word of God. It is inspired. God breathed into the
writers and inspired them to write His story. It is
the story of God's relationship to humankind.
The Bible is unique from Genesis to Revelation.
Our Bible is different than other holy scriptures
in other faiths. Those other scriptures are an ac-
count of man reaching for God. Our Bible tells of
God reaching to us, a God who makes Himself
known, a God who reveals Himself and does that
through the narrative of His dynamic interactive
relationship. His grace, His very presence is
made known as it interacts with humankind over
history.
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because the Holy Spirit brings it to life and gives
it meaning and purpose in our lives.
us and serve as God's guide for how we live in
Him, and how He can have His presence in us. It
is not a scientific
text. It doesn't
serve scientific
purposes. It's not
going to solve the
quandary about
the genome, those kinds of things. But its pur-
poses are absolutely reliable, guiding us into an
understanding of God's plan to restore hu-
mankind to the original intent God had all along:
that we would be pure in our heart and walk in
holiness with Him.
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is how God's grace and wisdom is poured into our
life. God's grace sometimes takes the form of the
Holy Spirit working through the Scripture as we
read it, convicting us, illuminating us about
God's truth. It inspires us and motivates us. It
warns us about directions we shouldn't take and
guides us in a direction that helps us in the jour-
ney that each one of is undergoing with God. And
this journey, this life is ministry. The Bible helps
that God has called us to do.
tice of "no Bible no breakfast." I don't think I've
done as good a job as they, but that's a good prin-
cipal everyday, starting the day in the Word and
in time with the Lord. It's like the Lord standing
at our heart's door and inviting us out into His
day, into His agenda.
tremendous resource in the
son can get tremendous wisdom and understand-
ing out of the Bible by using it.
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daily living. The wisdom, the guidance, and espe-
cially the fact that it is the living Word. It is one
of the major ways in which God literally interacts
with us directly. It is His active living Word. If
the President of the United States set up a time
to talk to us, we'd be sure to book that time. Well,
regular basis. It has more to do with listening
than petition. One way we listen is that we sys-
tematically live in the Word on a daily basis.
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Christians who are just living on their experience
and missing out on the tremendous nourishment
of the Word. It is the Lord's Word, our daily
bread. So many Christians are relying too much
on hearing the Word preached once a week, and
sometimes not even that. They are more than
malnourished. they are living in semi-starvation,
and they don't realize what they're missing.
Christians aren't actively in the Word because
their hearts aren't fully given over to their rela-
tionship with the Lord. Or they came to faith, but