Psalm 119:18 is a prayer we can use when we open our Bibles to read: “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your Word.”
We need the Holy Spirit to help us understand God’s Word. 1 Cor 2:14 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The Bible cannot be understood and embraced accurately by unbelievers, or even by us in our own strength. Knowing this, we read the Bible with dependence on God to help us know him through the help of the Holy Spirit.
I remember being in a Bible study led by an older Christian man in our church. I don’t remember what we were studying, but a couple of us were shaking our heads at “dummies” we knew who just didn’t “get it.” I remember some laughing and eye-rolling on our part, that something so obvious in Scripture could be missed by others.
Our wise, older friend gave us a stern and loving caution. A brilliant electrical engineering professor at the local university, he told us something along these lines, that “the Bible isn’t like calculus or biology, a subject that one can study hard enough to become an expert in it. The only reason we understand anything in this Word is because God has opened our eyes. We DO work hard to study it, but the Bible is a spiritual book and must be spiritually discerned. Without the Holy Spirit’s opening our eyes, we would never understand it either.”
His caution to us that day convicted me and changed the way I read the Bible. We don’t read the Bible like we dissect information in a textbook. We read the Bible with cries to God to give us understanding and life.
Not only can we pray at the beginning of our Bible reading to ask for help to understand, but Bible reading can be a rich exchange of fellowship with God by his Spirit through his Word. Pray a little; read a little; talk to God about what I’m reading; read some more. That’s what a “quiet time” really is — a time set aside to read God’s word and talk to him. So how can I have a quiet time? Until next time..!
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