Step 2

So hav­ing prayed to God, your next step is to ac­tu­al­ly open the Bible and read what He Says. Now you can choose to open your Bible to any ran­dom pas­sage and just read what­ev­er your eyes see. How­ev­er, if you are new to read­ing The Word or if you are try­ing to in­clude your fam­i­ly or group, you should be­gin with The Proverbs or The Para­bles in the four gospels.

To some de­gree, though, it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter what pas­sage you open your Bible to. In fact, when­ev­er you open your Bible, there are three im­por­tant things you must do:

1. The ob­vi­ous, you must open The Bible.
2. You must open your mind and heart to God’s Word.
3. You must lis­ten to God’s Sto­ry and si­lence the world’s sto­ry.

Let’s un­pack this a lit­tle. When you open The Bible, God’s Word Speaks to you. But can you hear Him when your ears are closed? Of course not. There­fore, you must not only open The Bible. You must also open your heart and mind to hear what God Says.

But even if your ears are ful­ly open, it is im­pos­si­ble to hear when the room is full of noise. Sim­i­lar­ly, you can­not hear God Speak­ing when your heart and mind are full of noise. In prac­tice, this means you can’t read The Bible while brows­ing in­sta­gram or tex­ting your best friend. Put away any im­me­di­ate dis­trac­tion. It’s just noise that keeps you from hear­ing God.

Be­yond these im­me­di­ate dis­trac­tions, you also have to close your ears to gen­er­al world­ly ca­coph­o­ny. You may not no­tice, but like the adul­ter­ous woman in Proverbs 7:10, the world is con­stant­ly telling sto­ries that are con­trary to God’s Word. For ex­am­ple, God Says, “Thou shall not com­mit adul­tery.” How­ev­er, you can’t hear this com­mand when your mind is full of movies and mu­sic that glo­ri­fy peo­ple hap­pi­ly cheat­ing on their hus­bands. God Says, “If you love me you will obey my com­mand­ments”. But the prophets of the world write books and ar­ti­cles say­ing that love is about “fol­low­ing your heart” and do­ing what­ev­er you feel. When these world­ly ideas and thoughts fill your mind, you won’t be able to hear God Speak. There­fore, you must close your ears to them. Stop watch­ing bad TV shows. Stop lis­ten­ing to mu­sic that doesn’t glo­ri­fy God. Dis­tance your­self from un­god­ly voic­es in your life.

No mat­ter what pas­sage you choose to read, open­ing God’s Word will be use­less un­less you open your­self to God’s Word. Open your mind and heart to hear what God Says. Close your mind and heart to dis­trac­tions and world­ly ideas. You do not open The Bible with your hands alone. We can sum this all up by say­ing: “You can only open The Bible by open­ing your­self to God’s Word and clos­ing your­self to the world.” Or to quote Paul:

“For I de­cid­ed to know noth­ing among you ex­cept Je­sus Christ and him cru­ci­fied ... 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wis­dom of men but in the pow­er of God.” - 1 Corinthi­ans 2:2, 5“But far be it from me to boast ex­cept in the cross of our Lord Je­sus Christ, by which the world has been cru­ci­fied to me, and I to the world.” - Gala­tians 6:14