Help Me Read My Bible Like I Should

• Help Me Read My Bible Like I Should
• James 4:13-16
• Include God in our plans...
• James 4:13-16 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."
• Planning the new year..
• Spiritual disciplines..
• Prayer
• Church attendance
• Bible reading
• 1st Find out what’s not working...
• Nehemiah 2:12-13 Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem; nor was there any animal with me, except the one on which I rode. 13 And I went out by night through the Valley Gate to the Serpent Well and the Refuse Gate, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down and its gates which were burned with fire.
• Why is Bible reading a struggle...
• Sometimes a letdown.. Emotionally
• Why is Bible reading a struggle...
• Sometimes a letdown.. intellectually
• Why is Bible reading a struggle...
• Sometimes a letdown.. spiritually
• Why is Bible reading a struggle...
• Not that urgent..
• The goal... slow, steady progress
• 2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
• ESV Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
Bible reading like school..
• Growth happens from slow, steady progress..
• A slow, steady process..
• Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had prepared (set) his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.
• 2nd Result of not reading Bible..
• Hebrews 5:11-12 of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
• 2nd Result of not reading Bible..
• Luke 4:1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.
• 3 And the devil said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread."
• 4 But Jesus answered him, saying, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'"

• 2nd Result of not reading Bible..
• Psalms 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.
• Ephesians 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God .. who goes into battle without their sword?
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• 2nd Result of not reading Bible..
• 1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;
• John 8:32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
• 3rd It’s all about Jesus..
• Luke 24:25-27 Then He said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
• Help Me Read My Bible Like I Should
• James 4:13-16