Step 7

Our last step in read­ing The Bible is called “Flesh Made Word”. Now what ex­act­ly does this mean? You may have read in John 1:14, “The Word Be­came Flesh and Dwelt among us.” Then in Eph­esians 4:10 you read, “He who de­scend­ed is the one who also as­cend­ed far above all the heav­ens, that he might fill all things.” The Word of God that Be­came flesh and Dwelt among us now Reigns from Heav­en to Judge and Rule every oth­er word. The Word of God, like the staff of Aaron, Swal­lows up every oth­er word. His Sto­ry Con­sumes every oth­er sto­ry. This does not mean your sto­ry is His Sto­ry. No. It means He Is Us­ing your sto­ry to Tell His Sto­ry. So go ahead and tell your sto­ry how­ev­er you like. But, as Ec­cle­si­astes con­cludes, nev­er for­get that God Is Writ­ing you!

In Matthew 7:24-29, Je­sus Gives us in­sight into His Sto­ry. In His Sto­ry, He Says, there are two only kinds of char­ac­ters. One is the wise char­ac­ter who obeys Je­sus and lives eter­nal­ly in heav­en. The oth­er is a fool­ish char­ac­ter who dis­obeys Je­sus and per­ish­es in hell. Now you must de­cide what kind of char­ac­ter you will be and how you will tell your part of His Sto­ry. Will you obey Him with your thoughts, feel­ings and ac­tions? Will you be an ac­tor who fol­lows God’s Script or an ac­tor who “does it his way”? No mat­ter what you choose, you can­not avoid be­ing a char­ac­ter in His Sto­ry. You will ei­ther be the wise man who builds on The Rock through obe­di­ence or the fool­ish man who builds on sand through dis­obe­di­ence.

If by God’s Grace you chose to obey Je­sus, then you need to know how to fol­low Him. What does He Mean by, “Do not steal”? How should you “love your neigh­bor as your­self”? Thank­ful­ly, we do not have to spec­u­late. The Bible Is God’s Script. God Wrote all those his­to­ries, lamen­ta­tions, songs and prophe­cies to show us how to play our roles. This is why He Tells Joshua, “This Book of the Law shall not de­part from your mouth, but you shall med­i­tate on it day and night, so that you may be care­ful to do ac­cord­ing to all that is writ­ten in it. For then you will make your way pros­per­ous, and then you will have good suc­cess.” Through The Bible, The Holy Spir­it Uses your mind cre­ate pic­tures and movies of the right thoughts, emo­tions and ac­tions. If you have been prac­tic­ing the last six lessons, you are now bet­ter equipped to un­der­stand and obey God’s Word.

But it gets even bet­ter than that. As a char­ac­ter in God’s Sto­ry, you are sub­ject to the dy­nam­ics and rules He Uses to Tell His Sto­ry. This means all steps we have been us­ing for read­ing His Word can be ap­plied to your life! By read­ing your sto­ry in this way, you can per­ceive and im­prove your con­nec­tion to His Holy Word! Now as Paul says in 2 Corinthi­ans 3, Christ has Un­veiled your face and Opened your eyes. Yet like the man born blind, you still see men as trees. This is not okay. How can you con­form your sto­ry to God’s Sto­ry if your eyes see but can­not per­ceive? There­fore, not only your eyes but also your vi­sion must be washed by His Word. And as your mind is re­newed by med­i­tat­ing on His Word, you are trans­formed from glo­ry to glo­ry into the im­age of The Lord (Ro­mans 12:1, 2 Corinthi­ans 3:18).

How It Works

To show how this works, we’ll con­tin­ue to prac­tice with Matthew 7:24-29. Grab the sum­ma­ry, list of char­ac­ters and con­stel­la­tions you’ve been com­pil­ing since step 1. Now, take a long look at every­thing you have writ­ten and bring to mind all you have read and imag­ined. Do you see your­self in the pas­sage? For ex­am­ple:

1. Are you the wise man or the fool­ish man?
2. Is your house built on sand or on rock?
3. Are you like one of the peo­ple in the crowd? Do you mar­vel at Christ?
4. Do you feel your­self cur­rent­ly be­ing bat­tered by the rain and floods?

Ques­tions like these will help you be­gin to see where your char­ac­ter or cir­cum­stances are re­flect­ed in the pas­sage. But mere glance at the mir­ror of The Word can be very dan­ger­ous. So take time to ex­am­ine your­self more close­ly by the light of His Word. Pray, sum­ma­rize and make-be­lieve your sto­ry so that you can more eas­i­ly con­nect the dots be­tween your life and His Holy Word.

For ex­am­ple, it is not suf­fi­cient to sus­pect a sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween your­self and the fool­ish man. You must find out how you are or are not fool­ish. So ap­ply the steps we use to read The Bible to your life by do­ing the fol­low­ing:

1. Pray to God and ask Him to il­lu­mi­nate your char­ac­ter with His Word.
2. Open to a chap­ter in your life. Start with to­day or yes­ter­day.
3. Sum­ma­rize your day so far or sum­ma­rize yes­ter­day if it’s too ear­ly in the day. What hap­pened in the morn­ing? in the af­ter­noon? in the evening?
4. List the peo­ple, places and things you en­coun­tered. Also list the ideas and and thoughts you had dur­ing the day.
5. Pray. Specif­i­cal­ly, ask God to help you prune and cor­rect your sto­ry with His Sto­ry.
6. Now con­nect the dots. Look through the sum­ma­ry and char­ac­ters in your day and com­pare them with the sum­ma­ry, char­ac­ters and con­stel­la­tions in Matthew 7:24-29. It may help to ask ques­tions like these:
1. Do you be­lieve Je­sus’ Sum­ma­ry of the life of the fool­ish man or are you trust­ing in your own in­tel­li­gence?
2. Are there any peo­ple, places, things or ideas present in your life that are also present in the con­stel­la­tion of the fool­ish man? e.g. A fool­ish man does not con­sid­er the rain and storm be­fore he be­gins to build. Where are you be­hav­ing this way? Are you, like the fool­ish man, blind­ed by the beau­ty and height of the man­sion you have built in­stead of be­ing con­cerned that it is built on sand? Are you, like Ja­cob or Pe­ter, will­ing to tear down the house you have built on dis­obe­di­ence and start over by obey­ing Je­sus Christ?
3. What peo­ple, places, things and ideas need to be re­moved or added to your life to help you stop be­ing fool­ish and start be­ing wise?
7. Fi­nal­ly, armed with this Word-Il­lu­mi­nat­ed pic­ture of your char­ac­ter, be­gin to change your ac­tions to do what God Says. Re­peat these steps dai­ly and you will soon find your­self look­ing more and more like the wise man Je­sus De­scribed in Matthew 7:24-29.

I en­cour­age you to do for your­self what Hezeki­ah did for Is­rael. De­stroy all the world­ly thoughts and emo­tions you’ve been us­ing to guide your life. Through The Bible, buy God’s Thoughts and God’s Emo­tions. As God Said to Joshua, be strong and coura­geous. In every cor­ner of your life, de­clare His Word and be­gin to judge all things ac­cord­ing to His Word. This is what we mean by “Flesh made Word.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions on learn­ing our fi­nal step in read­ing The Bible. By The Holy Spir­it, any­one can fol­low these sev­en steps to gain true un­der­stand­ing and glo­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tion as they read God’s Word. Every cor­ner of His Word, from long ge­nealo­gies to com­pli­cat­ed epis­tles, is al­ready your in­her­i­tance. You are now armed to go into His Word take pos­ses­sion of what is yours.