Hooked to the Book - Mr. Duke Jeyraraj

Before I knew Jesus as my Savior, when my parents told me to read the Bible I did not relish it. But things began to change after I accepted the Lord. Ever since I have been hooked to ‘The Book!’ I can confess along with the Psalmist, ‘Mouth open and panting I wanted your commands more than anything!’ (Ps.119:20, Peterson Version). In this article I explain from my understanding how you can start and sustain a life-long relationship with the Bible. Here we go:

Plead! The Bible is not yet another book. It is God’s own Word. The Bible is ‘God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3:16). ‘It was the Holy Spirit Who moved the prophets to speak from God’ (2 Pet. 1:20-21). You cannot possibly understand it without God’s help. You cannot grasp it without the help of the Holy Spirit. Therefore before you even open the Bible, close your eyes.

Plead with God like the Psalmist: ‘Open my eyes to see wonderful truths in Your law!’ (Ps.119:18). Before you begin to study the Scriptures supplicate like the Psalmist, ‘Turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through Your word’ (Ps. 119:37). Imagine how exciting the play ‘Macbeth’ would become if its author Shakespeare were right next to you to explain it! Something similar will happen when you plead with the Author of the Bible – God – and begin your Bible-meditation! Read! After you’ve pleaded with God to help you get a grasp of the Bible, the next step is to sit and start reading.

Choose a time to read the Bible. Lock out a slot in daily drill for Bible reading. Early in the morning is a good time to do it. Ezra read the Book of the Law for the people in the early morning (Neh.8:3). The Bible-lover of Psalm 119 writes that he awoke before the sun was up to put his hope in the words of God. He acknowledged that there were times in which he stayed awake through the night thinking about God’s Word (Ps.119:147-148).

The lesson here is that we must slip away to read our Bible at the time when we are least disturbed and our minds are most fresh – something that is generally a reality early in the morning or late in the night. Choose a place to read your Bible. It must be a place that is calm, quiet and serene. It must be place where there are no distractions. Feed! We are told that we should not only merely read God’s Word, but that we should look ‘intently’ at it (Jas. 1:25).

God told Joshua to ‘study’ and ‘meditate’ on the Book of the Law if he wanted to succeed (Josh 1:8). In other words, we must not be merely ‘tourists’ of the Bible but be ‘explorers’ of the same. We must not be merely scanning through the Bible but we must seek to ‘search’ it. We should read and re-read a small passage of the Scriptures till a message from that passage ‘hits’ you and ‘arrests’ you! We could do that by asking questions such as: Who is speaking here? What is happening here? Why is it happening? When (or what juncture) is it happening? Where is it happening? How is it happening? Another set of questions will also help us to feed on God’s Word are: Is there any Promise to claim in this passage? Any Sin to avoid? Any Warning to heed? Any Example to follow?’ In short, we must never leave a passage – we must go over it time and again – till it has spoken to us! Another way to mull over a passage is to try and compare it with other passages of the Bible.

Isaiah explains why. He writes that God provides ‘a command here’ and ‘a command there’; ‘a rule here’ and ‘a rule there’; ‘a little lesson here’ and ‘a little lesson there’ (Is. 28:10). Heed! It is not enough to ‘feed’ on God’s Word daily. We must heed to it also. In other words, we must obey what it says. James compares people who only read what the Bible says without heeding to it to people who look into a mirror ‘but do nothing to improve their appearance’ (Jas.1:22). The Bible is God’s Mirror to reflect your blunders, sins and errors. Peter was all ears when he heard Jesus teaching God’s Word using his boat as a pulpit (Lk.5:1-3).

Following his teaching Jesus asked Peter to ‘go out where it is deeper’ and let down his nets into the sea if he wanted to catch ‘many fish’ (Lk.5:4). Peter’s reply takes my breath away: ‘Master, we worked hard all night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, we’ll try again’ (Lk.5:5). This was the blessing Peter received for taking Jesus at His word: a boat-sinking catch of fish! Are you on your toes to obey whatever God tells you to do in your daily devotion time after reading about Peter’s glowing example in this regard? Breed! We should not even stop with heeding to God’s voice that we heard when we were meditating on the Bible. We must go one more step further. We must ‘breed’ the message we heard from God.

In other words, we must pass on that message to others so that it multiplies. Paul did that. You would have known this if you have heard about the 2 Timothy 2:2 principle! Here we read Paul’s words to his young ‘son in the faith’: ‘You have heard me teach many things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Teach these great truths to trustworthy people who are able to teach them on to others!’ Paul wanted Timothy to teach the God-inspired truths he had learnt from him to a few more others. These few others would further pass it to still few others. And the cycle will go on endlessly! If you practice the five simple steps explained above you will soon find that you are hooked to The Book!