In my family, there has been a great diversity of faiths, but when I was going through my personal crises, I did not want to hear from my favorite TV or radio pastor or family or friends; I didn’t want to hear from anyone else but God. I was Christian long enough to know that if I truly wanted to hear from God, then I had to read the book through which He is speaking to the whole of humanity, for all time. And of course, my first response was “the Bible is hard to understand!” And this was the first of my misconceptions to be proven false.
Why would anyone who has a burning message to convey to a loved-one or friend, purposely try to make the message hard to understand? It’s not logical. Quite to the contrary, this person would try to make that message more understandable. How might this be done? Maybe that person would tell a parable – a story with characters and situations with which the hearer is familiar, and that teaches a lesson.
That first journey through the Bible took me 6 years, but what a journey it was! Now, when I hear someone say, “the Bible is hard to understand!”, I think, “That sounds like a person who hasn’t read the Bible!” It was on this first journey that I learned:
- God wrote this word for me.
- God wrote this word for every human being walking this earth, whether illiterate or in possession of a PhD in Christianity.
- God wants us to know Him. And I want to know Him.
- When you study the Bible, you will discover God’s heart toward you, but also, your own place in the world.