How I Learned the Bible

Excerpt from a sermon on November 18, 2009.

Years ago, when one of my students in the Old Testament at the community college asked me, “How in the world did you get to know the Bible as well as you do?”, I couldn’t give her an answer. Such a question had never been asked of me before. I went home and thought about it during the week. Finally it dawned on me how it was that I came to know the Bible, and that was simply that I believed it. I just believed it. Every time in my Bible study that I came across something in the law of God in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy, or anywhere in the Bible, that I would not have said, or came across a judgment of God that I wouldn’t have made, or found anything that was different from how I felt – I felt shame and fear, and repented. I believed God, and I saw what He thought, I saw what I needed to think. I discovered what I needed to feel in order to be true and right. I learned the Bible by changing my thoughts every time I found a place where God’s way of thinking was different from mine, where His thoughts were not my thoughts and His ways were not my ways. I confessed to Him, “I’m wrong, God. I’m blind. Thank you for giving me a glimpse into your mind.” I rearranged me to accommodate Him.

That is how I learned the Bible. I confessed that it was right and I was wrong every time there was a difference between it and me.