Going Deeper

READ: PSALM 63; 1 CORINTHIANS 2:10-12; 1 PETER 2

Do you long to deepen your relationship with God? Does your soul hunger and thirst for Him as David described in Psalm 63? I don’t know about you, but since I trusted Jesus to be my Savior before age five, I’ve known I need to go deeper with God and continually mature in my faith.

Although I’ve been a follower of Christ for over thirty years, I still desire to grow in my faith, study the Word accurately, and allow the Holy Spirit to move His knowledge from my head to my heart. Sometimes, I’m still surprised by the things I don’t yet know, or the times I realize I haven’t had an accurate view of something in Scripture.

Growing up in church, I often heard, “The Bible is God’s love letter to us,” “The Bible is God’s instruction book for our lives,” etc. Recently, I was astounded to learn that I’ve been thinking about things a bit backward: first and foremost, the Bible is a book about God Himself. It dawned on me that we live in such a me-centered culture that we’ve even made the Bible about us instead of about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our three-in-one God.

Beyond this, the Bible is God’s story—with the themes of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration running throughout it. God created the world. Then Adam and Eve sinned, thus the Fall. But through Jesus’s death on the cross for our sins and His resurrection from the grave we can have redemption. And one day when Jesus returns, all will be restored. However, these four themes are not only in Genesis, the Gospels, and Revelation. They’re also woven through all the books and stories in the Bible—we just need to train our eyes to look for them.

Upon learning these things, I decided to read my Bible cover to cover in a new way. Instead of my typical prayer, “God, what do you have to say to me today?” I pray, “God, show me who You are.” I thought I had grasped the depth of God’s heart, understood His love and justice, etc., but I realized I had only scratched the surface. As I read, underlining each name of God and His character traits, He has opened even deeper wells to show me who He is. • Savannah Coleman

• Can you think of a time you realized you had misunderstood something in the Bible? How did God help you understand it better? None of us will ever “arrive,” no matter how much knowledge we obtain about God or how well we utilize that knowledge. There will always be opportunities to dive deeper. So let’s suit up and get our flippers on!

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1-2 (NIV)