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The Praying Church: A Commentary on 1 Peter

J.D. Walt
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The Praying Church: A Commentary on 1 Peter

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. — 1 Peter 2:9–10 (NIV)

We believe the church of Jesus Christ is the dwelling place of Almighty God on planet Earth.

Therefore, all we believe to be true about the living God, we believe to be true about his people.

If the holy love, power, and presence of God are dwelling within God’s chosen people, God’s royal priesthood, God’s holy nation, God’s special possession, it means at least two things:

  1. We have been granted extraordinary authority; and
  2. We possess enormous responsibility.

Think of it as response-ability. We have the authority and responsibility to respond in a way no other organization or institution on planet Earth possesses.

The Facts on the Ground

We desperately need to grasp the real facts on the ground, not as reported by the news media but as informed by the revelation of the Word and Spirit, and to understand the rules of engagement. Given all we are exploring about the nature of the church Jesus is building, here are the facts on the ground:

  1. The body of Christ is a global fellowship bonded together by the Holy Spirit. Remember, we are living stones being built together into a spiritual house. Our connection is not institutional in nature, but supernatural. We are quite literally part of each other — connected like a hand is to an arm. This has enormous implications for the church in regions where conflict continues without any end in sight (the conflict between Ukraine and Russia was on my mind when writing this): “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26 NIV).
  1. Jesus Christ is the head of the body — the Lord of heaven and earth, resurrected and ascended, living and active, speaking and listening, guiding and directing. He leads the intercession of the church. We must lift our hearts to Jesus, set our minds on Jesus, fix our eyes on Jesus, and offer our bodies to Jesus. He is the commander of angel armies and Lord of the church.
  1. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prayer who is praying without ceasing in words and in groans too deep for words. As we invite the Spirit to fill us with his own prayers, we will begin to sense the agony in this world, and our hearts will begin to attune to the Spirit’s praying. Prayer is not something we initiate; prayer is the initiative of the Holy Spirit. We do not initiate; we participate. Prayer is not ginning up more spiritual activity; prayer is getting low to the ground and cultivating receptivity.  

The Call to Prayer

We must pray. And I’m not talking about prayer as the “when all else fails, do this” sentiment we see written on placards and Instagram posts every time something bad happens in the world. I am talking about prayer as battle strategy. Prayer as war.

The call to prayer is not a call to “say prayers” and then move on. Prayer is the call to a deep awareness of the presence of God; a surrendered attention to the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ; a keen attunement to the voice of the Spirit; and a bonded attachment to one another across the body of Christ. The call to prayer is the urgent admonition to lay aside the religious customs of casual prayer and enter into the zone of the kingdom of heaven, abiding together in the presence and person of Jesus Messiah for the sake of the world.

The New Testament Vision of Prayer

There is a common and almost prevailing mentality around prayer that centers its authority in its sincerity, fervency, and collectivist spirit (How many people can we get to join in?). This feels to me like religious activism, like a spiritual protest movement. If we can just get God’s attention, giving ourselves no rest and giving God no rest (marshaling the precedent of Isaiah 62:6–7), God will be forced to act.

Though this approach has a seductive allure to it, it just doesn’t strike me as the approach taken by the New Testament people of God. The New Testament vision of prayer at the center of the church Jesus is building looks like transcendent activity. It is the presence and power of God moving in lockstep with a community of people. Examine how Paul instructs the church concerning prayer:  

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. — Ephesians 6:10–12 (NIV)  

What are the implications of this text?  

  1. Prayer does not begin with a people in one place crying out to a God who is somewhere else, hoping God will do something in yet another place. Prayer is an active, direct, warlike engagement.
  1. Prayer begins not with people but with God. Prayer is the initiative of God to share the burden of his love for the world with his image bearers — namely, us — and prayer is the Spirit-infused responsiveness of God’s people to share in and supernaturally carry this burden to the point where his kingdom manifests itself on earth as it is in heaven (that is, blind see, deaf hear, lame walk, lepers are cleansed, dead are raised, poor hear good news).
  1. In prayer, we always come up against the kingdom of darkness and death, making prayer a very dangerous activity. In prayer, we are engaging with powers, authorities, rulers, and principalities — indeed the realms of darkness and evil — against which we are no match. Hence, we are instructed to “put on the full armor of God.”
  1. Prayer is the mysterious and holy union of God with his people in a divine-human collaborative agency, inextricably bound together in an abiding fellowship coursing with an uncontainable strength and mighty power. Remember, the leader of this movement, the head of the church (not to mention the victorious Lord of heaven and earth), is fully God and fully human.

Prayer Is Not a Last Resort

Church, the time for casual prayer has passed. The age of prayer as “last resort” is over. The practice of prayer as expressing our anxieties is done. We are waking up to the sobering presence of Jesus Christ as our Great High Priest. We are beginning to sense the desperation of the Holy Spirit, who travails for the deliverance of the whole earth from the rogue and defeated powers of sin and death.  

Prayer is not, nor can it ever be, reduced to religious or even spiritual activism. It is instead the transcendent activity of God in the midst of the church Jesus is building for the sake of the world.

Cover of "1 Peter Daily Seeds" by J.D. Walt

Church, let us pray.

Adapted from 1 Peter: Surprised by the Church Jesus is Building by J.D. Walt — part of the Daily Seeds series of Bible commentaries. This book helps followers of Jesus see themselves as Jesus sees them — people indwelled with his Spirit being built up to impact the world.

What Is the Holy Spirit? How the Third Person of the Trinity Illuminates Christ

Phil Collins
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What Is the Holy Spirit? How the Third Person of the Trinity Illuminates Christ

Have you ever felt next to nothing in your faith? It’s not uncommon to feel despair and resignation in your relationship with God. I felt that deeply during my early adult years. The book of Psalms especially records emotions of God’s people feeling abandoned, left alone by God, full of restless anxiety.

If we live in the experience of feeling nothing from God for too long, however, we risk letting our lives slide into quiet desperation. We might become hypocrites talking about our love for God when we don’t experience it; or we might walk away altogether, saying this Christian thing doesn’t work, it’s all pretend.

So where do we go for help? The Holy Spirit. Very simply, what we want and need is personal, relational comfort from God, and the Holy Spirit is the Comforter (John 14:26).

Specifically, we need to meet the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Because the more we understand about the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Scripture, the more we can become like the child in Psalm 131: filled, confident, resting contentedly in our experienced relationship with God.

Our topic then is the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and our personal relationship with Christ — a triad, which has also been called a “three-fold encounter.”

What Is the Bible?

The first part of the triad is the Bible. We’ll do this briefly.

Very simply, the Bible is God’s Word. It’s God’s communication to us. It has authority because God has authority. It’s God’s revelation of who He is and what He’s done, is doing, and will do — it’s the story of creation, the Fall, of redemption in Christ, the church, and of the coming New Creation.

In other words, the Bible is about the Gospel, the true story of Christ, and it points to Christ (John 5:39). “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

What — or Who — Is the Holy Spirit?

The second part of the triad is the Holy Spirit. The first point I want to make about the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit Is God

In the Bible the Holy Spirit is described as God’s Spirit, as Christ’s Spirit (Romans 8:9). The Holy Spirit is fully God, worthy of praise Himself, but His primary responsibility in the Trinity is to point to Christ so that Christ gets our attention and glory.

The Holy Spirit shines a spotlight on Christ so we can be awestruck by Jesus, so we come to know, love, and follow Him.

Picture a large auditorium that is completely dark. In the back, up top, there’s a world class musician, and he’s pointing a spotlight down on his favorite world class musician on stage. The musician in the back is excited for everyone in the auditorium to meet, hear, and be blown away by the musician on the stage. That’s what the Holy Spirit wants to do for Christ, to shine the spotlight on Him (John 16:13-14). It gives Him the deepest joy to help us to see and hear Jesus.

The Holy Spirit Inspired Scripture

The second point about the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture. “Inspired” comes from the Latin word inspirare, which literally means “breathe into.” The Holy Spirit breathed life into the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16).

The Holy Spirit is the source of the Bible. If we ignore the Bible, we’re ignoring the work of the Holy Spirit, and since the Holy Spirit is God, we’d be ignoring God. Scripture is an intentional communication from one Living Person (God) to another (you and me).

This is a parallel to God breathing His life into human beings in Genesis. In Genesis 2:7 Adam became a living being when God breathed into his nostrils. The Holy Spirit, God, has also breathed His life into the Scriptures. The Bible, in some amazing sense, is a living book (Hebrews 4:12).

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To tell you the truth I don’t fully understand the idea of a book being alive, but I’ve experienced it. I hope you’ve experienced this too — the Holy Spirit using the words of the Bible to speak directly to your soul so that you knew it was God speaking to you. Maybe helping you catch glimpses of God’s holiness, power, or lovingkindness. Maybe convicting you of your sins and then comforting you after you’ve confessed them. Those are very real Holy Spirit experiences, and they remind us that God is active in our lives.

When you come to God’s inspired Word, in a very real way you’re coming to God. It’s an amazing biblical truth that we have access to God, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, through the words of the Bible.

The Holy Spirit Illuminates Scripture

The next point about the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture (John 14:26).

I mentioned that the Holy Spirit’s role is to direct a spotlight at Christ to illuminate Him, so that we can be awestruck by Christ, so that we will know and love and follow Him. In this illustration, the spotlight that the Holy Spirit uses for us to see and experience Christ is the Bible that He inspired. The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible and then uses its light to point us into a relationship with Christ, making us more aware of Christ’s presence.

The Holy Spirit is our “Advocate” (John 14:26). The Greek word is “paraclete,” which also means “Comforter,” “Counselor,” or “one called to the side of another.” The Holy Spirit comes alongside of us in the Bible. He uses it to comfort, convince, and convict us. He uses it to help us to meet Christ. We’re reading the Bible with the Author of the Bible right there with us. Amazing!

The Holy Spirit is within us and helps us to read the Bible well. He is the catalyst for all spiritual transformation. By spiritual transformation I mean we’re growing in our love of God and others, growing in our reflecting the image of Christ, growing in our following Jesus. He shows us a world we wouldn’t begin to see without Him. He’s the Godly teacher in the heart of every believer.

Relational Reading

Reading Scripture rightly is never reading alone — it’s a relational process. God is relational, so reading the Bible is relational. The Bible is a relational book. When we engage Scripture, we engage God. Given that the Holy Spirit is using Scripture to point to Christ, reading Scripture can and should be a real-time experience of communion with Christ. He’s calling us into a relationship with Him through the Bible.

Reading relationally means I don’t look at the Bible like it’s a theory. Instead it’s a home, the place we come to love and be loved by Christ, the central subject of all Scripture. Think of Bible reading as a conversation with a beloved family member, a family member you know already but want to know better.

I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother, whom I loved very much, late in her life. It was a deep and real conversation, just the two of us, where I remember realizing at a much deeper level — because I was finally mature enough to have this conversation — how amazing she really was, how complicated her life had been and what an adventure she’d been on during her life. I remember lingering with her, enjoying her presence, wanting to know more about her, and her wanting me to know more about her.

She showered me with her love and wisdom during that conversation. Surely speaking with Christ, the Lord of the universe, should be as relationally interesting as that!

Transformational Reading

The author of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, is within us, guiding us (Ephesians 1:17-18). The Holy Spirit is talking to us through the Scriptures. When the Holy Spirit talks to us, He isn’t revealing new doctrines, He’s speaking through what He’s already said in the Scriptures.

When we say that the Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture, we’re saying that He’s teaching us to acknowledge the truth in the Bible and how it bears on our lives. The inner witness of the Spirit authenticates God’s Word to us. The Spirit of God communicates by stimulating thoughts, feelings, and inclinations. The Spirit tells us “this in the Bible is true,” and “this has to do with you, so pay attention.”

A simple example of this is when we read about God’s love in the Bible, how Christ loves us and gave Himself for us. The Holy Spirit can take those words and help you to realize they’re actually true; God is a God of love and grace. But more importantly the Holy Spirit helps you to see and know that God loves you, right now, right where you are.

When we start to sense that truth in our souls, it transforms the way we see God and we grow in our love for and desire to be with God. Our view of the world is changed — our hearts are reprogrammed — which would not have happened apart from the Holy Spirit’s active illumination of the truths in the Bible. Just reading the words “God loves you” doesn’t transform us; we need the Holy Spirit to press that truth into our souls as we meditate on Scripture.

Sometimes I hear people talk like they have such close contact with the Holy Spirit that they don’t really need the Bible. It sounds holy, but its theologically unsound. The primary tool that the Holy Spirit uses to bring us into contact with God is the Bible He inspired and illuminates. To cut the Holy Spirit off from the use of the Scripture in our lives is like asking your doctor to do surgery on you with no medical equipment. It’s crazy.

The simple truth is that Jesus studied, meditated on, and prayed the Bible. If it was so important to Jesus, and He was completely Spirit-led, we His followers must do the same.

How the Holy Spirit Guides Us to Christ Through Scripture

So far we’ve looked briefly at two parts of our three-fold encounter:

  1. We’ve looked at the Bible; that it’s God’s Authoritative Word, God’s communication of the Gospel — the good news of Jesus Christ — and that it points to Christ.
  2. We’ve also looked at the Holy Spirit; that He’s God, He inspired the Scriptures, and He illuminates them in our lives through relational and transformational Bible reading.

So, what’s our role, the third part in this three-fold encounter?

Scripture Engagement

One phrase that describes our role is “Scripture engagement.” Scripture engagement means meditating on the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that we can be transformed by meeting Christ.

What do I mean by biblical meditation (Joshua 1:8)?

Have you ever noticed your mind so centered on something that it just won’t let go? Maybe something you wish you hadn’t said, or something you’re just worrying about, that repeats over and over. Or maybe it’s a positive thought, like you’re in love and can’t help thinking about that other person.

That’s meditation, and we all do it. It’s when our thoughts are on a slow simmer. In biblical meditation, you’re purposively choosing the thoughts you want to mull over instead of letting your thoughts run you (Philippians 4:8).

When we meditate on the Bible we slow down and savor the words, images, and truths of Scripture. We turn them over in our minds and, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, ask God to make them real to us. We keep in mind that we’re reading relationally, we’re reading to meet Christ. It’s right at this point, in the slowing down, that the Holy Spirit does His work. It’s when we choose to meditate that we give room for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.

That’s why it’s so critical to slow down and soak in Scripture: it’s the tool the Holy Spirit uses in our lives to transform us. We don’t grow in a relationship with a friend who isn’t present with us, who’s always zipping away to someplace else. “Sorry, can’t talk, got to go do something more important than you. I’m busy, terribly busy.” Don’t do that to Christ either. “Dwell, don’t dash.” 

How to Meditate on Scripture

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Meditating on the Word says simply that “you should accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart as Mary did. That is all. That is meditation.”

Meditation is a middle ground between our time reading the Bible and prayer. Too often when we read the Bible we read for information only, we read quickly and in a shallow way, trying to get the task done, and then after we read we pray our requests to God.

I can’t tell you how many years I followed that exact pattern. Read some Bible, pray my same prayers, then walk away, often somewhat dissatisfied relationally, but feeling I was at least doing my duty as a Christian. The Bible was changing me, I don’t want you to think it was all bad — but I yearned for something more. It felt like the volume on my spiritual life was set at “low” and I wanted it turned up.

Learning about and practicing Scripture meditation, Scripture engagement, is what’s been deepening my relationship with God for the past 25 years. Scripture meditation personalizes what I’ve read and studied.

Here’s how I do it:

I start by asking the Holy Spirit to use God’s Word to speak to me. I come in a posture of listening, asking for help to obey whatever God’s calling me to think, feel, or do.

I then carefully and slowly read a passage and study what it says. I love the One who speaks the words in the Bible — I want to make sure I get His words right — so I study them. I can’t reflect rightly on what I don’t understand. Without study my spirituality can become shallow and self-indulgent.

As I ponder what I’m studying and reading, I find the Holy Spirit personalizes what’s in the Bible. It becomes a conversation between God and me in which I literally talk to God; in other words, I pray as I’m reading.

I praise Him, thank Him, confess to Him, and make requests of Him all as I read, all prompted by my reading and reflection.

Let the Spirit Lead You to Christ

Read, meditate, pray — all in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t that complicated; it does take practice; there are lots of ways to do it; and — although I truly wish someone had taught me about all of this when I was much younger — it’s never too late to start. There’s absolutely nothing better than knowing, loving, and following Christ.

As we read, meditate, and pray the Bible our spirits are filled with a meaningful personal relationship with our Lord. We learn to trust and wait on His goodness, knowing that He has given everything we need to thrive in Him.

Open your heart to the Holy Spirit, be shaped by God’s Word, and grow in your relationship with Christ. It’s what your Father designed you for, and engaging Scripture is the primary means for you to experience the Lord.

If you’re new to Bible reading and not sure where to start — or if you want to challenge yourself with a Bible-in-a-year plan or simply renew your dedication — read our free guide. Or, if you’re already Bible-engaged and want to deepen your relationship with God’s Word, try Bible Gateway Plus free and get access to a host of amazing study resources.

February 2025 Bible Verse Calendar

Bible Gateway
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February 2025 Bible Verse Calendar

Here’s your daily verse calendar to kick off a new year of Bible reading! Click each link below to read the verse in your preferred translation — or download an image (or PDF) of all verse references.

February Bible Readings

Get the most out of your Bible reading — including each of the above verses — with a free trial of Bible Gateway Plus. Access dozens of Study Bibles, dictionaries, commentaries, and other resources to go deeper into every aspect of God’s Word. Try it today!

List of Bible verses for February 2025

Look at the Book: Haggai [Infographic]

Chris Fann
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Look at the Book: Haggai [Infographic]

“Look at the Book” is Bible Gateway’s series of short blog posts and infographics introducing you to the books of the Bible. Writing from Jerusalem after returning from exile, the prophet Haggai urges his follow returnees to prioritize rebuilding the temple above all else. 

Scroll to the bottom if you’d prefer to see (and save) this article as an infographic. You’ll also find a handy 30-day reading guide. Or, for a challenge, you can do it in one week using the 7-day reading guide below. 

Summary

Haggai’s primary message was on the consequences of disobedience and obedience and the blessings the people would receive if they gave priority to God and rebuilding his house, the temple. 

  • Category: Prophets 
  • Theme: Rebuilding 
  • Timeline: Written around 520 BC 
  • Written: Attributed to Haggai 

Key Verse

“’The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty.” — Haggai 2:9 (NIV) 

The Ruined Temple

The place where God chose to dwell among his people was in shambles and to make matters worse, the people didn’t seem to care. The ruined temple served as a symbol of the ruined spiritual state of God’s people. 

Haggai was the first of three Minor Prophets who ministered to the exiled Jews who had returned to the land of Israel. It is possible that he witnessed the destruction of Solomon’s temple and was in his seventies at the time of his ministry. 

7 Day Reading Guide

Here is a seven-day guide to the prophets Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. 

(See 30-day guide with all Minor Prophets below.) 

God’s Dwelling Place 

To Haggai, the rebuilding of the temple was not an end in itself. The temple represented God’s dwelling place, His manifest presence with His chosen people. 

Access the rest of the series. Browse Bible studies for each book of the Bible. Or right-click on the infographic below to download and save the image for your reference.   

Infographic depicting major themes and content from Haggai

Prepare for Spiritual Warfare with the Armor of God

Jonathan "JP" Pokluda
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Prepare for Spiritual Warfare with the Armor of God

If you grew up in church, or even spent much time there as an adult, you have talked about the armor of God. You made the craft in Sunday school. You were in the skit where you put on the oversized helmet. You have heard it. But what does it mean? 

When we get to Ephesians 6, the repeated word is stand. Whenever we’re talking about the spiritual war that we are in, Scripture is constantly commanding, exhorting, and admonishing us to stand firm. To hold our ground and to not be moved. 

You Have One Enemy

Ephesians 6:10–12 (NIV) reads, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” 

The Holy Spirit, through Paul, was saying to the church in Ephesus, “Nero is not your enemy. The Sanhedrin is not your enemy. The Pharisees are not your enemy. Rome is not your enemy. You have one Enemy, and he is the devil. Satan!” You only have one Enemy who operates through people to discourage you. 

If you can just get your head and heart around that idea, you’ll fight differently. You’ll start to realize, “Oh, this person who just yelled at me and is giving me a piece of their mind with their finger in my chest is not my enemy. There is someone greater than them working through them to discourage me. I have one Enemy, and that is Satan, and the battle is not of flesh and blood.” This is a paradigm-shifting idea for us to understand. 

The Full Armor of God

Once Paul told us to put on the “full armor of God,” he rattled off a list of what we should do. Reading the list, it can feel abstract. But think about it: most likely, as he wrote, Paul was chained to some Roman soldier, and he was grabbing for an illustration. As he sat imprisoned, he looked at the soldier’s armor and started to attach it to ideas to help Christians win the battle. Let’s read what he said. 

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. — Ephesians 6:14–18 (NIV)

Paul was saying that when the day of evil comes and when the Enemy attacks you, you can do these things to defeat the Enemy. When he comes after you, you will be able to stand your ground. If you want to win against the Enemy, do these things.

The Belt of Truth

The first instruction is to stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around your waist. This is Paul saying, “You need to know what is true and what is not.” Many battles have been fought over real estate — an effort to control a territory. The spiritual war is fought over the real estate of your mind. The Enemy is after your thinking. He wants to bend the truth and distort the facts. The scriptures you read, the podcasts you listen to, and the worship songs you sing as you go about your day, these are all helpful tools as you focus your mind on the things of God. 

Gain a Heart of Righteousness

This begs the question, how should we live? Well, we follow the ways of Jesus. We do what Jesus would have us do. This is so important in every situation for the rest of our lives. For as long as we live, no matter how hard it is, no matter what it costs us or how difficult, we just do what Jesus would have us do. To be righteous is to conduct ourselves in the same way that Jesus would.  

Stand on the Gospel

In 1 Peter 3:15, Peter exhorted, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” Having the peace that comes from the gospel in an anxious world is going to confuse the people who have not trusted in Jesus yet. Peter told us to always be ready to explain why we can be so hopeful. This is what it looks like to be ready. 

Hold on to Faith

Paul used the Roman shield as a metaphor of how to protect ourselves from the fiery arrows flying our direction. Faith can be difficult at times. The Enemy wants us to doubt and despair. Sometimes it’s easy to hold up our shields, but other times it’s not. Learn to do whatever you can to hold on to the shield of faith so the Enemy’s arrows are extinguished as they come toward you. 

Be Mindful of Salvation

Paul said in Ephesians 6:17 to “take the helmet of salvation.” I believe he was instructing us to be mindful of salvation. What’s the most important piece of protective equipment? The helmet. This is true in the skate park, on a bicycle, in a football game, and in a spiritual battle. The brain is the command center for everything in your body; everything you say and do happens as a result of your brain. If you are in battle and your brain goes down, it is game over. If we are mindful of our salvation, that means we are confident in our salvation. Then all the other actions of a disciple flow out of that. 

Have the Word Ready

In Matthew 4, Jesus came face-to-face with Satan — not just some demon — and was tempted after forty days of fasting. Satan tempted Jesus with His greatest earthly natural desires. Jesus was hungry. He had not eaten for forty days. And Satan said, “Here’s some food.” Jesus responded with scriptures that He had memorized. In short, Jesus was modeling for us what it looks like to use the sword of the Spirit. This is how we win against the Enemy. We pull Scripture and use it as a way to proactively fight against sin and temptation presented to us by the Enemy. We do this, and we will win.

After all the equipping with the “full armor of God,” the last thing Paul said was, “pray . . . on all occasions” (Ephesians 6:18). I’m convinced: if we will commit to prayer, we will loosen the Enemy’s grip in a whole new way.

Personal Application Questions

1. Read James 1:2–4. A common tactic of the Enemy is to first cause destruction in your life and then try to get you to believe that God would have prevented it if He were truly loving and good. (This is why you need to make sure you are putting on the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness each day.) According to James, what purpose might those trials be serving other than the immediate discomfort you are feeling at having to endure them? 

2. Think back to a season of your life when the Enemy was successful in harming you or knocking you off the path of righteousness. What did you learn during that time? What mistakes did you make that you can avoid in the future? 

3. We are instructed to “take up the shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16). Faith is a word that gets used a lot today, but often we don’t examine what it really means or what it looks like in everyday life. How would you describe what faith is and what faith requires from us? 

Cover of "Your Story Has a Villain" by Jonathan "JP" Pokluda

Adapted from Your Story Has a Villain by Jonathan “JP” Pokluda, with questions from the accompanying 5-session video Bible study for churches and small groups.

Cover of "Your Story Has a Villain Bible Study" by Jonathan "JP" Pokluda

Are you ready to change your narrative and live a different story today? If you’re weary from the struggle and ready to experience life as God intended, this book will help you explore the tactics of Satan, equip you to overcome spiritual battles, and remind you of the victory already secured through Jesus. 

We know the grim, eternal outcome for Satan and his demons — but the battle still rages. Are you ready to fight back, find freedom from sin and toxic thinking, and walk in the abundant life available to you?

Four Identities of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

John MacArthur
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Four Identities of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

When Jesus ministered on earth, He did more than just teach people. He was a man of action. He was more than a messenger of the gospel . . . He was the gospel. The good news of God was present in His life, His teaching, His death, and His resurrection. By His humility and His humanity, His service and His sacrifice, Jesus proved Himself as the ultimate Servant. 

The Bold Rabbi

The action-oriented record of Jesus’ life we find in Mark’s Gospel briefly introduces John the Baptist as the Messiah’s forerunner and then turns the spotlight on God’s Servant. Immediately after Jesus’s baptism and temptation, He arrives in Galilee, where He calls His first disciples — Peter, Andrew, James, and John — and embarks on a preaching and miracle-working tour that must have lasted for weeks. What follows next sets the stage for all that is to come: a series of controversies (or “conflict” episodes) with the Jewish leaders, beginning with the incident involving the disciples of Jesus picking grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28).  

The contrast between Jesus’ reception by His true disciples and the opposition to Him among the “religious” of His day was evident early on. Israel’s religious leaders consisted of four different sects — the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, and the teachers of the Law — each of whom envied Jesus’s popularity with the people. The Jewish religious establishment also resented Jesus for exposing their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. His claims to be the Messiah and the Son of God — claims that in their eyes were blatant blasphemy — incensed them.  

The increasing tensions between Jesus and the Jewish leaders foreshadow a deadly showdown. Specifically, it is the last of the conflict episodes, when Jesus heals a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath, that prompts the legalistic Pharisees to begin plotting together on how to destroy Jesus (Mark 3:3-6). Their tradition prohibited practicing medicine on this day of worship and rest except in life-threatening situations. But no actual law in the Old Testament forbade healing or any other acts of mercy on the Sabbath.  

Christ’s prerogative to rule over not only man-made sabbatarian rules but also over the Sabbath itself was another inescapable claim of His deity and, as such, resulted in the Pharisees’ outrage. This, in turn, led to Christ’s withdrawal to the Sea of Galilee with a great multitude from many places, where He named the rest of His disciples.  

The Deliverer

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” — Mark 10:45 (NKJV)

One way Jesus served those whom He came to save was by delivering God’s truth to a world shrouded in darkness. Jesus taught the people, often using parables in His teaching, such as the parables of the sower, the lamp, the seed, and the mustard seed. These short, simple, earthbound stories communicated eternal truths to reveal previously unknown mysteries about the kingdom of God to believers and to conceal its truth from unbelievers.  

Another way Jesus served was by delivering people from certain temporal trials. In all of Old Testament history, there had never been a person who exhibited such extensive healing power as Jesus. Physical healings were rare in the Old Testament, but Christ chose to display His deity by healing, raising the dead, and liberating people from demons. This not only showed the Messiah’s power over the physical and spiritual realms but also demonstrated God’s compassion toward those affected by sin, adding to an already-convincing presentation of Jesus as the Servant-Messiah sent by God.  

The Misunderstood Savior

In spite of Jesus’s amazing works, His own family and friends misunderstood His message and ministry. The backlash that Jesus received in His final visit to an unbelieving Nazareth prompted Him to redefine what it means to be part of God’s family (see Mark 6:1-6). At this stage in His ministry, Jesus began to train the twelve disciples to join Him as fellow workers rather than as observers. Christ also broadened His ministry to the irreligious Gentiles in the area, healing and performing amazing miracles in Tyre, Sidon, Decapolis, and Bethsaida, where many religious outcasts willingly trusted and obeyed Him. 

To the casual reader, some of the reports of Jesus’ ministry may seem to be a collection of unrelated incidents, but ultimately, He was deliberately moving toward Jerusalem, the site of His final confrontation with the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus, knowing the time was short, set about teaching and modeling for His disciples a number of important kingdom truths, such as defining kingdom greatness, identifying true spiritual fruit, and warning those who would be stumbling blocks. 

The Dedicated Son

In the final week of Jesus’ earthly life, the Son of Man entered Jerusalem to the glad shouts of the masses but also to the consternation of the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus then drove the money changers and merchants from the temple and publicly rebuked the scribes and Pharisees, which set Him on a collision course with the cross (see Mark 11). Yet there were still lessons to be taught, so Jesus seized the opportunity in a sermon He delivered from the Mount of Olives just east of the temple. His prediction of the future destruction of the temple in Jerusalem prompted a question from the disciples about the character of the end times. Jesus responded by describing His second coming.  

All the while, those who hated Jesus were moving to destroy Him. Jesus’ followers, perhaps sensing trouble, reacted with everything from worship to abandonment. Finally, Christ was brought to two trials — the first one Jewish and religious; the other Roman and secular — and was sentenced to death (see Mark 15).  

God’s redeeming work through His Son culminated in the cross, where Jesus bore the sins of the world. In Christ’s atonement, God restored unity between Himself and sinful human beings, reinstating sinners to a relationship of “at-one-ment” with Him. This supreme revelation of God’s gracious love was followed by the greatest event in history: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Son of God willingly came to earth to preach, die, and be raised for the very purpose of saving humankind eternally from sin. 

Reflections

Consider the soil. Jesus appeals to those considering His claims to think about the kind of soil that represents their heart. If it is hard-packed and beaten down by neglect of God, He calls us to allow His Spirit to break up the ground and make it receptive to His Word. If the soil is shallow and superficial, He calls us to allow the Spirit to remove the rocky resistance that lies beneath the surface of our seeming acceptance of the gospel. If the soil is infested with the weedy cares of the world, He asks us to allow the Spirit to cleanse us of worldliness and to receive Him with no competing loyalties. 

The cross before the crown. To come to Jesus Christ is to receive and keep on receiving. Yet Jesus and the authors of the New Testament make it clear there must be a cross before the crown, suffering before glory, and sacrifice before reward. The heart of Christian discipleship is giving before gaining. 

The gospel is not self-focused. Christian discipleship strikes a death blow to self-centered false gospels. It leaves no room for the gospel of getting, where God is considered a type of genie who jumps to provide our every whim. It closes the door to the gospel of health and wealth, which asserts that if we are not healthy and prosperous, we have not exercised our divine rights — or do not have enough faith to claim our blessings. It undermines the gospel of improper self-esteem, which appeals to our narcissism and prostitutes the spirit of humble brokenness and repentance that marks the gospel of the cross.

Adapted from 52 Weeks Through the Bible by John MacArthur.

Have you ever started reading the Bible only to get lost, lose steam, become distracted? Do you want to develop a habit of faithfully reading God’s Word, but the task seems too daunting? Based on more than fifty-five years of teachings from bestselling author and pastor John MacArthur, this year-long pilgrimage through Scripture will serve as your daily guide, providing context, helping you form a routine, and deepening your knowledge.

Finding the Full Meaning of Scripture in the Treasure Chest of Bible Translation

Jost Zetzsche
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Finding the Full Meaning of Scripture in the Treasure Chest of Bible Translation

“English readers are blessed when it comes to Bible translations.”

This statement on its own could mean several different things. It could mean that Bibles translated into English are better than those translated into other languages. Another possible meaning could be that English as a language is more qualified than other languages to express the meaning of the Bible. Or it might mean that there are a lot more translations in English than in any other language.  

It might be disappointing for some to hear it, but the first and second explanations are simply not true. There are excellent English translations of the Bible, and there are excellent translations in other languages. English is equally equipped to translate the original languages — and equally limited in finding just the right words — as other languages around the world. 

The third explanation is true, though. No language has produced as many different translations of the Christian scriptures as English. Bible Gateway has dozens of the most popular English versions — and even that barely scratches the surface of the 900 or so partial or complete English translations. 

In addition to this embarrassment of riches, yet another resource for readers of English ties in with the first and second reasons to emphasize how our cup overflows.  

Pentecost for the Information Age

Several years ago, United Bible Societies (the umbrella organization that national and regional Bible societies, including the American Bible Society, belong to) started a project to collect and publish remarkable snippets of scriptural translations in all of the approximately 3,500 languages into which they have been translated.  

Today, this ongoing collection is available in an online tool called Translation Insights and Perspectives (TIPs) that gives English speakers a window into Bible translations in hundreds of languages other than English.  

Using the practice of “back translation” — taking translations of the Bible in various languages and translating those into English — TIPs invites us to experience the full breadth of ingenuity represented in the whole range of human languages as they express God’s truth. It’s the closest most of us might come to the experience of Pentecost, speaking and understanding languages we’ve never even heard of before. 

Layers of Meaning in Four Biblical Terms

Here are four examples of the ingenuity of TIPs to demonstrate what sort of insights we can gain from it in our Bible studies: the words love, barley bread, John the Baptist, and hope. 

Love

There are many entries within TIPs about how to translate “love” — or more accurately, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek original terms that in English are translated as “love.”  

You may have heard sermons explaining the different Greek words for “love” (agápē, philia, etc.) that are usually translated with a single hard-working English term. This is an example of how one language — in this case, English — can struggle to adequately communicate complex concepts in translation.  

In most English translations of the important conversation between Jesus and Peter in John 21:15-17, Jesus asks Peter three times whether Peter loves him, and Peter answers three times that he does indeed love him. Crucially, however, the first two times Jesus asks Peter whether he loves him, he uses the Greek verb form agapaō. The third time Jesus asks (and every time Peter answers), the Greek text uses the verb form phileō, which is sometimes described as “brotherly love” and may be a more “human” kind of love than agapaō.  

Other languages, including German, French, Burmese, and Kayaw (another language spoken in Burma), translate agapaō with their regular word for “love.” For phileō, where our English vocabulary does not have a natural equivalent that would fit into the direct speech of this exchange, these languages use a natural-sounding form of “to be very, very fond of.”  

Is this important? I will leave that for you to ponder, but we can certainly agree that we want to get as close as possible to what God communicates to us through the scriptures — and this is an opportunity to move just a little bit closer. (You can read about the many nuances of this passage in more detail in the TIPs tool.) 

Barley Bread

Another example of translation ingenuity showcases not the richer vocabulary of another language but a more restricted one.  

In John’s Gospel narrative of the feeding of the 5,000, the English text describes the source of the food as a boy with five barley loaves, which is a fairly straightforward and natural-sounding translation of the Greek. Without a good Study Bible or commentary at hand, though, you might not immediately realize that “barley bread” was the cheapest kind of bread available at the time, emphasizing the desperate frugality of the situation that the disciples confronted.  

Barley is not known in the East African nation of Malawi, so there was no readily understandable word in Elhomwe, a language spoken by two million people in the country. So rather than adding a loanword or explaining what barley is in a comment, the translator there just used “cheap bread.” This communicated exactly what was important to the Elhomwe readers — and today, maybe to us as well. 

John the Baptist

You might be surprised to find a proper name among terms that need translation. In most spoken and written languages it doesn’t, though it might be transcribed differently or rendered with different writing systems (as you can see in the astonishing array of ways to write the name of Jesus).  

But languages that are neither spoken nor written, such as sign languages for the Deaf, often use meaning-based translations for proper names, especially names for people who play an important role in the biblical narrative. The question is what meaning should be attached to the name — and therefore communicated every time the name is mentioned. Considering that there are more than 400 officially recognized sign languages worldwide, many of which are working on Bible translation, it’s clear that there will be a large variation in the emphasis different sign language communities put on a single aspect of any person. 

For John the Baptist, most sign languages emphasize the baptism that John performed in the Jordan River by enacting the dunking of a body in the water, such as in Spanish and Mexican Sign Languages. Some sign languages — or some groups within sign language communities — don’t feel comfortable with the immersion implications of that sign; for example, the Catholic version of the German Sign Language sign for John instead shows the sprinkling of water on the head.  

The American Sign Language (ASL) version of John identifies another aspect of John as the most significant marker for who he was: the announcer. In ASL, the signer signs the sign for “shout” (plus the letter “J”). Similarly, in French Sign Language, the sign that is used signifies “preparing the way” (cf. Mt 3:3, Mk 1:3, Lk 3:4).  

Maybe most unexpectedly — yet beautifully — Vietnamese Sign Language denotes “John the Baptist” by showing an embryo leaping in the womb, recalling the prophetic encounter between John’s mother Elizabeth and Mary, both pregnant with babies foretold by angels. 

All of these are important aspects of Jesus’ cousin, and we — whether we are hearing or not — can benefit from a reminder of this significance every time John the Baptist is mentioned in a verse in the New Testament. Similar information is available for all major Bible characters within TIPs. 

Hope

“Hope” is an English word with a broad range of meanings, from a wish that something will happen (“I hope it’s not going to rain tomorrow”) to a spiritual certainty (“And we boast in the hope of the glory of God”). Mature Christians might have no problem with that second variety of meaning, but it might be confusing to young Christians or certainly to people who are not familiar with Christianity at all. 

Exploring how other languages translate the term reveals that some also struggle to bridge different meanings. Spanish, for instance, uses esperar, which means both “to wait” and “to hope.”  

Others have a much clearer delineation between the spiritual meaning and the everyday reality. In Yucateco, for instance, a Mayan language mostly spoken in Mexico, the biblical “hope” is translated with the phrase “on what it hangs.” “Our hope in God,” therefore, means that “we hang onto God.” The object of hope is the support of one’s expectant waiting. 

In Ngäbere, a language spoken in Costa Rica and Panama, the phrase “resting the mind” — that is, “we rest our mind on the glory of God” — also implies a deep sense of “confident waiting.” 

Perhaps most vividly, Anjam, a language spoken by just 2,000 people in Papua New-Guinea, seems to describe the certain embrace of a spiritual reality by using “looking through the horizon.” This implies that hope is nothing that can be perceived with our five senses, and yet it can clearly be captured by the mind of the faithful. 

With hope and most other major biblical terms, TIPs offers a variety of ways to view the many different translations for a single term. You can view them in detail on the term’s page or via a link in that page to a concise graphical format like this: 

Graphic pointing to many different translations of the Greek word for "hope"

Blessed by Bible Translations

English is a beautiful and highly expressive language that can unlock the meaning and even much of the poetry of the original languages in the Bible.  

But so can other languages. Let’s celebrate the privilege we have of exploring that deep treasure chest by holding up any verse in the Bible to the light and seeing its beauty shimmer in manifold color (and translation). 

I hope to see you over at TIPs.

Look at the Book: Zephaniah [Infographic]

Chris Fann
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Look at the Book: Zephaniah [Infographic]

“Look at the Book” is Bible Gateway’s series of short blog posts and infographics introducing you to the books of the Bible. “The Day of the Lord is near!” Zephaniah proclaims, listing the nations who will be subject to God’s wrath — but the remnant of Israel who will ultimately be restored. 

Scroll to the bottom if you’d prefer to see (and save) this article as an infographic. You’ll also find a handy 30-day reading guide. Or, for a challenge, you can do it in one week using the 7-day reading guide below. 

Summary 

Zephaniah’s theme focuses on the coming “Day of the Lord” — a time when God will punish the nations for their sin, including Judah. He ends his pronouncement of doom on the positive note that Judah will one day be restored. 

  • Category: Prophets 
  • Theme: Remnant 
  • Timeline: Written between 640-627 BC 
  • Written: Attributed to Zephaniah 

Key Verse 

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” — Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV) 

The Mighty Warrior Who Saves 

Zephaniah’s encouraging conclusion expressed hope based not on the moral uprightness of the people but on the power of God. He is “the Mighty Warrior” who would save a remnant of his people. 

Within oracles of divine wrath, Zephaniah exhorted the people to seek the Lord, offering a shelter in the midst of judgment, and proclaiming the promise of eventual salvation for His believing remnant. 

7 Day Reading Guide 

Here is a seven-day guide to the prophets Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. 

(See 30-day guide with all Minor Prophets below.) 

The Might of Love 

In the person and work of Jesus, God’s mighty power and tender affections meet. Jesus proves that God is mighty to save his people through the sacrifice of his Son. 

Access the rest of the series. Browse Bible studies for each book of the Bible. Or right-click on the infographic below to download and save the image for your reference.   

Infographic depicting major themes and content from Zephaniah

The God Who Speaks

Thaddeus J. Williams
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The God Who Speaks

What do you think is the most repeated phrase in the entire Bible?  

If you said, “Thus says the Lord,” you would be correct. It appears more than four hundred times.  

The God of the Bible is not the stone-cold silent god of the ancient Greeks. He is not the Stoic or Epicurean Zeus, too busy enjoying the amenities of divine bliss to bother with humanity, shaving a few strokes off his short game on some distant galactic golf course. No. The God who exists is the God who speaks.  

My Personal Favorite Atheist

It is all too easy to take the fact that God speaks for granted. We need help from one of the most famous atheists of the twentieth century, the French existentialist Albert Camus (pronounced Ka-me-you).  

Camus did not believe in a speaking God. Yet he is one of my personal favorite atheists. He did what so few atheists have been willing or able to do. He reckoned honestly with the implications for the human race if no speaking God exists. “When it comes to man’s most basic questions of meaning and purpose,” Camus said, “the universe is silent.”1 We shout, “Why are we here?” to the night sky, and the answer is crickets.  

The Absurdity of Modern Life

The implication is that “all human attempts to answer the questions of meaning are futile. . . . In a word, our very existence is absurd.” That absurdity of life in a silent cosmos was precisely the tough pill Camus offered us in his best novels.  

The Plague showed us the nobility yet utter futility of fighting death and despair in a godless universe as a pandemic strikes a French colony in 1940s Algeria. The Stranger chronicles a post-Christian drifter killing an Arab on a beach, yet seeking no redemption because the categories of good, evil, guilt, and grace are nonsense in the absence of God. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus rebooted the Greek tragedy of a man condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again and again and again forever.  

Camus offers a helpful, albeit depressing metaphor for modern man, the kind of ennui and unbearable absurdity that sets the protagonists of Mike Judge’s Office Space, David Fincher’s Fight Club, and Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad on their respective antihero paths to cyber fraud, corporate terrorism, and meth cooking.  

‘A Disillusioned and Exhausted Man’

Something astounding happened to Camus, something that has everything to do with a God who speaks.  

In the 1950s a New York Methodist pastor named Howard Mumma was guest preaching at a church in Paris. Mumma noticed a mysterious figure in a dark trench coat circled by admirers. It was none other than Albert Camus, mid-twentieth- century international atheist celebrity, and a self-described “disillusioned and exhausted man.” He confessed that he had never read the Bible himself, and Mumma agreed to be his tour guide through the text. What followed was a friendship that lasted five years, Mumma visiting Paris and Camus visiting New York City to explore the possibility that God has spoken.  

Camus confided in Mumma,  

“[When] I wrote the Myth of Sisyphus . . . [and] my first novel, The Stranger, I tried to show that all human attempts to answer the questions of meaning are futile. . . . In a word, our very existence is absurd. . . . So, what do you do? For me, the only response was . . . to commit suicide, intellectual suicide or physical suicide. . . . To lose one’s life is only a little thing. But, to lose the meaning of life, to see our reasoning disappear, is unbearable. It’s impossible to live a life without meaning.” 

Striving for the Faith

Then came a moment no one saw coming. Camus, famed atheist, asked Mumma if he could be baptized. Given his celebrity status, Camus had only one condition. The baptism must be private, behind closed doors. That way no paparazzi, no protesting atheists, no opportunist Christians could exploit Camus’s sacred sprinkling.  

Mumma kindly explained that the very concept of a private baptism was a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron like “jumbo shrimp,” “crash landing,” or “soft rock.” Baptism is a public sacrament, a visible declaration of one’s new identity in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

Camus said he would consider it. They parted ways. Camus died a couple of weeks later in a car crash. His final words to Mumma were, “I am going to keep striving for the Faith.” 

The man who wrestled so desperately with the silence of the universe saw a ray of hope that the God who made the universe is not silent.  

“Thus says the Lord.”  

Dear friends, do not take those four words lightly. Don’t miss their life-or-death profundity. Run the depressing thought experiment. If there is no speaking God, then what have you got? How would you begin to answer the existential questions that seize us in our most sober (and often in our least sober) moments?  

Science can answer questions about how the universe works. But science cannot answer a single why question. Thank God for science, but no amount of science, much less entertainment, alcohol, orgasms, income, or obsessive self-analysis can extinguish the burning why questions.  

Don’t Sell Your Soul

We might be tempted to delegate the answers to why questions to the politicians. Yet the twentieth century’s hundred-million-plus casualties of totalitarian megalomaniacs unite like a chorus of ghosts to shout, “Resist! Don’t sell your soul!”  

We might then be tempted to take the inward turn. The universe may be silent and the ideologues may lie, but our hearts can show us the way. “The answers are within” is the kind of advice offered either by those selling something by stroking your ego or those who have never plunged deep enough within to behold the contradictions and corruptions that lurk in our depths. The human heart is “deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9 NIV).  

Thankfully, “God is not man, that he should lie” (Num. 23:19 ESV). “Your word, Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations” (Ps. 119:89–90 NIV).  

Because God exists and God speaks our quest to answer why questions does not leave us cosmically alienated and pondering a noose in Camus’s silent universe. Deep trust becomes possible, a trust in something or rather Someone infinitely more trustworthy than scientists, politicians, and everyone else, including ourselves.  

Camus was right that “human attempts to answer the questions of meaning are futile.” Yet, your existence is not absurd. Your quest is not doomed. You have purpose because you were created on purpose by a purpose-driven God. “All things,” which would include you, “were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16 ESV).  

God’s purpose-illuminating words can be accessed whenever you want and with greater ease than anytime in human history. Bibles are no longer under lock and key in the Latin Vulgate that average folks couldn’t understand. Today at least some Scripture can be found in 3,589 languages (and counting). A ten-second app download can put hundreds of translations at our fingertips.  

Revere God

We revere God when we take his word seriously. Such reverence has a proven positive impact.  

When researchers Arnold Cole and Pamela Caudill Ovwigho polled forty thousand people ranging from eight to eighty years old, they made some unexpected discoveries. People who read their Bibles once or twice a week experienced no benefit over those who never read their Bibles. At three times a week, some minor gains were detected. But with at least four times of reading Scripture per week, everything seemed to spike.  

  • Sharing their faith skyrocketed 200 percent.  
  • Discipling others jumped a whopping 230 percent.  
  • Feelings of loneliness dropped 30 percent.  
  • Anger issues dropped 32 percent.  
  • Relationship bitterness dropped 40 percent.  
  • Alcoholism plummeted by 57 percent.  
  • Feelings of spiritual stagnancy fell 60 percent.  
  • Viewing pornography decreased 61 percent. 

Do you battle a sense of purposelessness as Camus did in his silent universe? Do you feel lonely, lost, or stuck? Thankfully, God is not silent. Open a Bible and hear your Maker speak.

Cover of "Revering God" by Thaddeus J. Williams

Adapted from Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker by Thaddeus J. Williams.

The chief reason we exist is to glorify and enjoy God. But for many, God remains a vague cloud of cosmic kindness, a super-sized projection of ourselves into the sky, or an impossible-to-please killjoy. Who is God, really? Who is this being we should thank for our next breath?

Written in the great tradition of classic discipleship works like A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, and R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God, this discipleship guide stands out as our generation’s invitation to good theology that yields profound, reverent, God-centered living.

  1. All quotes are taken from Howard Mumma, Albert Camus and the Minister (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2000).  ↩︎
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