Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
This year (2025) began with a challenge (from God the Holy Spirit) to surrender. The challenge is deeper than surrendering my life to God, and it is a challenge many Christians may not be willing to make.
I am being challenged to surrender my thoughts and desires to the will of God the Father. This challenge may come because my mother dedicated me to God before I was born, promising to raise me to follow him.
She kept her promise, and I have endeavored to comply (some periods in my life were better than others).
Another reason for the challenge could be that my life verse is found in the Old Testament book of Proverbs.
“Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all. Run to God! Run from evil!”
Proverbs 3:5-7 The Message
The language of the King James Version says it this way:
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 3:6
The point is that it is my challenge, and I have been writing about it. I hope you find something that speaks to you and helps you find (or deepen) a close personal relationship with God.
Since I began the challenge in January 2025, I have had a revelation about the Bible. It is funny (not in a humorous way) that I haven’t seen it before because I am a lifelong Bible learner. But that speaks to the Word of God being alive and God’s desire to reveal it to you as you are ready to receive it.
How do you read the Bible?
Let me clarify what I am NOT asking. I am not asking if you read the Bible from cover to cover, front to back, every chapter, and every word.
I am asking how you perceive the Bible.
For years, I read it cover to cover, front to back, every chapter, and every word because it was my religious duty. I was proud to boast of having done it.
However, I did not realize that I was reading the Bible as a religious book full of rules and regulations that I had to follow.
I did not realize that my manner of reading was promoting (a religious) pride.
I did not realize that my efforts might have gained me a checked box on my (religious) To-Do list, but did not get me closer to God.
In other words, I was reading the Bible as a religious book because that is what Christians were supposed to do.
Jesus addressed this in one of his sermons in the New Testament book of Matthew.
“The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law.
You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help,”
Matthew 23:2-4
The Message
The comment, “They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior,” is particularly important.
When you read the Bible as a religious book, you get caught up in the “dos and don’ts” and miss the matters of the heart.
This is what I did, and I could not see that I was full of religious pride, even though I could quote the Bible and tell you where in the Bible a passage of scripture was located.
The Apostle Paul addresses this in his letter to the Corinthian Christ-followers.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
I Corinthians 13:2 The Message
In other words, reading the Bible as a religious book does not fill one’s heart with God’s love.
However, reading the Bible as a life manual teaches you how to live fully.
For example, in the Old Testament, you learn about God, his creation, and how he chooses to interact with them.
You learn the consequences of doing life without God and the beauty of living obediently with him.
The Old Testament is full of gruesome stories like the woman nailing a tent spike into a man’s temple.
Then Jael Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
Judges 4:21 The King James Version
You learn about a king who had a man murdered so he could marry his wife.
Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
II Samuel 12:9 The King James Version
You learn that sin has consequences.
“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”
Genesis 3:24 The King James Version
You learn about God’s heart for humanity.
God said, “It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.”
Genesis 2:18 The Message
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
Psalms 91:15 The King James Version
In the New Testament, you learn about God’s plan for restoring humanity.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16 The New King James Version
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 19:10 The New International Version
You learn that God will take care of his own.
And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
Acts 12:11 The King James Version
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Revelation 12:11 The New King James Version
You learn God’s plan for Christ-followers.
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
John 17:24 The New International Version
In other words, when you read the Bible as a life manual, you learn:
- whose you are
- how loved you are
- how that love changes your life
- the importance of following Jesus
- God has a plan, a place, and a purpose for you
A challenge for you.
If you realize you have been reading the Bible religiously, ask God the Holy Spirit to open your eyes, soften your heart, and teach you how to see it (and read it) as a life manual.
The call of the Spirit is going out across the land for light bearers and (wisdom-speaking) truth givers to bring the words of life to a lost and dying world—one person at a time.
The journey is exciting and scary, and I am thankful for everyone who is willing to accompany me on it.
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