The Question That Changes Everything
The heavy cover. The whisper-thin pages. It sits on your nightstand, a silent testament to a spiritual discipline you feel you’re failing. You open it, resolved to connect, but the words just lie there. You’ve heard your whole life that the Bible is a love letter from God, but right now, it feels like an ancient, indecipherable textbook. You know the verse, Hebrews 4:12, the one that promises the Word of God is 'quick, and powerful,' but your honest experience is… quiet. Dusty. Dead. If that is you, if you are wrestling in that silence, I want you to hear me clearly: you are not alone, you have not failed, and you are not too far gone. You might just be starting in the wrong place. You might not have heard the one question Jesus is asking you before you even read the first word.
It’s a question of posture, of motive. Why did you pick it up today? Was it to check a box on your spiritual to-do list? Was it out of a deep sense of guilt, prodded by last Sunday’s sermon? Are you looking for a verse you can use as a weapon in an argument, or a quick-fix promise to soothe your anxiety? These motives aren’t necessarily evil, but they will always leave you empty. They treat the Bible like a vending machine or an instruction manual. But the Bible is not a book of rules or a collection of quotes. It is a meeting place. It is the location in time and space where the living God has promised to reveal Himself, and He is a Person to be known, not a subject to be mastered.
Look at how it happened for the very first disciples. They were following Jesus from a distance, curious, uncertain, drawn by something they couldn't yet name. The Bible says, 'Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye?' This is the most important question for any of us who dare to follow Him. He doesn't ask, 'What do you know?' or 'What do you believe?' He cuts straight to the deepest longing of the heart: 'What are you looking for?' And when they fumble for an answer, asking where He lives, He doesn't give them a map. He gives them an invitation. 'Come and see.' This is the first, and most foundational, of all Bible reading tips. Before you read a single verse, let that question sink into your soul. Are you seeking a thing, or are you seeking Him? And then, listen for His tender invitation not just to read, but to come and see.
Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see.— John 1:38-39, KJV
Permission to Not Understand
One of the heaviest chains that keeps the Word of God bound and lifeless in our lives is the crushing pressure to understand everything we read. We stumble through a genealogy in Chronicles or a complex prophecy in Daniel, and our eyes glaze over. We hear Jesus speak in parables, and like the crowds, we walk away scratching our heads. A familiar voice of shame begins to whisper, 'A ‘real’ Christian would get this. A more spiritual person would feel something.' And so we close the book, feeling more distant from God than when we started, defeated by a test we feel we were supposed to ace.
Can I speak a word of grace and freedom over you today? Consider the men who walked with Jesus every single day. They saw His miracles, heard His sermons, and shared His meals. He took the twelve aside and told them, plainly, about His coming betrayal, His brutal suffering, and His glorious resurrection. He laid out the entire gospel before them. And what was their response? The Bible tells us with stunning honesty, 'And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.' They were hearing the living Word from the mouth of the Word made flesh, and they did not get it. If the disciples who touched the Son of God could be confused, it is okay for you to be confused, too. Your confusion is not a mark of your faithlessness; it is a divine invitation to dependency.
The goal of reading Scripture is not information, but transformation. It is not comprehension, but communion. Sometimes, God allows a text to be hidden from our intellect so that we are forced to seek His face with our hearts. He wants us to lean in, to wrestle, to ask, to be humbled into saying, 'God, I don’t get this, but I trust You. Show me what I need to see.' Reading the Bible is not about mastering a text; it's about being mastered by its Author. So release the pressure. Give yourself permission to not know. Let the mystery draw you deeper into reliance on the Holy Spirit, the one Jesus promised would guide us into all truth. It is far better to close your Bible with more questions for God than to close it with a handful of answers that you figured out on your own.
And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.— Luke 18:34, KJV
The 'Ephphatha' Cry
So if we come to the Bible seeking a Person, and we give ourselves permission to not understand everything, what do we do next? How do we bridge that vast canyon between the dead letters on the page and the living Spirit who inspired them? We learn to pray like the desperate. We stop approaching the Bible like scholars who are dissecting a text and start approaching it like the blind and the deaf who came to Jesus. They didn’t come with their resumes, their strengths, or their abilities. They came with a profound and painful awareness of their own inability.
Remember the man they brought to Jesus in the coasts of Decapolis? He was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. He was locked in a world of silence, unable to clearly hear or be heard. The first thing Jesus did was take him aside, away from the noise and expectations of the multitude. Then, the Bible says, 'And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.' With one word from the Creator, the man’s ears were unplugged and his tongue was loosed. This must become our prayer over the Word of God. This is how to read the Bible in a way that changes everything. Before your eyes scan the first verse, let your spirit cry out, 'Lord, Ephphatha! Open my ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying. Open my eyes to see the wonderful things in Your law. Open my heart to receive Your truth.' It is an admission of our spiritual deafness and a declaration of faith in His power to heal.
We can pair this with the desperate cry of blind Bartimaeus, sitting by the roadside. When he heard that Jesus was passing by, he refused to be silenced by the crowd. He shouted, 'Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.' He knew the only one who could open his eyes was near, and he would not miss his moment. This is our model. The Word of God, as Hebrews 4:12 promises, *is* quick and powerful. The life is already in it. The power is already on the page. Our job is not to generate the power, but to cry out for the mercy to see the power that is already there. 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Let me see You in this chapter today. Ephphatha. Be opened.'
And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.— Mark 7:34, KJV
The Bible is not a book of dead history; it is the living address of the King of Kings. He is not hiding from you in its pages; He is waiting for you there. He is still turning to see you following, and He is still asking with infinite love in His eyes, 'What seek ye?' He is still extending the same invitation He gave to Andrew and John two thousand years ago: 'Come and see.' Don't just read about where He dwelt. Go there. Abide with Him today in His Word. You don't have to understand it all. You just have to come, and trust Him to be the one to say, 'Ephphatha,' opening the Scriptures, and your heart, to His glorious life once more.