The Change that Understanding the Author's Intent Made in My Bible Reading

When you open your Bible to read, what is your goal?

It is a simple question that the Lord dropped into my thoughts several years ago. I’d never really thought about it. I was a church kid. I grew up attending church every Sunday and Wednesday. I attended, and later taught in Vacation Bible Schools. I was a champion memory-verse reciter. I grew up, married, and went on to attend Bible College. I studied scholarly works on church history, theological arguments, and Biblical literary devices. I understood that the Bible was true and that God had set it out as a guide for living.

As I began to really ponder the question that God had posed, however, I found that my answers were lacking. I opened my Bible to prepare lesson plans. I opened it to find a support verse for a point of argument. I opened it when I was hurting to find a nugget of encouragement. I opened it to read about familiar characters when I wanted to remind myself of how I was supposed to act – be LIKE faithful David or Esther; DON’T be like evil Haman or betraying Judas.

When I opened my Bible to read, I was looking for what I had been taught to look for: the formulas and rules for leading a “good Christian life.” My reading was all focused on who I was in relationship to the material. Holy Spirit began to convict me that there was more to His Word than that. I began to ask another question: if I was missing the depth and breadth of the book, if my goals in reading it were too shallow, what was God’s goal in writing it?

It was as though I felt the Spirit inside me say, “YES! Now you’re asking the right questions!” Scripture says that Holy Spirit is given to us to be our teacher; that He will guide us into all truth, taking what is of the Father and the Son and instructing us in it. (John 14 & 16) As I opened my Bible again, starting at the very beginning, I began to read while also asking Holy Spirit to show me God’s goal.

Y’all. It changed everything.

God’s goal as author, as breather-out of words that faithful men would pen and publish, was so very different from what I had been taught. From the very beginning, it wasn’t about keeping me in line. It wasn’t about giving me a leg to stand on in arguments against worldly wisdom. It wasn’t about giving me role models to live up to. It wasn’t about cautioning me against bad behaviour. Those things are in there and are helpful. The humans in the story are characters and have their story arcs. But those characters and settings and plot points in Scripture rest on and flow out of the author’s heart: to help us to know Him.

In the beginning, when God created all that He created, He developed an environment that was suitable for the sustaining of humanity. This earth was designed to support our lives. Our bodies were formed and His breath of life shared with us so that we would walk with Him, be His companions, be known by and know Him fully. That relationship was severed harshly and dramatically when we decided that we couldn’t trust Him and acted in what we thought was our own best interest. Much is stated about what we humans lost that day that sin entered perfection and ruined it. Rarely do we consider what He lost.

He lost communion with the creation that He had built the whole world to sustain. He lost daily walks in the garden, discussing anything and everything. He lost the confidence of His people; where we had trusted, now we doubted. Where once we knew His heart and intentions toward us, now we suspected Him of manipulations or unfair dealings. Our own sense of guilt and shame colored our perception of His actions on our behalf. The peace and beauty of His world was now scarred with thorns and barren places. His heart was broken over His loss. He grieved. He made a plan to restore the prized relationship that He had painstakingly cultivated.

He inspired the writers of Scripture to set down the stories of His interaction with humanity because He could no longer walk in openness with us. Although we were unable to know Him fully and intimately, He didn’t want us wandering around in our misconceptions of who He is. Every single story that I was taught as a hero or villain story – a role model of the faith or a cautionary tale of an evildoer - is also a story that reveals the heart and character of God. Every point that I was handed as a defense against worldly wisdom is also a spiritual principle that teaches how God designed His world, the world He designed for our sustenance not our destruction, to operate.

When I open the Bible now, I ask Holy Spirit to show me Who GOD is in every passage. He wrote this for me to know Him. He is the main character driving all of the action. His relationship to every other character teaches me about my relationship to Himself. His joys and griefs, the things He loves and the things that anger Him, His desire toward me and toward all His people, the actions He has taken in His role as Creator, Sustainer, Judge, Redeemer… all these things are knowable about Him.
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He is not hiding. We are the ones who hid from Him in the garden. He has always desired for us to know Him. The whole story of Scripture is Him literally moving heaven and earth to restore our relationship back to that time when we walked naked and unashamed in His presence. Opening my Bible with that perspective has made it come alive. There is no mere obligation of study, no weighty expectation of imposed will or judgmental condemnation.  Rather, I find the passionate, persistent, insistent writing of the One who knows me best seeking to share all of Himself with me.