Step 1

So you prob­a­bly know that you should pray be­fore do­ing big things like start­ing a new job or get­ting mar­ried. But did you also know that you have to pray be­fore read­ing The Bible? You need to pray be­cause The Bible is God’s Word.

You see, peo­ple use words to com­mu­ni­cate their minds to oth­er peo­ple. As hu­man be­ings, we have no prob­lem un­der­stand­ing each oth­er’s words be­cause we al­ready have sim­i­lar minds. But, in case you haven’t no­ticed, God Is Not a man. His Mind is far Greater than yours and far Dif­fer­ent from yours. Even when you hear Him Speak­ing per­fect Eng­lish, you can’t fath­om The Mind He Is Com­mu­ni­cat­ing through His Word. There­fore, you des­per­ate­ly need Him to help you un­der­stand The Bible. Only God Has The Pow­er to Give you His Mind through His Word. So when you pray to God for un­der­stand­ing of His Word, re­mem­ber that you ask­ing Him to help you grasp His Mind and not your own.

But even af­ter He Ex­plains His Word to you, you will still have dif­fi­cul­ty hear­ing Him. This is be­cause a part of you still re­sists The Truth. You know that part of you, the part that doesn’t want to ad­mit he’s wrong, the part that has be­lieved the wrong thing for so long he can’t even see what the truth is any­more. So in ad­di­tion to un­der­stand­ing, you need some­thing more from God. You need God to Tear down your de­fens­es. You need God to make your hard heart soft so that you can re­ceive His Holy Word. There­fore, pray to God. Ask Him to break you and heal you. Ask Him to re­move all the ob­sta­cles in your mind, heart and spir­it that pre­vent you from re­ceiv­ing His Word.

Bible read­ing starts with prayer. Pray to God to give you His Mind so you can un­der­stand The Bible. Ask Him to re­move every place where you are ac­tive­ly or pas­sive­ly re­sist­ing His Holy Word. So be­fore read­ing The Bible, try pray­ing us­ing words like these: Fa­ther, open me up with your word, open your word up to me. Amen!