Vietnam War. He came over one night and he said, “My wife and I are discussing how you get into Heaven and I know you go to church. She thinks if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, you will get in. I said I do not think it is that. What does the Bible say?” I did not know. Finally, it came to me. I am sure it is from being in Sunday School all my life. It says, “By grace are you saved and by faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. He said, “Could you show me where that is? I’d like to show it to her.”
Well, I did not know where anything was in the Bible. I don’t even know how I remembered that verse. I ran down a few doors to my neighbor in the apartment and banged on the door, “Hey, they want to know this, we cannot tell them we don’t know, when they ask where something is in the Bible. Here are these Christians going to church every Sunday, and they do not know where something is in the Bible. This man was saying, “We’re hanging in the balance.” In fact, he looked at me and said, “We could go either way. Can you show me?”
Something happened to me. That tore me up so much that I had a person’s life in my hands, and I did not know the Bible and I was in church every Sunday. That is when I made a decision, I am going to learn the Bible. I am going to know the Bible the best that I can. And you can do it, too. God wants you to do it.
Sometimes you can just open the Bible, start reading and the Holy Spirit will speak to you. Before you read, say “Holy Spirit, God, speak to me. Tell me anything you want to tell me when I read this, just speak to me.” And then read until something jumps out or until something stands out. Here is the one I just looked down on, “So you, too, must keep watch for you do not know the day or the hour of my return.” How do you keep watch? Reading the Bible is one of the biggest ways you keep watch. It keeps your mind on it.
Ask God to make it interesting to you. If you go through dry times where it gets boring again, be honest with God. Just say, “Lord, it is boring. Help me, Lord, I want it to be interesting again.” And he will do that for you. As busy as the U.S. Presidents have been, and I do not think you can get any busier than that with any greater responsibility, so many of them say, “I have read the Bible. I have gained comfort from it. I have gained wisdom from it.” And so if somebody as busy as that says, “I read it every day. I have to have it.” Then it must be really important and God bless America. God give us Godly Presidents. God give us men who read the Bible. Give us Godly men and women to help run our nation. Give us people that live by the Book and, God, let us be people who live by the Book.
Quiet Time Questions
1. Think back on the attempts you have made to read the Bible. What has prevented you from reading the Bible?
2. How is the Bible applicable to our lives today?
3. What are the reasons for reading the Bible?
4. How can you make sure to read the Bible daily?
5. List ways to know where things are in the Bible.
6. What suggestions from the lesson will help you to study the Bible?
7. Before reading the Bible, what should you pray?
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Topics: Basic Discipleship