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 December. I pray it encourages you and would love to hear your thoughts:

One statement has stuck with me all these years: Beliefs determine practice. You don't live what you say you believe; your life reveals what you believe.

Speaking facts about the Bible and a life yielded to Scripture are very different things. I’m in my sixties now and wish I had spent less time with facts and more on yielding.

I’ve also come to realize through years of teaching, shepherding and counseling others that what you believe about the Bible will deeply influence how much you receive from it

I think about this passage often (Pro. 22:19-21).

As you venture into this book I'm going to start with a request that will help you immensely if you’ll embrace it.

Give yourself permission to believe that the Bible is God’s word and that He wrote it to reveal himself – to you.

That simple belief will help you; I promise.

Believe that each time you pick up God’s word is valuable time spent with God, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

It's a book unlike any other book and God will not allow your time with Him to be in vain. Read it like it is God’s book written to and for you.

It’s also helpful to remember that God wrote Scripture using people like you and me – not scholars, professors or experts (2 Peter 1:19-21)

God wrote the Bible for ordinary people using ordinary people. Once you better understand the Bible, you'll realize what "holy men of God" means.

The instruments to record God's word were everyday people with a variety of life experiences and backgrounds.

Moses avoided God for the first eighty years of his life and ran into Him on the backside of the desert.

David was a shepherd’s boy who later became famous for adultery and murder. Solomon chased every worldly pleasure imaginable and caught most of them.

Jeremiah was afraid to speak and sure he was the wrong guy for the job. Amos was an uncultured herdsman.

God called Elijah a man subject to passions just like you and me. Matthew was a despised tax collector who threw some amazing parties.

Mark turned back from the challenges of ministry and was of little use thereafter as far as the apostle Paul was concerned.

John wanted to burn up the people he didn’t appreciate, and Peter denied the Lord three times mere hours after he proclaimed his allegiance to Him.

And what about Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament?

He was a religious zealot who took pleasure in the death of Christians, destroyed families, broke up churches and put believers in prison. He consented to the death of the first Christian martyr.

These are God’s "holy men" moved by the Holy Spirit to pen the words of Scripture.

But one thing must remain clear: It was God writing through them.

This is what God’s words declares about itself and when we trust what the Bible says at face value by faith, we’ll gain more from it.

Those men did not offer their opinions about religious matters or make things up. God claims to be the Author who used men to record the very words and message He intended for us to have.

It’s a book for you and me, written by God to you and me, by people like you and me. That’s a belief you’ll want to embrace.

So, here’s my question for you: What do you claim to believe about the Bible but how you live is telling a different story? If beliefs determine practice, what does your life preach right now?

I’d love to hear your response. Reply and let me know or jump into the community and share it on the post there. I read every one.

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