Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Have you ever seen one of those paintings—or maybe I wouldn't even call it a painting, but a picture—where you stare at it for a long time and supposedly (and I say supposedly because some of us never get there), you're staring at it, and there's supposed to be this picture that pops out at you? Where you are looking at this one fixed place and it seems like everything's kind of blurry and it's just a bunch of lines? If you look at it long enough, there it is. It's a picture of a dolphin jumping out of the water or a bird flying.
These pictures are so interesting. To be honest, I've been frustrated at times because I feel like everybody else can see it, but I'm the only one who can't. What's interesting about that idea is I know many of us might feel that way when it comes to the Bible. You might hear people say things like, it's so important for you to read God's Scriptures daily, or you should be in a Bible study. All these different ideas are indeed true. If you're honest, you might say, you know what? I've tried to look at the Bible or read the Scriptures, but it's hard for me to understand it.
I get it because I've been there myself. One of the things that I've learned is similar to what I was saying about these pictures that you stare at for some time, and you wait for the picture to reveal itself. Well, that's what's true about the Scriptures.
The Gift of the Holy Spirit
One of the gifts that we have that doesn't really help us when it comes to staring at some photo looking for the hidden picture is the gift of the Holy Spirit to show us what it means to understand the things that are written in the Bible. What that looks like practically is maybe showing up to a time where we're reading through what the Bible says, and maybe to our brains, we're picking up the words that our eyes are seeing on the paper, and maybe in a general sense, we know what these words mean by definition.
If we're very patient, God, by His Spirit, begins to connect the dots between what the words say, what the words mean, and how they apply to our hearts. The thing that we have control of is to fix our eyes on these things that have been revealed to us by God's Spirit. The Scriptures are words we can look at and stare at and read, and there are times when, in our pursuance of understanding, we're waiting and we're listening, and we're wondering what God wants to show us. Then boom! He begins to reveal to us the hidden picture that's there.
You Can Understand God's Word
I want to encourage you today that even if you've felt for some time like it's been hard for you to get through the scriptures or you don't feel like you can understand it, you might say things like, I'm no pastor, I'm no scholar. How can I understand what the Bible says? Well, I want you to know that this book is a gift to all of us who are followers of the way of Jesus, and there are no experts in the company of Christ. We're all beginners. Every one of us is hungry and thirsty for God to show us from His Word what He wants us to see about Himself.
Show up today. Just stare a little bit at it and maybe God is going to reveal a hidden picture to you today.
