God's Resource for My Deepest Need

So I got to I'm watching Jeopardy the other day on TV. Anybody here watched Jeopardy pretty much like every night? You're a Jeopardy fan, right? It's the most watched game show. It's pretty intense. My mom lives with us now, and she loves to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night. And so that's what we watch if I'm home. It gives us something to do together, and I always shout out the correct responses if I know them. If I don't, I just keep quiet. I don't want to be wrong, but if I know, I might just shout it out. It's number five, you know, or whatever. My mom thinks I'm a genius. How many of you do that? Just to kind of prove you could be on Jeopardy if you really wanted to?

All right, so the other day I'm watching it, and the categories are all like unusually obscure categories. It's like cinema of the Ukraine, seriously? Ancient Latin agriculture, you know, six, seven, eight conjugate? What does that even mean as a category? Just all incredibly hard categories. I think they do that when they know that they've got some really smart people on the panel. So they're all like, I have no idea what these categories even mean, let alone know the answer. Then the sixth and final category in the final double jeopardy round is Bible relationships. I'm thinking at least I can, you know, impress my mom on that category. And that's obviously the one easy category they've got on the board.

So they start going through the jeopardy categories, and all three of these people are like absolute genius Brainiac, Mensa member, off the charts brilliant people. They're going through these things, and all of them know all of the answers to all of the categories. I mean, cinema of the Ukraine? She won the Ukrainian equivalent of the Emmy in 1964. They're all trying to ring in; they all know it somehow, the Latin term for Bulger wheat. They all know it. Yeah, they're just all into this, absolutely. But they are leaving the Bible relationships category completely alone. They're not even touching it because you can tell they're afraid of it. You know, these geniuses, you know everything, they're afraid of that category.

So finally, it is the only column left, and they kind of look at each other, and per Alex Trebek goes, "Jessica, you do have control of the board," and she's like, "I guess Bible relationships for 200, Alex." And it comes up. Here's the clue. See if you know this one: a Fleetwood Mac song title and Abraham's wife. So the correct response is, "Who is Sarah?" Right? I mean, I'm thinking most kids who went to Sunday school would know this. So these Mensa Brainiacs all look at each other like time runs out; none of them know the answer. Okay, next one. Bing. He was Cain's capable brother. The correct response is, "Who is Abel?" None of them know the answer.

I kid you not, they're all like, they knew Ukrainian cinema answers, and they don't know Cain and Abel. So I'm looking at this, you know, how many correct answers they got in the Bible relationships category? You know how many they got? Zero. Absolutely none. And you can tell at the end Alex Trebek's looking at them like, "You people are like morons," because everybody knows the answer. None of them knew it. Now you're going, "Well, big deal. What does that prove?" Here's why I think that's a big deal. Because I think that is indicative of where our entire culture is headed, where even super smart people literally know nothing about the Bible. We are headed into an era of profound, you could call it biblical illiteracy.

Now you might be going, "Well, so what? You know, big deal?" I think it's dangerous. You know why? Follow me. We remain a culture where the Bible is seen as authoritative. In fact, this is just out. This was in a Gallup poll that was released two days ago. Currently, 76% of Americans say they see the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Right now, 76% of Americans say absolutely the Bible is authoritative. It is the inspired Word of God. And yet when they ask them, do you read it? The majority rarely or never actually read the Bible.

And so you're saying, "Well, what are you getting at, Renee? Why is this a problem?" This sets us up as a culture for disaster. Disaster because on the one hand, it sets us up for the worst kind of fundamentalist religious con artist to come along and say, "How many of you believe the Bible to be authoritative Word of God?" 76% of Americans. "Oh, I do." And then he says, "Well, let me tell you what the Bible says. The Bible says to hate those people, and the Bible says to go to war against those people, and the Bible says that if you haven't, plant a seed, so you give me all your money, and then God's gonna make all your wishes come true." And 76% of Americans are going to go, "Is that what the Bible says? Okay, if that's what the Bible says, here you go, Mr. Religious con artist."

And if you don't think that happens, you haven't been watching Sunday morning TV lately, or you haven't been looking at other countries that have their own problems with religious fundamentalism. Exactly because of this equation: everybody thinking their scripture is authoritative and yet not really knowing what it says, and it makes you vulnerable to the worst kind of scripture twisting. Now on the other hand, it also makes you vulnerable if, say, you're a college student or you're ever on the internet, and you're reading some atheist blogger, and your college professor or the atheist blogger says, "How many of you believe the Bible is the authoritative Word of God? It's inspired by God." 76% of Americans raise their hands, and the professor or the blogger goes, "Really? Well, let me just show you how the Bible contradicts itself here and here and here and here. Let me show you some verses where the Bible supports slavery." It does not. "Let me show you the verse right there. Let me show you verses where the Bible's misogynist and against women: that verse, that verse, and that verse. Let me show you verses where the Bible claims to teach this horrible thing." And you go, "Oh my gosh, I never knew the Bible taught that before. I guess I don't believe the Bible anymore."

And you're vulnerable to that kind of scripture twisting. You don't believe that's the case? I hear about it every year from college students who come back and tell me, "Well, my college professor told me that the Bible says all these things, so I'm not a Christian anymore." And you know what? The same exact danger was happening in the very first century of the Christian Church. So I think you and I ought to do something about this, just like Paul was encouraging Timothy to do something about it. Grab your message notes that look like this. Grace is the name of our series in the Bible's book of 2nd Timothy, and if you'll remember the context for this book, it was actually a letter the Apostle Paul was writing, the final letter of his life from prison to Timothy, the young pastor of the church at Ephesus.

And remember last week we talked about how he says there are false teachers creeping in. We saw that he compares these false teachers to magicians in Pharaoh's courts who are always trying to sell you some new magic spell that you got to know to be truly blessed by God. And Paul says, "No, no, you don't have to buy their religious snake oil. You already have God's resource for your deepest needs." And you and I need to know this because if you don't, you are vulnerable. Watch this. Paul says to Timothy, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures." Say those two words out loud with me: Holy Scriptures. Circle those words, underline them. That is what the whole rest of this chapter is about.

Paul is saying, "Timothy, don't get distracted by these con artists with their new revelations and secrets and techniques. Stick to the scriptures." And then Paul just goes on this riff, and he says the Bible is awesome, and here's how it changes your life. This applied to Timothy in the first century. This applies to you and me in the 21st century. My goal today is to get you a little bit more amped and moving just one or two percent more toward incorporating the Bible into your daily life because of the amazing things that it can do for you. Number one, he says the Bible activates my faith. The Bible activates my faith. That's where my faith starts.

Show of hands: anybody here ever heard of GK Chesterton? GK, great writer. He was a Christian, lived about a century ago in England. Just a brilliant mind. But in a newspaper interview, he was asked, "If you were marooned on a desert island and you could only have one book, what would it be?" And shout it out. What do you think his answer was? The Bible? No, it was Thomas's guide to practical shipbuilding. True story. Witty guy. But it's a great point because if you find yourself trapped in a desperate situation, you want to find out, "How do I get home?" If you're in a desperate situation, you wonder, "How do I get saved?" And that's exactly what the Bible tells you.

Verse 15: the holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. How does this happen? Well, there's probably about 900 examples here in this room, but let me just tell you one story. The actor David Suchet plays Inspector Poirot on TV. Show of hands: any Inspector Poirot or Agatha Christie fans? Lots of you, right? Interesting stat: somewhere right now, people are watching David Suchet play Inspector Poirot. That sentence has been true for the last 20 years. At any time of the day or night, somebody somewhere is watching this guy play Inspector Poirot. It's one of the most popular TV shows that's ever been produced. They just finished their final season after more than 20 years in production, and the final season of Inspector Poirot mysteries was watched by over 700 million people worldwide. Quite remarkable.

But David Suchet, the actor who plays him, says he was brought up with no religion at all in his life, even though his family is from a Lithuanian Jewish heritage. But he wasn't raised with anything. But he says, "My whole life I was searching for something." Well, he's up in Seattle one day about 20 years ago, and he's filming the movie Harry and the Hendersons. Show of hands: anybody here ever see Harry and the Hendersons? I'm so sorry, but something good came out of it. Because they're up in Seattle filming this movie, and it's raining, so they can't film, of course, as usual. And he says he was freezing the whole time he was there, so he decides he wants to take a nice long warm bath, and he wants to get in the tub and read something.

But he's already read all the books that he brought with him in his luggage, so he's got nothing to read, and he's got to read something. And guess what he finds? The Gideon Bible stuck in the drawer in the hotel room. And he has never read the Bible before, but he has heard that the book of Romans is a good book to start with in the Bible. So he looks it up, the book of Romans, and this is a guy who's an actor. He's trained; he reads Shakespeare and stuff. So he opens it up to Romans. He says he is riveted, and he can't put it down until he gets to the very end. Somebody with no Christian exposure, and he says, "I knew that Paul was teaching about a way of looking at the world that I had been longing for my whole life." And he ends up investigating the faith. He becomes a follower of Jesus, and check out this quote: "Now my favorite book is the Bible. It's got everything. It led me to Jesus, my Savior and best friend." Isn't that awesome?

For David Suchet, what happened? The Bible activated his faith. But I want you to notice that Paul says the Bible makes you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. You don't accept the Bible as your personal Lord and Savior. The Bible leads you to Jesus. This is a very important distinction. You know, don't worship the Bible. In fact, I want you to look at this. Here's what Jesus says to the Pharisees, who were the religious scholars of his day. They knew the Hebrew Scriptures by heart, and let's read together what he tells them. Let me hear you say this. He says, "You search the scriptures because you believe they give you eternal life. But the scriptures point to me." Jesus is saying the whole Bible, every story, every command, it really all points to me.

And listen, I think this is why some people say, "I tried the Bible; it didn't work." I tried the Bible. I tried to follow all its commands, like that guy who wrote the book Year of Living Biblically. I tried it; it didn't work. Because if you look at the Bible and you think it's all about you and what you've got to do to please God, it's just gonna be a burden. But if you look at the Bible and you realize that it's what Jesus said it was, all the scriptures point to Jesus, then it's freeing. Because you understand the whole Bible tells one story: the story of how God created the world perfectly, but then it was marred by sin. But because God is love, he didn't abandon us. In fact, he came to us as Jesus Christ, and he died on the cross for us to rescue his flock, his stray sheep. If you realize it all points to Jesus Christ, then it's going to absolutely, positively liberate you. That is how it activates my faith.

The second point Paul makes is this: the Bible originates in God. It originates in God, and this was a huge point for Paul to get across. Why? Because in the Greek culture of the time, their religion was all about oracles. What's an oracle? Well, if you wanted to hear from a god, you went to see an oracle. That's what they called their prophets or prophetesses, and ground zero for this was a day or two from Ephesus. It was this place, Delphi. You paid a fee, and a prophetess would go into a trance, and she would kind of be possessed by the gods, and they would tell you what you wanted to know about your future. Like, "Will we have a child? Will it be a boy or girl? If I go into business, will it be successful? If I go to war, will I have victory?" And the oracle would tell you. It was kind of like this. Anybody recognize what this is? What is this? A web? How many of you had a magic 8-ball? How many of you still use one? No, just kidding.

I imagine a ball was something that if you grew up like in the 60s and 70s like me, you know, you kind of shook it like, "Does she like me?" and you open it up, "Don't count on it." You know, really? And you shake it again, "Will I get an A in school?" and it tells you, "I don't believe so." And so, you know, you kind of see what the magic 8-ball's gonna tell you about your future. Religion for the people in ancient Greece at the time of the first century was really all about getting the oracle for telling the future, and this was being imported wholesale into the Christian Church. Prophets and prophetesses were wandering into the church saying, "Yeah, for a fee, I got a pipeline to God, and I can breathe out the words of God for you, just like those oracles at Delphi." And Paul is correcting that, and he's saying, "Timothy, all scripture is God-breathed." And the word Paul uses here in the original Greek, Theonustos, means "God" and "breathed." He's saying the Bible is in a distant second to fresh revelation from some new teacher. You've got God-breathed teaching right there, the Holy Spirit-inspired people who wrote within their own cultures, their own languages, for their own situations, but he inspired a message that's timeless.

Now you might say, "That's fine for people 2,000 years ago, but how can I believe the Bible is inspired by God in the 21st century?" I mean, it might be an ancient book with some fine teaching, but you know, isn't it repressive to women and other minorities? And isn't it male chauvinist? And isn't it full of contradictions? Listen, I dig into this in way more depth in a message that I co-taught with my wife, Laurie, here a couple of years ago. That was the day that Laurie was here in Santa Cruz, and I was in Israel, and we taught the message together on two different continents. I put the URL for this in your notes so you can go to that for more detailed material on this. But let me just speak briefly and personally to this. Here's three of the reasons that I personally look at the Bible and go, "Wow, this is God-breathed." First, it's thematically unified. It's thematically unified. Check this out. The Bible was written over a period of 1,600 years by 40 different authors speaking three different languages on three separate continents, and yet it knits together perfectly and tells this macro story of God coming to rescue us. It's thematically unified to the degree that that alone is enough to make me go, "Wow, inspired." But there's more.

It's also prophetically accurate. There are so many prophecies in the Bible that have been fulfilled, particularly about the Messiah, starting about a thousand years or so before Christ was even born. There were prophecies about how the Messiah would be born, where the Messiah would be born, the kinds of things the Messiah would preach, how the Messiah would die, where the Messiah would be buried—just remarkably detailed prophecies, over 300 of these. And they all came true in Jesus Christ. What would be the odds that I could foretell 300 things about somebody who would live a thousand years from now? They would be so astronomical that you couldn't even write the number down on a piece of paper. I think it takes more faith to believe that those things are all coincidence than to believe that God inspired the Bible, including the prophecies about the Messiah. But there's more. It's archaeologically confirmed. So many details in the Bible have been confirmed by archaeology. Let me just give you one example. The Gospel of Luke says that John the Baptist's ministry started with a guy named Lysanias, who was Tetrarch—that's a kind of ruler—of a place called Abilene. But the skeptics say Luke got it wrong because here's the problem: Lysanias was not Tetrarch. We know who Lysanias was. He wasn't Tetrarch of Abilene; Lysanias had a different title, and he was ruler of a different town, a town called Cowsis, and he didn't even live in the age of John the Baptist. He lived 50 years earlier. So like on every point, Luke got this wrong, and this is one of the popular things to go, "Luke can't be trusted to be a historian on this simple measure."

So how can you believe that the Bible is inspired by God? Well, that was what people said until they found this inscription written during the reign of Caesar Tiberius, the time of John the Baptist. It refers to Lysanias being Tetrarch of Abilene. Turns out there were two Lysaniases: Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene and Lysanias Schlepfer, which is weird, but no, that part is not true. But I gotta tell you, there are hundreds of examples of these. I see Dave Hicks in the front row. He just came back from Israel, where you can walk to archaeological discoveries that confirm stories in the Bible. Hundreds of examples. Now, there have been some questions that haven't been resolved yet, but Dr. Rodney Stark, who's a co-director of a department at Baylor University and a best-selling sociologist—and those two words do not go together very often—he says this: check out this quote, great quote. "The major result of the many unrelenting scholarly attacks on the historical reliability of the New Testament has been to frustrate the attackers because again and again, the scripture has stood up to their challenges." Isn't that awesome?

Now that's the New Testament. What about the Old Testament? A man named Bruce Feiler wrote a New York Times bestseller a couple of years ago called Walking the Bible. Now, Bruce Feiler is not a follower of Jesus Christ; he's just a great author, and he decided this would be a great idea for a book: I'll go to the Bible lands, and I'll literally just walk every place that the Bible happens, and I'll just talk to people. It is a great book. I really reckon it's fascinating. But at one point, he's down in the southern part of Israel, and he talks to Dr. Eliezer Orrin, who's maybe the leading archaeologist in the world. He's at the University of the Negev, and he talks to him and says, "All your discoveries, all your archaeological discoveries, how have they affected your evaluation of the Hebrew Scriptures?" And Dr. Orrin says, "When he started as a young scholar, he wanted to be dismissive of the Bible, but his research has called him to respect the scriptures." And then Bruce Feiler just puts it very bluntly. He says, "Can you give the Old Testament a grade in terms of archaeological accuracy?" And here's Dr. Orrin's response: "A plus plus." These are secular authorities.

So listen, the Bible activates my faith, and I can have confidence that it originates in God. It is trustworthy. And the number three, it stimulates my growth. It stimulates my growth. The rest of verse 16 says it is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness. Now, very quickly, what do those four words mean? Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training? Well, teaching is showing the path to walk on. That's teaching. Rebuking is when God shows me how I got off the path and why I'm in the ditch now. That's rebuking. Correcting is how I get back on the right path for my life, and training is how I stay on the path. Do you get that? That's what those four things are. The word of God is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training. Now, do you notice Paul doesn't say, "And for telling the future?" Paul is trying to get the discussion about what the Bible is for advanced beyond this childish magic 8-ball faith. He's saying what it's about is God growing Christ-like character in you.

And that brings us right to the fourth and final point: it's for liberating my potential. The Bible liberates my potential, and this is so important because only God, your creator, knows your potential fully. You don't know your potential fully. Your parents don't know your potential fully. If you're married, your spouse doesn't know your potential fully. Your friends don't know your full potential for God. Nobody around you, you don't even know your full potential for God. Only God knows the great things of which you are capable when it comes to the good works that you can do. God knows, and God has planted things inside of you that he can activate and mold and develop so you can be the person that God made you to be.

What's one example? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I talked about Nick Vujicic. No arms, no legs, yet he's reached millions with his ministry. I really like this guy, and I love what he says in this interview I'm about to show you. He never would have known his potential, who God made him to be, if not for the Word of God. Watch the screen.

But what was it specifically for you that made you say, "Lord, I'm gonna trust your word because I know it's true. I'm gonna trust you even if I don't know what you have in store for me tomorrow," right? Because there was nothing else I could find. There was nothing else that can give me peace. I knew arms and legs wouldn't give me peace anyway. Arms and legs alone, I needed to know the truth of who I am, why I'm here, and where I'm going when I'm not here. And I haven't found that truth anywhere else but in Jesus Christ. And it was in Jesus Christ where Nick found the strength to do what many thought would be the impossible. It's so hard to be strong when people constantly say, "You're not good enough. You know, go away. We don't want anything to do with you. Nick, you're a nobody. Nick, you can't do this. Nick, you can't do that. Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick." In life, if you don't know the truth, then you can't be free because then you'll believe that the lies are the truth. But once we realize that when we read the Word of God and you know the truth of who you are, I am NOT a man without arms and legs. I'm good. I am a child of God. I am forgiven of my sins. I'm an ambassador of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I'm nothing but a servant of the Most High God. This is not about Nick. It's not about Nick's capacity and capability to become this conqueror. I am nothing. I'm nothing. God, though, lives in me, and I now live in his strength, and whatever Jesus conquered, I conquer. Isn't that fantastic? Do you believe that to be true for you too? Whatever Jesus conquered, you can conquer.

Paul says this in 2nd Timothy 3:17, and I want you to listen to these words of God. The Bible is inspired so that the servant of God may be what? What are the next two words? Thoroughly equipped for what? Every good work. There are amazing good works for you to do, and through the Word of God, through knowing God's Word, the Bible, God can thoroughly equip you, thoroughly liberate your full potential for the kingdom of God.

You know, next weekend is Father's Day, and we're gonna be talking specifically about that. It's gonna be a great service, but I'm very excited about this. We have got an Olympic athlete joining us. Our trainer was an Olympic swimmer. He was a world champion, a world champion. He was a five-time national champion. He's also a great guitarist. He's gonna join us on the worship team, and I'm gonna interview him in the services during the sermon on how God, how his faith in Jesus Christ liberated him to fulfill his potential in life. Don't miss it. It's just gonna be a great weekend. I hope you're here for that.

But I want you to look back over your notes. Look at just four of the things that Paul talks about the Bible can do in your life. You see right now, I hear what you're saying, but I don't understand exactly how that looks in a human being's life. Well, I want to show you Dr. Irene Miranda. She attends here at Twin Lakes Church. She shared her faith story about three years ago here. She's a PhD scientist. She taught evolutionary biology at UC Irvine. She currently works for the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. She travels all over the world researching fisheries to make sure they're sustainable and they show up on that Seafood Watch card. That's her job. So she's brilliant, even though she's very humble. She would rather be called Irene than Dr. Miranda. But until just a few years ago, she was one of those people who just mocked the idea that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And then something changed. I asked her to share her story. She was able to join us live last night, and I want you to watch what she told us.

So some of you will remember this story, but for anyone who hasn't, let it inspire you. I hope it does. Like Renee said, my name is Irene. It's not really Dr. Irene. I'm just a person. And as a young adult, I was an atheist, and I was completely convinced that there was no God. And in fact, that belief in God was a crutch for the weak-minded. And then at 40 years old, I had a crisis. I got divorced, and I began at that time rethinking everything I thought I knew about life. And all that time I had been ridiculing God and the Bible, but clearly my way of doing life wasn't working so well. So I went with a friend to church every weekend for a year, but I would not sing. To me, that was like buying into this, and I just couldn't do it. But without realizing it, that year I was hearing the message of grace, and I hadn't heard it before. So during that time, I started to feel a tug from the Holy Spirit, and it was sweet and inviting and winsome. I think I'm fortunate to feel that I learned this as an adult, what the Holy Spirit feels like, and I wanted to respond. But first, I needed to take my mind along. I just couldn't take that leap without thinking clearly. You know, I'm a scientist, and scientists think critically about information by thinking and examining the source of the information. So that's the Bible.

So I spent a year researching a lot of things about the Bible. A lot of the things that Renee mentioned are astounding. I looked at how authentic is the Bible we have today compared to the early documents, and I found that it was absolutely authentic. What we are reading was written just as it is by the people thousands of years ago who wrote it. In fact, it is the most reliable ancient document that exists. But is it true? I slowly began to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, could the stories in the Bible be true? Could there really be a God? I really didn't think there was, but could there be? Could Jesus have actually risen from the dead, a man who rose from the dead? And I thought, "No way, come on, I'm a biologist. This is ridiculous." And then there's a story about the talking donkey. You guys know that one? So I was having a crisis of faith definitely, and I started to think maybe I really didn't know everything there was to know in the universe. Can you see how arrogant I was? I went on and on like that for months, and finally, and only through God could this happen, I was in Santa Barbara at a conference, and I was alone in my hotel room, and I looked in the drawer and I found a Gideon Bible. And I thought, "Well, maybe this really is God's truth. Maybe it really is." So I read the sinner's prayer in the front pages, and I thought, "This is too flowery," and I put it in my own words. I said, "Jesus, if you're real, I need you." Do you hear the doubt that I had? And God met me there anyway, and that was it. The angels began celebrating, and the next day I felt centered. I couldn't quite even admit to myself what had happened yet, but I could feel it. Then I discovered Christian music, and I started singing. I sang today; I was even in the choir, remember? Yeah. And then I couldn't stop reading the Bible. I mean, I missed classes. I'm supposed to be a good student, right? I would miss classes so I could read more chapters in the Bible, and I became acutely aware of spiritual realities I just never saw. I never knew existed. Our understanding of the Bible comes to us spiritually. Until then, it had been complete nonsense to me. I mean, absolute foolishness. I won't even discuss it. I couldn't take it seriously, and I couldn't understand it. It was like gibberish. And then suddenly, after this happened, the words, they just leapt off the pages as if Jesus himself were speaking to me. And it was so simple and so real, and it had this quirky ring of truth to it. The message of God's love and his provision for us was so obvious. I thought, "How could I have missed this? How could I have missed this?" So now I think, "How did I get so lucky that God chose me?" And I still don't know, but I'll spend eternity thanking him.

Thank you. I love that. I love that. Man, we want so much for the words to leap off the pages right into your life. So how do you get that? How do I get all these benefits? Well, here's the genius answer: Read it. Crack it open and read it. Now I know there's a few obstacles. Some of you are going, "I don't have a Bible." We have free Bibles every week for you to take home for free at the information desk. Another thing you can do is download some great apps like YouVersion. It's free. It not only has the Bible in multiple translations, including modern, easy-to-understand translations, but YouVersion, which is available for Android and iPhones for free, it also has daily Bible reading plans that can help you out. And we offer daily meditations that are linked into the sermon every week; they're on page 3 of your bulletins to help you get into the Word. And we have these little Our Daily Breads that are also available for free at the information desk. They have just little brief daily meditations. Why? Because we want you to experience how the Bible activates your faith and liberates your potential and strengthens you and stimulates your growth. It can happen for you. It can set you free. There's no other book like that book. So get into it.

But I want to give you one bottom line here. When you're getting into the Bible, don't look at the Bible as a way for you to earn brownie points from God. That's how I used to look at it: if I read this verse, even though it's boring and awful, but if I make this sacrifice to read this, then it's like my lucky rabbit's foot. God's got to do something good in my life. No, look at it as a way for God to bless you. It's a channel of his grace to you, and then you'll read it with excitement and joy because it points to the person we're about to remember during communion, Jesus Christ. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, help us to be people of the book. And as we prepare our hearts now for communion, help us to remember that the Bible points to Jesus Christ. The Christians all around the world right now are taking communion together because the bread reminds us of the body of Christ broken for us on the cross, and the cup reminds us of the blood of Christ shed for us on the cross. And so, Lord, even as we get into the Bible, help us not to become distracted by trivia. Somehow, even that's possible. The words Bible and trivia don't seem like they could possibly go together, but it can be. We can get distracted sometimes, Lord, even in our Bible reading. Keep us near the cross, and we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.