Start with the Basics

Hi Girls!

My thought for today is not some drastic, revolutionary idea. It's something we've all heard before, many times—Bible reading. My thought comes from Matthew 4:4—

“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

I want to focus on two words—every word. Most churches that I have been to have some kind of Bible reading program that, if you follow, leads you to read your Bible through in a year. If you have never done this, let me encourage you to start here. But if you have, it is time to move on. My question is “How can we know every word of God if we only read it through once a year?”. 

The fact is, we can't. Now, I'm not saying we need to memorize the whole Bible; for one thing, the Bible never commands us to memorize it. Sure, we are commanded to meditate on it and to hide it in our hearts, but, let's face it, to most of us, memorization is remembering the verse long enough to quote it to someone and then promptly forgetting it in order to memorize another passage of Scripture. We need to know the Bible.

 We need to be able to go to our Bibles and go straight to Scripture that will help us. If someone asks us to pray for something, we should be able to go to our Bibles and find out whether or not what they want is the will of God. If we are struggling with sin, we should have verses that we can go to immediately. Lonely? Find passages about peace! 

In my experience, pastors get up and preach that we should study the Word of God, but they have never taught us how to study. My answer—READ!!!! Read your Bibles, not just once a year, but over and over and over again until you know it backwards and forwards, so that no matter what happens in life, you always, ALWAYS have an answer for whatever happens. Only after we know our Bibles can we live by EVERY word of God.