Does Bible reading ever feel like homework? When you learn the whole story of the Bible, everything else comes alive.
The post Understanding the Story of the Bible Changes Everything appeared first on Bible Gateway News & Knowledge.
Do you remember sitting in Sunday School as a kid, watching the volunteer teacher place flannel graph cutouts on a board, explaining different Bible stories?
We had Noah’s Ark, Adam and Eve, baby Jesus, Jonah in the whale, Daniel with a smiling lion, story after story, each one teaching us a little something about God. They were really helpful at the moment, wouldn’t you agree?
Then, if you’re like me, as you grew up in Church, you were encouraged to memorize verse after verse, to get the Word buried deep in our hearts. I wasn’t exactly gifted at memorizing, so my mom had to incentivize me with Dairy Queen Blizzards for every verse I got to stick. It was a win-win situation, a pretty sweet deal.
So by the time I was a teenager, I knew a ton of Bible stories and random memory verses. But even with all that knowledge, something still felt disconnected. The Bible was still overwhelming. It was a massive book with tiny words, weird names, and cultural things that I didn’t understand.
But as a Christian I was supposed to fall in love with reading it. Right?
I just didn’t know how. And it wasn’t until my mid-twenties when I hit a low spot in my life (and in my faith) that I reached to the Bible again — but this time for answers.
I joined a Bible training program in Australia where we studied Scripture for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 9 months straight. We read through the Bible five times, and essentially wrote our own commentary on the entirety of Scripture.
That experience changed everything for me. Because for the first time, I realized what I had been missing: the bigger picture.
Yes, I knew stories.
Yes, I memorized verses.
But I was missing the full storyline that tied all of the stories and verses together.
When I finally saw the Bible as one unified narrative — the story of God, His people, and His plan to redeem and restore all things, with Jesus at the center — everything clicked.
Can you relate? Maybe you grew up in Church and had a similar knowledge of Scripture as I did. Maybe you want to read the entire Bible, but it’s a little big and confusing and you don’t know where to begin. I understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been there.
But here’s the thing: once you zoom out and learn the story, it will make everything else come alive. You’ll see the Bible differently. You’ll enjoy reading it more. And you’ll even see how your story fits into God’s story.
Here are three ways understanding the full story of the Bible will change the way you read it forever:
1. You Don’t Just Learn About God — You Fall in Love With Him
As Christians, we can’t approach the Bible the same as we do any other book. We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, meaning that His heart is behind every word written within it. Yes, the Bible is a history book, full of wisdom and inspiring stories, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a revelation of God’s heart. And we would be doing ourselves and Him a major disservice if we only allow our Bible time to build up our knowledge of Scripture, instead of allowing it to make an impact on our hearts.
The story of the Bible reveals a faithful God who is in pursuit of His creation and wants to partner with them in redeeming the world. It’s a love letter and a divine rescue plan that we get to be a part of.
God is not just all-powerful and all-knowing (though He is).
He’s also deeply personal and loving and compassionate and consistent and full of grace.
The God of the Universe is inviting us, mere humans, into a relationship. I think that can be overlooked sometimes, especially if you grew up in the Church, but that’s a major deal. And His Word is the main place we look to understand His heart and fall more in love with Him.
The more you read the story, the more you will trust the Author. You will stop seeing him as a distant God that is detached from our reality, and start seeing Him as the faithful Father that is inviting you into something beautiful.
2. You Start to See Jesus on Every Page
A lot of us spend the majority of our time reading the New Testament, because that’s where Jesus shows up — or so we think. But did you know that he is also the thread through the entire Bible? You can find hints and shadows of Jesus in every single book of the Bible, even thousands of years before he came to earth as an infant. He is the Passover lamb in Exodus, the substitute in Genesis 22, the suffering servant in Isaiah, the fulfillment of the Temple in Exodus.
A few examples:
- Exodus 12: Just as the Israelites were commanded to put the blood of a spotless lamb on their doorposts to protect them from God’s judgment, Jesus is our spotless lamb whose blood saves us from sin and death.
- Genesis 22: Just as Abraham was willing to offer his son as a sacrifice and God provided a ram as a substitute, God offered His son for us with Jesus being our substitute.
- Isaiah 53: Isaiah prophesied 700 years before the crucifixion about a man who would bear our iniquities. At a time when they expected the messiah to only be a political figure like King David, this prophecy wouldn’t have even made sense to them, because why would the messiah be a suffering servant?
- Exodus 25-31: Jesus was the fulfillment of the Temple. He said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days” (John 2:19-21). And now through the Holy Spirit, every Christian is somewhat of a new “temple”, the place where heaven and earth collide.
From Genesis to Revelation, the story is pointing to one name: Jesus.
Reading the Bible from front to back is a great thing, but the first few times we will miss out on so many mysteries. The more you study, the more you dig deep, the more you will realize God’s intentionality with Scripture and be blown away by how He places hidden treasures everywhere, like the thread of Jesus in every book.
3. You Begin to See Where You Are in the Story
Not only is the Bible a story about God’s relationship with humanity, but it also talks about what our role on earth is, how we are now new creations that have been given a task to make disciples and be used to spread the kingdom of God here on earth.
The Bible begins in a Garden and it ends in a Garden City. But right now we are in this in-between period: Jesus already resurrected and yet we are still waiting for his return to finish what he started. That’s where we come into the picture.
We’ve been invited into the restoration of all things. We’ve been given the Holy Spirit, and now we carry the mission of Jesus into our neighborhoods, our jobs, and our families. So what does that look like practically?
We should be loving our neighbors, bringing peace to chaos, displaying forgiveness, enacting justice, showing mercy, providing for the needy, comforting the broken, expecting to be used in miraculous ways. We should be looking at the life of Jesus and doing everything in our regard to be transformed into his likeness.
The more we understand the story, the more it helps us live out our purpose. We were made for such a time as this, and we’ve been given a part to play.
Jesus is our goal. We’ll never get there, but he gives us something to aim for!
So whether you’ve been reading the Bible for years or you’re just picking it up for the first time, here’s my encouragement:
Zoom out and learn the entire storyline of scripture, from beginning to end, because when you understand the story of the Bible as whole, it will change everything about how you read it.
And if you need help, I wrote The Bible, Simplified to walk you through it. It’s 40 short chapters, bringing you through the entire storyline of Scripture, to help build your foundation and see how it all connects.
Once you learn the story, you’ll know how to live the story, too.
Go from feeling lost with the Bible to becoming confident in your faith. Get your copy of Zach’s book, The Bible, Simplified today! Then, take the next step with The Bible, Simplified Study Guide, an easy-to-follow, eight-week program with streaming video to help you learn and live the story of the Bible.
The post Understanding the Story of the Bible Changes Everything appeared first on Bible Gateway News & Knowledge.