UPDATED Today’s Spiritual Food for Thought, written by Pastor Sam Lee who leads Catalyst Agape Church in Northern New Jersey, was first posted on October 24, 2013. He is a graduate of University of Wisconsin (BA) and Biblical Theological Seminary (M.Div.).
Spiritual Food for Thought for the Weekend
“Read God’s Word, Meet Jesus”
Matt. 13:14-15b (NIV)
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.”
Introduction: In a dated-video I (P. Ryun) recently viewed, a pastor from America, who was visiting China at the time, told a roomful of Chinese underground church leaders, “In my country, we have on average two bibles per family, but we don’t read any of them.” Is that us? If we do one thing differently as a result of going through the travails of COVID-19 pandemic, let’s really dig into God’s eternal truth embedded in Scripture.
During my seminary years, I had wondered why some (liberal) scholars didn’t have faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. It is apparent that people read the Bible for many different purposes. On the one hand, some unbelieving critics scrutinize the Bible to find errors in order to justify their unbelief; that is to say, they read the text but never perceive the truth in it.
Then there are some believers who read it merely to gain information, that is, insights and principles that satisfy their curious or fertile minds. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing; nevertheless, the goal of reading and studying the Bible should be to meet Jesus. Reading the Bible with our head inevitably leaves our heart untouched; as a result, our lives remain unchanged. The goal of our devotions is to have a fresh encounter with Jesus Christ; for that to happen, the attitude of our heart must be in the right place when reading the Scripture, which is liken to a double-edged sword (Heb. 4:12) and fire (Jer. 23:29).
In the Gospel of John, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1- 2, 14 NIV). Jesus, the Word incarnate, is co-eternal with God from the beginning; Jesus is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. Yet, this glorious Son of God came to earth in the flesh, in the form of a servant; that’s humility (Phil. 2:5-8). My prayer is that, as we approach the Word of God with the attitude of a humble heart—even more so since we have been greatly humbled by the pandemic—we would encounter this Jesus, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in every page of the Bible.
Prayer: Lord, help me to be like the Thessalonians who “accepted [the word of God] not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13), so that it will “judge the thoughts and attitudes of my heart” (Heb. 4:12). Empower and motivate me to discipline myself to really read, study and meditate on Your eternal word. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Isaiah 7-8