Our Relationship with the Bible
This lecture discusses the importance of a person’s relationship with the Holy Bible, and how this relationship should be based on love, reverence, consistency, and practical application. It explains that the first relationship a person should have with the Holy Bible is to love it and find pleasure and joy in reading it, because it is a continuous message from God addressed to that person. The Holy Bible is not merely a book that we read to fulfill a spiritual obligation, but the Word of God that guides a person throughout life and reveals God’s will to him. Therefore, a person should read it as a personal message from God, seeking what God wants to teach him through it.
Spiritual Message
The lecture emphasizes the necessity of reading the Holy Bible with reverence, accompanied by prayer before reading and asking God for understanding and enlightenment, so that a person can recognize the spiritual message he needs. It also stresses the importance of consistency and perseverance in daily reading, rather than being satisfied with occasional or superficial reading. A person should not be satisfied with the literal wording of the commandment, but should seek its spirit and its divine meaning, guided by the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and His true interpretation of the commandments. True spiritual reading leads to knowing God, and this knowledge increases a person’s love for Him and develops his spiritual life and purity of heart.
Educational Lesson
The lecture explains that studying the Holy Bible should not be limited to theoretical knowledge, but should be transformed into spiritual training and practical living. Every commandment that touches a person’s heart during reading should be something he strives to apply in his life, so that the Gospel becomes visible in his behavior and actions. It also encourages memorizing verses, meditating on them, writing down meaningful verses, and using books of interpretation and meditation to understand the correct meaning. It warns against taking a single verse out of its context, emphasizing the importance of gathering the verses related to a particular subject and understanding their circumstances and the people to whom they were addressed, so that a complete and sound understanding of God’s Word may be formed.
Practical Application
The lecture calls us to make reading the Holy Bible a regular part of daily life and to carry a copy of it for reading during free time instead of allowing our thoughts to become distracted. It also encourages memorizing the Psalms and biblical verses, and examining ourselves continually to recognize how much of God’s Word we have memorized, meditated upon, and applied. It emphasizes that the responsibility of teaching children the Holy Bible, helping them memorize its verses, and explaining them to them belongs to parents, and is not the responsibility of the Church and Sunday School alone. A family can make God’s Word present in the home by displaying biblical verses and changing them regularly until the children memorize them, while using them wisely and lovingly, without provocation or confrontation. When God’s Word becomes part of the heart and life, it protects a person from falling, enlightens his spiritual vision, and gives him wisdom, strength, and the ability to face temptations and answer questions concerning his faith. The ultimate goal is that the Gospel should not remain merely a book before a person, but that the person himself should become a living Gospel, witnessing to Christ through his behavior and actions.
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