Imagine having a large zip lock bag full of jigsaw puzzle pieces. But you don’t have the box with the picture the puzzle will create.
You might start by finding the four corners. Then the border pieces. Then start working on adding pieces based on shapes and colors. Patterns might begin to emerge: with light blues becoming sky, darker blues becoming water, greens becoming foliage, and splashes of bright colors becoming exotic birds. A beautiful tropical waterfall might be the final picture.
The Bible is a Puzzle
The Bible can be a lot like that puzzle. The Romans Road could be the four corners. The four sides could be the prophecies of a coming messiah, the virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus.
As other pieces come together, there will be countless people, places, events, miracles, parables, and teachings which will come together as the Kingdom of God. It will take all of this life for each of us to complete that puzzle as God works our lives into His tapestry.
The King James Bible contains 66 books, 1,198 chapters, and 30,857 individual verses. Like any one puzzle piece, any one of the verses can be interesting, intriguing, even life changing by itself. But also like the jigsaw puzzle, when individual verses “connect” with each other the result is often something far greater than the sum of the parts.
Many study Bibles have references to other verses for meaning or content. Unfortunately, it’s often hard to find the time to actually look up those references. More often, we’re going well just to read one brief devotion during our day.
How to Approach Scripture
There are five basic ways that we can approach Scripture:
- We can hear it, as during a sermon or a Sunday School lesson.
- We can read it, as during a Bible study or devotional time.
- We can study it, reading commentaries or references.
- We can memorize it.
- We can meditate on it.
“Meditation” seems to have taken on a negative connotation. King David spoke often in the Psalms of meditating on the Word of God. The dictionary defines meditation as to “think deeply or to focus one’s mind for a period of time.”
Sixty years ago, A.W. Tozer wrote:
“May not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the kingdom like little children through the marketplace, chattering about everything but pausing to learn the true value of nothing.”
The Apostle Peter said that God has:
“Given us everything that pertain to life and godliness, that He has given us great and precious promises, and that with this, giving all diligence we are to add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness kindness, and to kindness love.” 2 Peter 1:3-7
God has given us everything that we need for life and godliness through His word, His Spirit, and the cross. What we do with them is up to us. The spiritual disciplines that we build into our lives has everything to do not only with the quality of life that we will have on this side of eternity, but also on the other side.
What Can God Do In You?
In John 15:5, Jesus said:
“I am the vine, you are the branches; He that abides in Me and I in him the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
The Christian life is not what we can do for God, but rather what God can do through us. It is only as we abide in Him, and He in us, that He lives His life through us. The fruit that He produces is the fruit of the Spirit.
Pastor Johnny Hunt often said that “we can produce plastic fruit in our own strength, but only Jesus can produce the true fruit of the Spirit.” We abide in Him as we spend meaningful, consistent, daily time in His Word. Meditating on His word. Pondering His word. Hiding His word in our hearts. Praying about His word. Allowing His Spirit through His word to help us begin to see life from His perspective and not ours.
Paul said in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Our faith grows progressively stronger as it is consistently built on the truth of scripture.
We should follow Solomon’s pattern in Proverbs 2:
“If you will receive my words, and hide my commandments with you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding. Yes, if you cry after knowledge and lift up your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”