Walking Powerfully in Daily Life: By Reading the Bible

Today, we will learn 

1. Why do we read the Bible? To get to know God and His great love for us and the power available to us.

   
   

2. How do we read the Bible? Daily, with readiness of mind.

   
   

3. What do we read? Psalms, Proverbs, and Romans through Thessalonians are a good place to start.

Why Read the Bible? 

To get to know God and His great love for us. 

Psalm 33:11

"The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations."

When we go to the Word, we are finding the thoughts of God's heart. In God’s Word, learn of His goodness, faithfulness, power, His love for us and all the characteristics of God.

Psalm 34:8 

O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

Romans 5:8

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The more we know God by reading His Word, the more we love Him. As we learn about how much He loves us, our response is to love him back. 

When we read the Bible we also learn of the power available to us as God's children. 

Ephesians 1:18, 19

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power. 

God wants us to know  His exceedingly great, super-abundant power to us who believe.

When we read God’s Word, we grow in godliness, which is our true and vital spiritual relationship with God 

2 Peter 1:3

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.

'godliness' here means a genuine true relationship with God. Reading the Word is how we get to know God as our Father. And the result is confidence. We start seeing real results in our lives because we know God’s promises. We can say, 'God and I are like this 🤞."

So we just learned that we read the bible to know God and his love for us, the power we have, and to grow in our relationship with God.

Practical ways we can make reading the Bible a part of our daily life.

How to Read the Bible

Have a Ready Mind & Read daily

Acts 17:11

"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so."

This verse covers two things:

• They received the word with all readiness of mind: Get ready to learn something that will bless you.

• Searched the scriptures daily.

  
  

Start small to build the habit. Maybe 1 verse a day (little blue booklet of verses).

Then maybe increase to 2 or more verses a day. Or maybe set a time, like 5 min. A day and work up to 10 or 15 min/day. Or maybe you want to read a book of the Bible, and you read 1 chapter a day. There are also lots of Bible reading apps that can help you, too.

I know two people in our fellowship who have a little Bible-reading arrangement. They read the Bible until they come to a verse that they love, and they text the other person that verse. They read it for themselves to get blessed, then share it to bless their friend, which adds a little bit of accountability.

You just enjoy reading the Bible- to get to know God and his heart and love for you.

3. How much do we read?

Enough! Whatever that means for you on that day or according to your plan. My friend Amy said that when she was in college, she would open her Bible to Psalms or Proverbs and just read until she found a verse she liked. Then she would write it on a sticky note and put it on the wall.

Ok, so you have a plan and you're ready to build that habit and read your Bible every day. 

What to Read?

The Bible:

• It took 1,500 years to write. 

• It was written by 40 different people. kings, commercial fishermen, a medical doctor, a tax collector, and a shepherd. 2 Peter 1:21 and 2 Timothy 3:16. Say that God is the author 

• it spans 3 continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe, in 

• three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek).

• It tells one unified story of Jesus Christ

• In an Eastern culture, totally different from our modern Western culture today

We research the word to get back to God’s original intent.

So it takes some work and research to know what to read. If you open up your Bible and read Deuteronomy, you might be discouraged if you don't know what you're reading or that it wasn’t written to you.

The Old Testament, Genesis through John, is the Old Testament is for our learning. 

Romans 15:4

"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

"Aforetime." = in the past. Since Paul is writing the book of Romans directly to the church during the Grace Administration, anything written "aforetime" (in the past) refers to the Old Testament and the Gospel records. The verse says that those past writings are "for our learning."

1 Corinthians 10:11 says that the Old Testament is for our example to learn from

Psalms and Proverbs are easy to understand. They are in the Old Testament, so they are written for our learning. Whatever you read in the Old Testament has to line up with Romans through Thessalonians (The church epistles). 

The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)

These are the accounts of Jesus Christ's ministry, life, and death, as he walked on the earth performing miracles. The Gospels cover a time before the Day of Pentecost. The new birth and the gift of holy spirit were not available yet. Spiritually speaking, the Gospels are technically still part of the Old Testament period. We can learn from them, but they are not written to us.

Acts (The Bridge)

Acts is the bridge between the Gospels and the Church Epistles. It records the acts of the born-again believers after Jesus ascended.

• Acts 2 is the absolute core of the book. It was the exact day the new birth became available. The gift of holy spirit was poured out, and believers spoke in tongues for the first time. Before this, the spirit was upon people conditionally. After Pentecost, it was Christ in them permanently.

  
  

• The rest of Acts is the historical record of believers figuring out how to walk powerfully with this new reality of the gift of holy spirit.

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The Church Epistles (Romans – Thessalonians)

These are written directly to us. They apply to our lives today. The rest of the Bible is written for our learning, but the Church Epistles are written to us. If you read Habakkuk and it says to wear brown sandals, you look at Romans through Thessalonians. Is it in there? No? Okay, so I don't have to wear brown sandals. Does that make sense?

The Church Epistles tell us how to live today

It’s like in the glovebox of your truck or car, there’s probably a manual on how to operate your truck or car The Word is the instruction manual for life.

Ephesians is sometimes called “The Breakfast of Champions” because it’s about our spiritual identity and power! Just like a protein-packed breakfast gives you fuel for the day, Ephesians fuels the believer with the reality of who they are in Christ.

Conclusion

As we make reading our bible a daily habit, we can expect our personal relationship with God to grow. 

By reading the Word, we get close to God as we learn about Him and His great love for us. 

We also grow in our knowledge of the power that we have as we believe God’s Word.

Today, we learned how to walk powerfully in our daily lives by starting each day by reading the Bible.

We literally learned how to read the Bible.

This week, I encourage you to start your day by reading the bible to build your relationship with God, see His love for you and the power you have.

If you want to learn how to Read Your Bible with Confidence, click here to see every book of the Bible, who it’s written to, and what it’s about. (Genesis - Revelation). 

Ps. Consider starting with the King James Version of the Bible. It’s used to keep things uniform. It’s preferred because the original translators put added words in italics, so you can easily spot what wasn't in the original Greek or Hebrew text. It's also the version that most major concordances and interlinears are keyed to, which makes word studies a lot easier.

Use other versions of the Bible to build the depth and research Word. Here’s are some:

The Amplified Bible

The Amplified Bible Classic Edition

George Lamsa's Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text

The Companion Bible

New American Standard Bible

English Standard Bible

God bless you. You are the BEST!