People who know me have heard me say it more than once. Read the Word. Read the Word. Read the Word. I did not pick that phrase because it sounds nice said three times in a row, though it does.
I picked it because three things have to happen before Scripture actually does what it was given to do in your life, and missing any one of them will leave you short.
You have to read it. You have to come to know it. And you have to understand it. They are not the same thing, and you cannot skip ahead.
Read the Word
The first one is the simplest, and the one most easily skipped. You cannot know or understand a book you never open. That sounds obvious until you look honestly at how many weeks can pass between sitting down with it on purpose.
The blessed man is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night, like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in season (Psalm 1:2-3).
Notice that fruit follows meditation, not the other way around. Reading is not the finish line. It is the starting one, but you do not get to skip it.
I have written a whole piece on why and how to actually build this habit, with a reading plan if you need somewhere to start. Why (and how) to read your Bible
Know the Word
Reading puts the words in front of you. Knowing is what happens when those words stop being unfamiliar, when you can recognize a passage before you finish the first line, when the story or the command or the promise has become part of how you think. But there is a trap here, and it is an old one.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day knew the Scriptures forward and backward.
You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, and it is these that testify about Me, and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life (John 5:39-40).
They knew the book and missed the Person the book was written to introduce them to.
I have written before about that exact danger, knowing the Bible the way you know facts, without that knowledge ever becoming the faith it was meant to produce.
Knowing the Bible like the back of my hand
Understand the Word
Reading gets the words in front of you. Knowing gets them familiar. But understanding is the one piece you cannot manufacture by effort alone, no matter how disciplined you are or how many times you have read it through.
A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).
On the road, after the resurrection, Jesus did not just hand His disciples a clearer outline. He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45). That opening is still His to give. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:5). Understanding is asked for, not earned.
So the next time you hear me say it, you will know I am not just repeating myself for effect.
Read the Word, because you cannot know or understand a book you never open.
Read the Word, until the words on the page become a Person you recognize rather than facts you have filed away.
Read the Word, and ask the Spirit to open what your own effort never could reach on its own. Three calls, not one repeated.
Together they are what carry you from the gospel you believe to the life you are meant to live.
Hallelu Yah (Praise God)
Be blessed,
Kevin
You might also like “Know the Bible like the back of your hand” and “Hobby horse alert.”
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