This gives direction, focus, and purpose to our study.
“This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This is a taste now of heaven’s coming delights. The great goal of Bible reading and study is this: knowing and enjoying Jesus. And in doing so, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). First, “he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27), then he taught his disciples that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). “Bible reading is a regular prompt to own our failures, repent, and cast ourselves on his grace all over again.”Īs Jesus himself taught after his resurrection, he is the Bible’s closest thing to a skeleton key for unlocking the meaning of every text - every book, every plot twist, the whole story. The works of God stand as marvelous mountain ranges in the Bible, but the highest peak, and the most majestic vista, is the person and work of his Son. This is another way of praying that God would open our eyes to wonder, just with more specificity. You need not artificially capture one, specific point of application from every passage, but pray that his word would shape and inform and direct your practical living.Īsk that he would make you more manifestly loving, not less, because of the time invested alone in reading and studying his word. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). Ask him to allow the seeds from Scripture to bear real, noticeable fruit in tangible acts of sacrificial love for others. Pray that God, having opened your eyes to wonder and reminded you of the sufficiency of his grace, would produce genuine change in your life. Prayer is the path to staying fascinated with his grace and cultivating a spirit of true humility. So it is fitting to accompany our opening of God’s word with the humble, broken, poor plea of the redeemed: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).īible reading is a daily prompt to own our failures, newly repent, and freshly cast ourselves on his grace all over again. We fail friends and family daily - and even more, we fail God. For as long as we are in this life, sin encumbers every encounter with God in his word. Pray, like the blind man begging by the roadside, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38). Those who cultivate awe keep their hearts warm and soft, and resist the temptations to grow cold and fall away.
Wonder is a great antidote for wandering. Join the psalmist in praying not just for the gift of spiritual sight, but for the gift of seeing wondrous things in God’s word. This is why Paul prays for Christians, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened” (Ephesians 1:17–18). “Seeing they do not” was Jesus’s phrase for those who saw him and his teaching only with natural eyes, without the illumining work of the Spirit (Matthew 13:13). “The great goal of Bible reading and study is simply this: knowing and enjoying Jesus.” “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” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Without his help, we are simply “natural” persons with natural eyes. We ask God to open our spiritual eyes to show us the glimpses of glory we cannot see by ourselves. “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). How then should we pray over our Bibles? Here are four verses you might pray as you open God’s word. With our eyes on God’s words, he gives us his ear, too.
Then, wonder of all wonders, he stops, he stoops, he bends his ear to listen to us. His voice sounds in the Scriptures and climactically in the person and work of his Son. Prayer is a conversation, but not one we start. The Spirit is the X factor in Bible reading, making an otherwise ordinary routine supernatural - and making it utterly foolish to read and study without praying for our eyes, minds, and hearts. The Holy Spirit hovers over and in the words of God, ready to stir our hearts, illumine our minds, and redirect our lives, all for the glory of Christ (John 16:14). When we open our Bibles to read, we’re never alone.
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