Jesus said some interesting things about scripture. He told the Pharisees that although they search them diligently in the hope of gaining eternal life, they were missing the answer those same scriptures point to: Him. Jesus was like, “Dude, look at ME. I am the one those words are talking about!”

How does that happen? Can we read the Bible and miss the point? I know I'd be frustrated if people were reading a book I wrote and when I said "Let me explain what that meant..." they shooed me away!

I read recently what an atheist wrote. He claimed that reading the bible convinced him there was no God. That hurts. To think someone can have Gods Word right on their lap, and yet not clearly see the message of Gods love and forgiveness as revealed in His Son, Jesus.

Gods Love Letter

When I was going through a divorce, I poured out my heart to my children in this long letter. Although I couldn’t be with them at the moment I wanted them to understand my plight, and to know I was thinking of them, and loving them. I told them to please contact me as soon as they were ready to talk. After a month went by, I called my oldest daughter to find out why no one had tried to contact me.

“You needed to call us first!” She stated stubbornly.

“But,” I said, “In the letter I asked them to contact me. “

“Oh that,” she snorted dismissively, “I threw that out. It was the most pitiful thing I ever read.”

Yikes! I can’t remember now what the letter said, and whether or not it was pitiful, but it grieved me to know this long and painstakingly written letter had been dismissed out of hand.

The point is, God wrote us a letter. A beautiful love letter. He is the bridegroom, waiting in a far off country to come retrieve His bride. He wants us to take time to read this carefully written letter of love from his heart. If we cast it aside, we have spurned his love.

Trying to Figure it out

I grew up with this radically Christian Mom. I really thought she was just a bit kukoo. Still, I wondered about the God thing. I made a number of attempts to find Him, but it just wasn’t happening. I read the Bible, but it was as dry as straw. I didn’t understand how my mom found so much meaning in it! I tried different versions, but even the plainest and modernist of lingo could not make the words be more than dry print.

Then one sunny day on the shores of San Diego California, I bowed my heart to Jesus. I prayed with some kukoo ladies, asked God for forgiveness for my sins, and acknowledged He had come in the flesh to take my punishment.

That day I went home to my apartment on the beach and suddenly had this crazy desire to read a Bible!!! I searched my apartment, digging through dirty laundry, boxes in the closet, and desk drawers. My mom had given me bible after bible in hopes I’d find God in those pages… I must’ve kept one! Just one! But my search was fruitless. I was empty handed, although I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a medium size bible with thin pages and red letters. I didn’t want King James Thees and Thous, but I didn’t want a lingo so everyday it diluted the beauty of the literature. I found a Christian bookstore in the yellow pages and hurried down the road hunting my elusive prey. The store produced no satisfactory results. I went home deflated.

The doorbell rang as I was hanging up my jacket. There in the doorway stood a young man I had met at the diner where I worked. We had just talked about his Christian beliefs the night before. I had scoffed when he admitted  he was a “Born again” believer, but he had taken it in stride. Now he stood at my door, a small package in his hand. “I have something for you,” he said somewhat shyly. He pulled a brand new Bible out of the bag. It was medium sized. I flipped through the thin pages and marveled at the red letters, reading the semi-modern translation. It was my first miracle!!

A new Life, a new Love

I slept with that Bible. I did. I barely understood it, but I clutched it to my heart. I felt I had found the answer, but I didn’t know where to start in its hundreds and hundreds of thin pages. I just would read one verse at night, and one in the morning.

Sometimes those verses seemed to actually take on a life of their own! The words leapt of the page, often speaking to me directly by relating to a specific need I was praying about. Soon I was staying up all night hungrily devouring each word. Eventually I combined my personal reading with “through-the-Bible” teaching tapes by Chuck Smith, but mostly I just let the Bible speak to me in the powerful way it can.

Sometimes I even held my open bible and stared at the pages, wondering if I would catch it subtley breathing!! No for real, I did!

Spiritually Discerned

I had a good friend at that time named, Deborah. . I told her of my conversion in a long letter, but she wrote me back saying “I can’t get anything out of the bible.” Almost a year went by before she wrote to tell me she had prayed to receive the Lord into her life and… she then wrote in a huge scrawl: “I CAN UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE!” I laughed out loud! I related so well to those excited words.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14 Paul wrote: “¹⁴The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

In order to Know God, to meet Him in His word and understand His will, a person must first become “Born Again.”

*You can know God through His Word.

*Gods Word testifies of Jesus

*The First Key to understand the Bible is Faith.

*Read John 3: 1-21 That’s a great place to start.

I’ll be back soon with another post called “How to Read the Bible”