1 Thessalonians 2:13
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
It is so easy to take our Bibles for granted–to think of them as something mundane. We know the words of the Bible are God’s words, but the import of that gets lost. We approach scripture as habit or obligation. We hear it preached as mere inspiration or moral instruction. We treat the Bible as a mere source of good instruction.
For we have lost sight of the wonder of what it truly is–God’s living word that works. So we ask God to humble us under his mighty word so that we receive it rather than critiquing it, obey it rather than rebelling against it, and are filled with its truth rather than cherry picking our preferred parts.
We pray the words of Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” To behold and receive these wondrous things we need humble and soft our hearts, so we ask God for those too because we can’t turn our hearts that way. In the Bible God tells us of his character, his love, his power, his plans, and most importantly of his Son. And our small, distracted, sinful minds and hearts can’t receive all this goodness without the help of the Holy Spirit, but he is with us and in us, enabling and teaching us.
And as the Holy Spirit opens and instructs our hearts we are able to see the work of the word–the way it is growing and changing us, the way it brings dead hearts to life, the way it is the means and promise we need to walk faithfully with Jesus. Yes, we are still tempted to think of it as static or mundane or boring, but when we attend to the Bible’s depths and marvels we will never cease to be satisfied and amazed by this living word.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.
