When I was in my late teens I tried to discredit the Bible in my mind as just a book of suggestions or opinions written by a group of men a long time ago.
I was deceived.
From the beginning, Satan has always been challenging the word of God and God’s love for us. He attacks our thoughts with deceptive suggestions, “Are you really His beloved.” “Is the Bible really true?” “Did God really say that?” The answer is YES!!
I love the word of God! And even though I am still learning and may not understand all of it yet I believe every word is truth and approach it (Him) like that.
The Bible is the “living” word of God.
It is Holy Spirit inspired and it is alive and active. I have testimony after testimony how I’ve seen it working in my own life and the lives of others.
It produces supernatural results and God’s word mixed with faith has the power to change lives, physical circumstances and declare and manifest His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And it is just too late for anyone to convince me otherwise. “The fear of man brings a snare.” I know Jesus, I’ve met Him and He is alive!
But for a long time I also questioned the validity of the Bible as God inspired for one main reason, I was living in the darkness and the dark hates the light because the light will expose its evil deeds. We are born with a sin nature, which simply means that we gravitate toward sin. Sin is rebellion against what God says.
My heart was evil, and for me, deep down I was afraid to believe that the Bible is truth because that would have huge implications on my life and I would need to make a life changing decision. (But when I came to the end of myself, meaning that I did not want to be me anymore. The weight of my sin debt was too heavy to carry any longer. I was the walking dead, but at that moment I called out to Jesus with all of my heart and made peace with God.)
Now some religious doctrines have presented it as a book of rules and regulations of what man must do to obtain right standing with God. Do good to be good. It hasn’t always been represented as the history of an intimate relationship between us, and God our Creator, who wanted to be a Father to mankind. “God is love.”
This relationship was broken when men chose to “succeed from the union,” But God had a plan to purchase our freedom and make a way to be reunited with Him.
And sadly, predominate religious approach is to use the Bible to change the outward appearance of people, behavior control in a sense. Guilt or fear factor tactics in order to make people “toe the line” so to speak.
But the truth of the Bible approaches change from a heart level. The heart is the source of our external behavior. God takes away a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh.
The night I got born again I did not confess my sins, the only sin that separated me from God was not putting faith in Jesus who has paid for all of our sins.
But I did remember hearing the Gospel (good news) message of Jesus.
I just got real with God, I mean I spoke to Him without religious pretense. I told Him that I did not want to be me anymore. I wanted a heart change. I told Him that I knew about Him but I did not know Him. And I said, “God, I want to know You.”
And humbly yet truthfully I said with all of my heart, “Jesus, I’m not moving one step until l talk to You.”
Just like Jesus said in John Chpt. 3, “You must be born again,” and in Roman’s Chpt. 10, “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
That night my tiny mustard seed of faith came into agreement with what God had already provided by His saving grace and God’s word worked a miracle in my spirit. Jesus’s right standing in exchange for my own unrighteousness. And the word of God working in me by His Holy Spirit to reproduce a born again child of God.
Without a doubt I knew Him and knew I was forgiven all.
Some people believe that the Bible is out of date and presents old fashioned ideas, yet this old book is still a best seller world wide and it testifies as the written word of God. It is not a self- help book or suggestions on how to live a better life. It is life. And offers transformation, death to life, curses to blessings. Orphan to “joint heirs of Christ.” It has been here long before we were and will stand long after we are gone.
You can’t convince me that the Bible is not valid, or incorrect for today’s world or contradicts itself. I have intimacy with the Word of God and “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
We are the variables.
And as a Pastor once said, “We don’t read the Bible, the Bible reads us.”
John 1:1, 6:63; Psalm 89: 34; 119:152; Isaiah 40:8; 48:17; Mark 13:31; Jeremiah 29:11; 2 Timothy 3: 16-17
Contact Brenda Groves at: bkgroves1996@yahoo.com
