Daily With Jesus

For many years I had an interest in understanding the Bible. I remember buying the biggest Bible I could get my hands on. I brought it home and started reading it. But the problem was that the more I read the more confused I became. I never could understand what the problem was. I was already a registered nurse then, so I felt it was not a lack of intelligence, yet my intelligence failed me. This struggle continued for many years. I felt frustrated. I could not understand the Bible. What was my problem? Why couldn’t I understand what I was reading?

First, ‘I’ was trying to understand the Bible. ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I,’ and more ‘I’… I was ignorant! I could not help myself. “But the natural [unbelieving] man does not accept the things [the teachings and revelations] of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness [absurd and illogical] to him; and he is incapable of understanding them because they are spiritually discerned and appreciated, [and he is unqualified to judge spiritual matters]” (1 Cor. 2:14, Amp.). Truly, I was grossly unqualified to understand the Bible. I Knew not the Lord, I was not “born again”, and therefore had not received the grace to access the wisdom, understanding, and revelation of God’s word that can only come from the Holy Spirit.

I had many opportunities to surrender my life to Jesus, but I rejected Him. My biggest excuse for not accepting Him was fear. For whatever reason I feared losing living a life of freedom, freedom to engage in circular activities as I desired. At that time, it made sense to me, but now when I look back, I cannot even figure out what I feared losing. I lacked great understanding. Little did I know that what I was living in the time past was not life but an empty, purposeless life, “…dead in trespasses and sins,” separated from God. That was not a life, that was not freedom, that was indeed bondage to what was oblivious to me.

Many children of God preached Jesus and Him crucified to me. They invited me to surrender my life to Jesus, but I shut the door of my heart foolishly and plugged my ears. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6, KJV). Jesus was calling me. Deep down my very soul, I felt a great emptiness that all the things I held on to that prevented me from saying yes to Jesus could not fill. Ironically, I continued on the failed journey of trying to make sense of the Bible. I did not know that it was my Lord Jesus calling me, tugging and pulling, inviting me to Himself. Jesus says in John 14:6, “…I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” But I was trying to go to the Father without Him. I was trying to go to the father by “I’.

It was not until 2005, that I found myself in brokenness, among other debilitating life challenges I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had come to the end of the road with no other person or place to turn to but the same God I rejected. As I walked through the valley of the shadow of breast cancer verdict, God came and delivered me from hopelessness and eternal death to eternal life by His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus came to my rescue. I finally found a place of permanent healing and safety, Jesus my Lord! I surrendered my life to Him never looked back, and will never. The story of my conversion is rather long but so dear to me. It is my trophy, my testimony forever. Oh Lord, “for with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light” (Psalm 36:9, KJV).

Understanding the Bible is not by power nor might but by the Spirit of God alone. Once I accepted Jesus as my Lord and personal savior, the door of understanding opened. First, I was now able to come to grips with the reality that I was far in my trespass, wretched, and lost. I was a sinner, who needed to be desperately saved. My self-righteousness, worldly desires, and pleasures put a veil over my ability to receive God’s grace. Thank God for Jesus! He never gave up on me. When the light of salvation shone in, God’s gift of understanding by His Spirit ensued. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29, KJV). The power of revelation belongs to God alone Who has chosen to give His revelation to His own. Those who dare take the leap of faith in Christ Jesus shall surely be endowed with the wisdom and understanding that comes only from above.

Jesus was well-known in the gospels for using parables to speak in public places. One unmistakable thing was that He never failed to take His disciples privately and unveil the hidden meanings of the parables. After observing Jesus’ modus operandi, the disciples in their dismay. “…came, and said unto him, why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear” (Matthew 13:10-16, KJV).

How can a seed grow in an unfertile ground and who causes the ground to be fertile? “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed…” We become fertile grounds when we yield to the transforming power of the finished work of Christ on the cross. When we allow Jesus to give us a new heart, not a heart that has waxed gross, earthly, thirsting for sensual pleasures and vain glory, but a heart that dies to the world and turns to the kingdom life availed to us by God’s grace. “But God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us” (Romans 5:8, AMPC). God has first chosen us and made His love available. We have been given the will to choose. Today, I pray we choose Jesus so that we may be made fertile grounds. Jesus says in Revelation 3:20, behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. When the seed which is the word of God as depicted by Jesus in Luke 8 (The Parable of the Sower) is planted in us, the fertile ground, it must germinate and bear fruit. Blessed indeed are those who are granted the eyes to see and ears to hear. In other words, Blessed are those that find the grace to yield to Jesus and receive the power to understand the Word of God bearing fruit in His kingdom.

The disciples answered the call to follow Jesus. They made Him their Lord, savior, and all. Therefore, they earned the right by grace to receive an understanding of the mysteries of God. Jesus interpreted the parables to the disciples being physically present with them. We, Jesus’ followers in our dispensation have the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is already availed to us according to the promise of Jesus in John 14:26, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Today, the same way Jesus pulled His disciples to a private place and expounded the mysteries of the parables and many other truths to them, so also do we receive like grace through the Holy Spirit of God, Who expounds the scriptures and the secret things of God unto us as we continue with Christ in our journey home.

In Acts chapter 8, the Ethiopian eunuch sought knowledge of the word of God but was incapable of understanding it. To God’s glory, the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip and sent him to Gaza where he met “…an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship”(Acts 8:27, KJV). At the command of Spirit, Philip drew near to the Eunuch and heard him reading the book of Isaiah. He asked him if he understood what he read and the eunuch answered saying, “…How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him” (Acts 8:31). He further asked Philip to expound the scripture to him. “Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus (35). At this point, the eunuch believed and accepted Jesus as His Lord. Consumed by the Spirit, the eunuch asked for more. He was not stopping at the confession of Christ alone. He wanted everything about Jesus, hence he asked to be baptized. Phillip baptized him “…and he went away rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). Hallelujah!

We may have the desire to know the Word, however, without the owner of the Word granting us a pass to that knowledge through the power of the Holy Spirit, we remain as the eunuch, or should I say, we remain as me, Angelina-Nkechi Chukwuocha before Christ, incapable of understanding what I read.  

Understanding the scripture is not simply intellectual but rather divine. There is no true understanding without Jesus Christ. “…There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries…” (Dan. 2:28, KJV). We must therefore be in alignment with the “…revealer of secrets” (Dan. 2:47, KJV).”  Understanding the Bible has its prerequisites. The foremost is the attainment of the status of born again; the receipt of the gift of salvation through faith alone in Christ Jesus. This opens the door to the entrance of the Holy Spirit in whose power lies the revelation of God’s word.  It is indisputable that “…interpretations belong to God?” (Gen. 40:8). We must align ourselves with God so we may receive immeasurable grace and abundance of His power to live a life according to His will for us through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. It is only then that we can start our journey as true Bible scholars empowered to “study to shew (ourselves) approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim.2:15, KJV).

My dear friends, upon reading this short message today, I pray that the Lord has ministered to you concerning surrendering your lives to Him. Our desires should never be only about reading and understanding the Bible, but for us to have the ultimate goal of becoming transformed by the very word we read. “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:23-25, KJV).

Our ultimate goal of studying the Bible is transformation. As we study the Bible and are made free by the truth of the scriptures (John 8:32) our minds are renewed from the lies and deceits of our enemy, satan. We must apply and live out what we learn and are convicted about by the Holy Spirit. We must in our daily living turning our backs on worldly pleasures and desires as we conform to a new Kingdom life in Christ Jesus. “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2, KJV). This is the will of God for us, to disentangle us from the world to Himself through His word. Hence, He gave us Jesus and through Him, we are able through faith to become the children of the kingdom set apart to the glory of God. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). There is a better life, there is hope, peace, joy, contentment in accepting and serving the Lord. Please, say yes to Jesus. Our sincere yes to the call of salvation is the beginning of understanding the Bible.

Believe in your heart that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, whom the Father, God sent to come and die for our sins. He suffered, shed His blood for the remission of our sins, died and rose on the third day. He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God. He will return to take us with Him to our eternal home where we shall reign forever with Him. Confess Him as your Lord and Savior. Do not fear as I did, but believe He is the Son of God who came and died for your sins and the sins of the whole world. After accepting Jesus, ensure you belong to a local church that will help you grow in your new journey with Christ. Now the journey of understanding the Bible has just begun!