I’ve adapted this excerpt from my soon to be released book that will help believers familiar with Scripture get far more out of it while building a meaningful reading routine.

I’ll be sharing from the book on Saturdays now through the book’s release in late December. This is from a chapter that really resonated with my beta readers.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Listen to podcasts, social feeds, theological debates or your favorite Bible teacher and you're likely to take a side. And what about all those books, commentaries and study Bibles?

Everyone is claiming to be "biblical” and can point to verses of Scripture to "prove" their point.

Turning to AI is only going to make this much worse.

I’m going to help you cut through all the noise, spin and sensational claims.

Soon you'll have the criteria and tools to align your beliefs with Scripture instead of what others say.

One of my goals is to keep you from being misled, confused, unfulfilled, or worse, spiritually manipulated and wounded.

Together, we’re going to remove some barriers to forming sound beliefs based on what Scripture says so you can read Scripture the way God intended.

What feels right, sounds right or what your friend or favorite Bible personality believes is too subjective.

The text is what determines the context, not the person teaching the text.

We're going to begin the process of determining context so that you can evaluate truth claims and recognize spiritual spin.

I'll be emphasizing context and how to establish it throughout this book because without it you can have no confidence in how to interpret Scripture.

Communication always involves translation: a transmitter to a receptor, an author to an audience.

But this creates opportunities for misunderstanding.

What they said, what they meant, and what they expect are all subject to interpretation. You do this when reading a text message, an email, drinking coffee with a friend, or eating dinner with loved ones. It’s how communication works.

And whatever is being communicated is being filtered.

We interpret communication through our personality, learning style, intellect and life experience.

But reading God’s word isn’t like reading or watching the news or having a phone conversation or chat with a friend.

The Bible involves several barriers to effective communication that frustrate spontaneous understanding.

The Bible is an ancient text written to an ancient culture thousands of years removed from yours. It has a social, political, religious, racial and economic context unlike yours.

Their values, social influences, lifestyles and more are different. The language, idioms, rhetorical devices and more are foreign and yet what help create context.

How you or anyone else interprets the Bible is dependent upon context.

And that's good news.

It's the great equalizer in discerning what the Bible means. Once you establish context, you gain understanding.

You consider who was speaking, to whom, under what circumstances and for what purpose.

Remember the question, “whose mail is it” from chapter one?

Here's another that is very useful.

If you only had the Bible and followed the normal rules of grammar, what would you logically conclude?

This is where we begin to discern context. And you might soon be amazed at how many vaunted teachers of Scripture violate this simple rule.

This is important because you do not ignore grammar with other important documents that affect your life.

If you read a rich uncle’s will, legal document, medical transcript or the US Constitution grammar matters.

Each have precise meaning because the author chose a context in which to communicate and the specific words and word order to do so.

Ignore this rule and you can make the document say whatever you want.

You understand them and so can everyone else because they are culturally relevant and familiar.

Their word choices and grammar create clear context. 

But when you read the Bible, you're far removed from what was culturally relevant to them.

Thousands of years removed.

To understand the Bible, you must understand "them" first.

This cannot be ignored if you want to make progress in comprehending God’s word. Once four barriers that get in the way are removed understanding accelerates.

Here’s why all this matters. God chose to record events, using people and circumstances at a point in history with which we share little in common.

If we’re going to understand the Bible, we first need to determine how “they” understood it when written.

Their context (not ours) is what determines how to interpret the text…

Check out the section below if you’d like to go through this training live. I’m offering it free to the first 100 subscribers who can make most of the ten session and are willing to offer constructive feedback.

I’d love to have you join us. It starts at 11a eastern time today. See details below.

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Free Live Bible Training Starts Today @ 11a eastern. You can still sign up. In as little as three sessions you’ll open the Bible more, hear from the Author personally and begin building a meaningful reading routine you’ll enjoy. You’ll finally read the Bible the way God intended and have a faith you can call your own. If you can’t make every class, but can make most, sign up! Learn more & register today.

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