Kristen Wetherell

10 Promises for Your Bible Reading

Monday, September 25, 2017

Many mornings, weariness threatens to win.

Like a thick cloud, it opposes my time in God’s Word, obscures my desire to read, and keeps me from seeing the light of truth. My weariness might be circumstantial – a disappointment or an ongoing trial – or it may be physical – a long night of little sleep or the lingering annoyance of chronic pain.

I desire to dive into the depths of Scripture, but weariness wants to keep me in the shallows. I yearn to explore the endless riches of knowing Christ better, but weariness tempts me to apathy and tricks me into settling for less.

I need God’s help when I come to his Word. We need God’s help.

Only he can overcome the shallows of our weariness and enlighten our clouded hearts with his truth. He actually promises to do these things when believers read their Bibles—

But do we trust his promises?

Our Problem and God’s Blood-Bought Promise

Apart from the miracle of the gospel at work in us, we’re unable to read our Bibles to see what’s really there. John Piper says,

We cannot turn from one page to another [in our Bibles] without God. We cannot think one thought without God. We cannot feel one feeling without God. And we certainly cannot see the glorious wonders in the word without God. Therefore, we must read by faith in the blood-bought promise that God will help us.^[1]

If my desire for the Word was left to me, most days I’d feel apathetic, distracted, and yes, weary! This is the problem of the human heart, that we’re easily deceived by our sinful emotions, tempted by Satan’s devices, and lured by worldly distractions.

But this is precisely the problem Jesus remedied when he went to the cross, and it’s the obstacle he overcame when he destroyed sin and all its fruit by his resurrection.

When the Son of God took our sin upon himself at Calvary, what was he doing? He was reconciling us to the Father. He was making peace by the blood of his cross. He was opening the living way for relationship with God, that we would hear him speak, desire to obey his words, love him increasingly, and be changed in the process.^[2]

The miracle of the gospel is this: We can now come to our Bibles expecting to hear from the God who speaks, who’s given us a new, blood-bought heart that loves him, and who promises to help us as we read.