You Can Read for Transformation

Perhaps you can relate to D. L. Moody who said he used to read a certain number of chapters in the Bible a day, but if someone asked him two hours later what he had read, he could not have said. When he was a boy he used to hoe corn on a farm and he hoed it so badly in order to get over a lot of ground, that at night he had to put down a stick in the ground to know the next morning where he had stopped. "That," he said, "was somewhat in the same fashion as running through so many chapters every day."

What we receive from the Word depends more upon our intention, attitude, and hunger to gain a fresh word than it does on which portion we read. Reading to receive from God is reflective and prayerful. We are not concerned with how much we read but with our receptivity. We read with the purpose of opening ourselves to how God may be speaking to us through whatever text we are reading.

I love to read commentaries and often have gained helpful information. Yet the most life-changing encounters with the Word have come when I simply allowed God's words to search me, and I pondered them in my heart eager to obey them, to allow them to be who I am.

"He who has ears to hear let him hear," Jesus frequently said. The people probably thought they had been hearing, but Jesus was implying a hearing failure of some sort. He wanted them to do more than just be able to repeat back to Him what He had said. He wanted His words to sink into their spirits so they would obey them.

Dear Jesus, help me to be like the prophet Daniel who "set his mind to gain understanding and humbled himself."

"Anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand!" (Mark 4:9 NLT).