Sitting here this morning, I was looking around at the library in my office. There are shelves full of books on theology. There are books on hermeneutics, dictionaries, concordances, lexicons, commentaries, and more Bible translations than you can shake the metaphorical stick at. There are books on church history, musicology, eschatology (end times) spiritual warfare, prayer and more. There are aids for daily Christian living like prayer books and devotionals. There are biographies of Jesus, the disciples and various Christians throughout the ages. There are cd-ROMs with more Bible related topics than many seminaries held at one time.

All of these are aids to help me understand the Word of God more. There are several ironies in that fact:

1) If Holy Spirit isn't helping, no amount of "research" and reading will help me understand the Bible

2) The Bible can be read and understood on its own. Certainly all the books help at times with a deeper understanding of the subtleties, intricacies and with gaining valuable background knowledge to see the picture more clearly but we don't need them.

3) It's easy to get sidetracked into reading about the Bible rather than reading the Bible itself.

4)The entire library doesn’t have all the answers.

The truth of the matter is that you don't need a big library or formal training to understand the Bible. Certainly there are parts that scholars have spent their entire careers on trying to understand and there are some areas where people will come to differing conclusions.

It doesn't take a doctorate in theology or years of seminary training to get the gist of the Bible.

Here's my summary

• God is good.

• He is all powerful, all knowing and present everywhere.

• God is in control.

• God created us all.

• God loves us.

• God gave us choices.

• Choices have consequences.

• Adam and Eve made the first bad choice.

• We all still make bad choices.

• Some choose to accept God and others reject Him.

• Jesus came and died on the cross as payment for our mistakes.

• If we accept Jesus we are forgiven our sins, get a new start in life and will spend eternity with Father.

• If we reject Him the price is eternal separation from God with no forgiveness.

• "Good" people and "Nice" people without Christ go to hell just like "Bad" people who don't have Christ. "Bad" people with Christ go to heaven along with the "Good" people and "Nice" people who have Christ. God's yardstick is simple, Accept me and be saved. Reject me and be lost.

• Our eternal destiny doesn't depend on how good or bad we are. None of us is good enough or nice enough to earn their way into heaven.

• Life with God beats life without Him hands down.

• God is greater than Satan and good triumphs over evil.

I know that summary is over simplistic in some ways but it truly captures the essence of the Bible. If we know no more than that, we have all the information we need to make the decision that impacts us for all time.

Even children get the message. Sometimes as adults we make it way harder than it needs to be. Perhaps that's why Christ commended the children and praised the Father for their faith.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:1-4 NIV

We're not called to a childish faith. We're called to a childlike faith. A child learns that he/she can trust then trusts even when they don't understand. That's the way we're called to trust God. We learn that He can be trusted then we trust Him even when we don't understand.

We're not called to ignore the hard parts of the Bible. We're not called to throw away our discernment and our intellect. We're simply called to trust.

I know what life is like without Christ and I know what is like with Him. Having Him in my life beats not having Him hands down. I'll stick with trusting Him.

I won't throw away my library. I'll keep searching and studying and working at knowing Him more, letting Holy Spirit guide me in the process, but I already know the most important thing: Jesus loves you and I enough to have died so that we can be reconciled to God.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." John 3:16-21 NIV

Until next time, keep on working on getting to know God better, but rejoice that the core of the truth is so simple that even a child can understand it.

Be blessed.

Hallelu Yah (Praise God)!

Kevin

http://gleaningsfromtheword.com/

Once you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are cared for.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7 NIV

Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant. You have value in the eyes of God so great that it was worth dying for. You are a blessing to the world.

Did you know God's forgiveness and unconditional love is available for anyone who asks?

If you haven't made the decision to accept Christ as Lord