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.

10 Promises for Your Bible Reading

What are some of these promises? What does God say he’ll do when we, his weary children, read his Word, trusting that he will help us? Meditate on and pray one or more of these promises as you open your Bible today, and trust that they’re for you as you commune with God in the name of his Son:

1. God promises to accomplish his purposes through his Word.

[My word] shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

2. God promises to grow you in holiness through his Word.

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

3. God promises the gift of faith through his Word.

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

4. God promises to keep his Word.

I will not violate my covenant

or alter the word that went forth from my lips. (Psalm 89:34)

5. God promises to be with you as you read his Word.

…for [God] has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

6. God promises to direct your way through his Word.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)

7. God promises to attend to those who are humble before his Word.

But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:2)

8. God promises his Spirit will guide you in the truth of his Word.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. (John 16:13)

9. God promises to search your heart by his Word.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)