The Importance Of Reading The Bible Daily

38 As they traveled along, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to His message. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations to be made. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me!” 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord replied, “you are worried and upset about many things. 42 But only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her.” -Luke 10:38-42 BSB

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Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus (whom Jesus raised from the dead John 11), lived in Bethany, and they welcomed Jesus to their home to refresh Him from His journey with something to eat. When Jesus started to teach, Martha’s sister Mary decided to listen to Jesus over helping her sister with the preparations. Jesus’ words truly captured her attention, and she desired to hear from God’s Word, which trumped everything else. 

Martha complained to Jesus that her sister had left her alone with the tasks. Martha was so worried about the things she had to do that she didn’t realize that God in human flesh was teaching His Word. Instead of hearing Jesus’ message to learn and feed her spirit (Matthew 4:4), she ended up missing out on hearing from the Lord to grow spiritually. 

Jesus responded to Martha that her sister chose what’s more important and He wasn’t going to take that away from her.

Jesus is telling us that reading God’s Word is much more important than our daily tasks, no matter what it is. Whoever desires to know more about Jesus through the reading of God’s Word—God will give them that desire so that they may be able to read it without being difficult to do so. When you read the Bible, how much time do you spend in it? Remember, spending time reading the Scriptures is spending time with Jesus Christ.

Are you like Mary or like Martha? What’s more important to you?

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Christians Need To Be Sharpened In The Word Daily

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15 HCSB

Before we go out into the world to tell people about Jesus, we must be in the Scriptures learning and allowing the Holy Spirit to give us insight. Without having God’s Word inside of us, we will be as useless as an unsharpened pencil to preach and defend the truth.

The Scripture is the only thing that can give you the knowledge of God: who He is and what He has done for you. If you go to other sources, you might intake unbiblical teachings that can distort the person of Jesus Christ and salvation. Only God’s Word can make you wise in the things of God. Just like a sharpener to a pencil, without it, the pencil is useless to a person. Without you learning about Jesus in His Word, how can He use you?

When we start to get into God’s Word, it will be a process of continuous studying with devotional reading. The more you start to intake the Word, the more you will get sharpened.

Eventually, you will see some progress in knowing the Scriptures a little bit better. You will become better equipped to answer some objections that are designed to attack the Word of God. And there will be others who will have genuine questions regarding the person of Jesus and how to obtain salvation.

The result of a sharpened Christian is a deadly one to the forces of evil. The Holy Spirit will use you to bring people out of darkness and into the light of Jesus Christ. But, we must keep in mind that just as a pencil gets dull after a while and requires sharpening, so do we. We have to sharpen our minds with God’s Word often because if you stop reading His Word, He will stop giving you insights. And, you will start to forget some of the new things that God has taught you.

Jesus Desires To Reveal His Word To You

25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to infants. 26 Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure.

Matthew 11:25-26 HCSB

The hidden things refer to God’s revelation to men through the message of Jesus Christ. The word wise here is used in a negative term because of its context. So the word wise means self-righteousness, which tells of a person who thinks that they can know God apart from His Word. And, he or she can achieve a right standing before God through their good works.

The word infant in the passage does not have a literal connotation but points to the condition of one’s heart. That is why the Lord only reveals the secret things of God to infants. An infant has a humble spirit, so the person has to emulate that type of spirit. We have to be willing to submit to God’s Word after understanding its meaning.

The Father’s pleasure is to reveal the spiritual meaning of Scripture to His followers and to those that the Holy Spirit is working on so that they can come to know how to get saved.

If we come to the holy Scriptures with a haughty heart, don’t expect to get an insight or hear from Jesus. Every time we open up the Bible, we have to come with a mentality of a child. A child is humble and believes everything that is said to him or her. That is the mindset needed when we go to the Bible. So, when we read the Scriptures, our minds must be willing to accept and believe what we are reading. That is how we will hear from Jesus and have a heart set to obey His Word.