Bible Gateway Blog

This is the second lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

I know that early in life I thought the Bible was a good guide to living, and protection from danger like the guardrails along a dangerous road. But that is really a stunted view of what Scripture has to offer. Living the Bible means the essential qualities of our lives are shaped by the truth of God. It is about life itself.

Living the Bible, in other words, is about the Bible—the word of God—living in us. It is a living word, because it contains life and prompts life.

As Psalm 1 puts it, the person who delights in God’s Word is “like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” But this does not happen automatically. It is all too easy for us to read the word of God with no effect whatsoever if we are just looking at the Bible as a pile of facts. Or maybe we long for a time when Scripture impacted us deeply, but somehow that is less the case now and we wonder why. We all know people who need a spark of spiritual life, or they need the protection of the truth of God’s Word, but they look down upon the Bible. It is almost like they think the Bible is trying to take something away from them, rather than giving them life.

One day Jesus explained to his disciples why some people receive the message of the kingdom of God and others do not, and he used a comparison from the natural world, as he often did. A sower goes out to plant a crop, casting seed this way and that. Some of the seed lands on the hard-packed path the sower is walking on, some falls into soil that is pretty thin because of rocks and stones, some of the seed falls among wild plants like thorn bushes, and some actually lands in good, fertile soil where it has a chance to sprout, grow, and produce. Jesus then explains the meaning of his parable, point by point.

“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:18-23)

Jesus’ disciples must have wondered why some people heard “the message of the kingdom” and accepted it, but many did not.

This is assumed in the parable: the seed is good. It has all the potential for life and fruitfulness. The variable in the parable is the soils. The variable is our receptiveness to God’s words.

When we do not let God’s messages in, like a hard surface off which seeds will bounce (the path), absolutely nothing will happen. In fact, a hard and stubborn heart is exactly what the evil one wants.

When we listen to the word of God slightly, and let it penetrate in only a shallow way (the rocky ground), the effects are superficial and temporary.

“The worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth” (the thorns) is a story told many times over. Someone wants to have a living faith in God, and may even enjoy life for a little while, but it is short-lived against the competition of worries and materialism. We see it in celebrity believers who speak about faith for a while, but then it fades away. Ordinary people experience it all the time. It is what happens when we spend large amounts of time accumulating more material goods. We are free to do that. But then we’ll have chosen one master over another.

And then there is the good soil. In times past when my wife and I planted a garden in the spring, the first task was soil preparation. Do it well, with rich soil, some peat moss for aeration, and a bit of natural fertilizer, mix it all together, and you can scoop up handfuls of rich-smelling soil. You know the seed is going to love that soil.

So living the Bible is an organic process. It is about a living word deeply taking root, and eventually we are amazed at the harvest. This will not happen if we view the Bible as merely a book of rules.

Some self-examination is in order here. Are we ready to receive the word of God like good soil? Or do things like our worry and financial stress compete with the truth of God? Are we letting the word of God develop deep roots, or are we being shallow with it? And are we guarding against hard hearts which won’t receive the truth of God at all?

Prayer: Lord, make our hearts and minds open to the implanting of the seed of your word.

[If you believe this series will be helpful, this is the perfect time to forward this to a friend, a group, or a congregation, and tell them they too may sign up for the weekly emails here]

Mel Lawrenz (@MelLawrenz) trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s minister at large. He has a PhD in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel is the author of 18 books, including How to Understand the Bible—A Simple Guide and Spiritual Influence: the Hidden Power Behind Leadership (Zondervan, 2012). See more of Mel’s writing at WordWay.

By Candace Payne (a.k.a. Chewbacca Mom)

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
— Ephesians 4:22-24

Why did I tell myself I couldn’t run?

It was a simple question. But it was an act of resistance, challenging my tendency to count myself out before I had even tried. That’s the power of why.

Why had I told myself I wasn’t a runner? It was more than facing rejection or comparing my lack of skill to the junior-high track star. I could see that I had two working legs, breath in my lungs, and that running was no threat to my health. The reason I started lying to myself was rooted much deeper, and this question led to questioning everything on my list. To uncover the answers, I needed time alone with my thoughts—which I got as I walked each morning. I had decided I was going to walk often and run (even if it was only in 15-second sprints) every day.

Each day I would lace up my orange running shoes and leave the front porch of my home feeling a calm and peace that I had tried to gain in my thoughts for years. It’s as if every step I took was stomping out tiny remnants of campfires of deceptions I had long believed. As a person who earnestly intends to grow my relationship with God, I would use this time to pray, talking with my God about my list (of lies and cant’s) and recalling his words found in the Bible. For every single lie on my list, Scripture countered with a truth. And praying no longer felt as though I was saying words that would hit a short brick ceiling above me. Talking to and listening to that small voice within began to cross out the list of lies one by one. I began feeling such a freedom while walking and running that I didn’t want to miss a single day.

That was easy enough before the Chewbacca Mom video went viral. In its aftermath, however, the interviews and travel made it a nightmare to find extra time and places to walk. But I was determined. The walking and running were so essential to honing a new skill of calming my mind and had become such an important routine, I made it a priority no matter where I was or what I was doing. So much so that I found myself running across a grassy knoll atop the Facebook headquarters in California. Yes, you read that right.

The media and press whirlwind was overwhelming, to say the least. Imagine the pressure of never doing interviews or being on live television before, and now the entire world seemed to know your name and wanted you to retell your experience. How would you deal with the overnight success? I didn’t have a game plan. I had, however, established a way to center my thoughts. And I knew if I was to keep my head in the midst of the chaos, I was going to make every effort to keep that routine.

A few days after I utilized Facebook’s live video platform and became the record holder for most views, I was invited to tour their company headquarters. As I walked through the elaborate campus, two thoughts went back and forth in my mind. The first was amazement at the beauty of the place. Y’all. There’s a woodshop (what they make other than keychains and the super sweet plaque they presented me with upon arrival is still a mystery), an incredible restaurant where the whole community dines as though it’s the local hot spot, and a park on the roof. I didn’t want to miss a single moment of the wonder in each turn, stairwell, and hallway.

However, my other thought was beginning to stifle me and give me cold sweats. I kept repeating to myself, “Who am I? What in the world am I doing here?” As I listened half-intently to the description of how they built this amazing rooftop park, I became inundated with a sense of unworthiness, the same feeling that I was being laughed at that I felt during homecoming week in college. I told myself to shake that garbage from my thoughts. (In my mind, I had Jenny from Forrest Gump yelling over the voice of my tour guide, “Run, Forrest, run!”)

And then I abruptly interrupted this sweet and tender-voiced millennial. “Hey! I have an idea. Have you ever just run the length of this knoll and back?”

Unmistakably caught off guard from what felt like her scripted tour, she said, “Why do you ask? You wanna do it? You wanna run?”

“Yeah. I do. I think I’m gonna run over there and run right back. Want to join me?”

She took off her high heels, lay them in the grass, and we took off running together. In that four minutes, I recentered. I recalibrated. I embraced and owned those sweat beads running down my forehead while with a group of dashingly thin and beautiful people. As we turned a corner atop the roof, I asked for a few minutes to catch my breath and be alone. I sat in a chair and overlooked miles upon miles of the most gorgeous landscape you can imagine—sparkling water, green treetops, cityscape, and more. It was a clear, blue day and nothing was impeding my view. I had gone from my living room to the top of the world.

I sat there and prayed for a few minutes—words that, to this day, I don’t remember. However, I do remember the thought that came to mind as I lifted my eyes to the horizon one more time before rejoining the patient group waiting to escort Chewbacca Mom. I thought: I’m sitting on top of a building that houses some of the most creative minds and concepts in the whole world. As a matter of fact, their motivation is to connect the entire world. They have seemingly unlimited resources and can do the most incredible Willy Wonka-style imaginings to their headquarters. Now, if that’s what Facebook can do, what more could a God with unlimited resources do with little ole me? I suddenly felt a charge that I was given grace to connect this world in ways beyond my inherent capabilities. I knew at that moment that I had been given the opportunity not just to share joy but to empower people to live joy-filled lives. For some reason, I felt as though I only heard that acutely because I was obedient to answer the internal call to run . . . to embrace my new identity as a runner. And now I understood that it was both a figurative and a literal title.

Currently, I am on a quest to abolish the list of can’ts I have believed about myself. One common obstacle consistently rears its ugly head when I consider changing these thoughts. It’s this hideous, offensive word that accompanies my goals. What word, you ask? Should. I cannot tell you how many times I shame myself or my past or my present struggles with that cuss word. Yes, it indeed has become a cuss word to me.

Here’s a small example. I will look in my past with regret on how I allowed myself to become so overweight or lazy or careless with my health. It’s in those musings that I hear that I should have done better. I should have been more proactive, should have made better choices in what I ate and my level of physical activity. Over the years, I’ve heard this pushy inner voice say I should do Tae Bo, Zumba, and Ab Rocking, and buy everything that Suzanne Somers sells on late-night shopping channels.

In my present struggles, I am still tempted to embrace counterfeit joy over authentic joy. Yes, I know. The person who shared four minutes of straight-up joy with millions struggles daily with maintaining authentic joy. It’s so easy to hear that little temptation that says I should be happier on days I wake up in a foul mood. But since shutting up the shoulds, nothing within me feels pressure to maintain this false platform, because the moment the door was opened to me was one of raw, authentic, and defiant joy. That doesn’t mean I won’t face the decision to answer Should’s call to make do with less just because of the people watching. Every time I hear I should do something outside of the call to be authentic, I know it is an assault on the progress I’m currently making in uncovering what a life full of joy looks like.

That tiny word, should, tries desperately to lay claim on my future as well. It divides paths that would otherwise be clear and narrow. It pushes like a bully to work and perform and hold tight to something I have to pour all my power and effort into to maintain.

If you’re ever going to break up with the list of lies you possess about yourself, it’s not only time, but vital to do so. Today this is my invitation to you: Shut the should up! Come on; somebody needs to read that again. Shut the SHOULD up!

There’s beauty in living each and every moment knowing that you can take any path you choose and find each step that is authentic to your story. I’m not telling you to embrace some crazy thinking where you do only what pleases yourself, or that you now have a free pass to live life without a moral compass. Where there is injustice toward others or even yourself, take a stand. But please don’t stand just to earn the applause and fleeting popularity of a crowd. Live authentically with the grace to know risks are where bridges of joy are forged over many waters of disappointments, regrets, failures, and lists of can’ts. Loving others and living brightly as a light to a hopeless and hurting world is possible because you are enough—even if you’re a work in progress. Authentic and defiant joy embraces the fact that it is more than okay but absolutely necessary to quit should-ing yourself.

So, go ahead. Make your list of lies. Pick just one small lie you’ve believed far too long about yourself. Decide to replace that lie by doing the opposite of the core belief that has held you back. Then do a gutsy thing and tell a friend—name the lie you’ve been believing and the truth you want to live instead. Have your friend hold you accountable and support you when you feel the desire to embrace the negative.

Be a full-on rebel and prove your lying list wrong! Tackle as many as you can, one-by-one, every single day. When it gets tough, don’t be surprised. It means you’re close to a breakthrough. Keep at it and don’t give up!

Shut the shoulds up! Run, Forrest, run! Do what you were made to do. True joy waits on the other side of every small victory.

________

Taken from Laugh It Up! Embrace Freedom And Experience Defiant Joy by Candace Payne. Click here to learn more about this title.

The world knows Candace Payne as “Chewbacca Mom,” the wife and mother of two from Dallas who captured the hearts of nearly 200 million people around the world with nothing but a toy Chewbacca mask, a smart phone, and infectious laughter.

Candace’s viral moment of simple joy became Facebook Live’s top video. But what the video doesn’t show is Candace’s storied journey of daunting obstacles on the way to the joy-filled life—extreme poverty, past trauma, and struggles with self-worth.

Laugh It Up! tells the rest of the story behind the woman in the mask. Like most of us, Candace has often felt overlooked, undervalued, and insignificant. But she has also discovered the secrets to unshakable joy that no circumstance can take away, and Laugh It Up! will help you discover and experience the same.

Join Candace to discover the gift God has given us all to experience life to the fullest. All you need to do is answer “yes” when joy, whom Candace personifies as a friend, calls you to come and play.

Do you feel tempted to give up on your dreams? Joy stays the course.
Do your knees knock when thinking about the future? Joy hopes for what can be.
Do you feel unseen and unnoticed? Joy is content whether backstage or center stage.
Do you feel crushed under the weight of regret? Joy loves you enough to weep with you, but also enough to help you move on.

When life punches you in the gut, it can be difficult to muster a smile—much less a laugh. But with humor and power, wit and wisdom, Candace lights the way forward to a life that is free indeed.

Candace Payne is a viral sensation whose Facebook Live video of trying on a Chewbacca Mask became the most-viewed Facebook Live video to date (165+ million views). She has been featured in more than 3,000 media outlets and has interviewed with major media such as Good Morning America, The Late Late Show with James Corden, The New York Times, PEOPLE and Cosmopolitan. Candace recently launched a video series with TLCme and her first book will release in the fall of 2017. Candace lives in Texas with her husband, two children, and an ornery pug. Connect with Candace online at CandacePayne.me.

What are the complicated and unintended legacies of Martin Luther and the epochal 500-year-old movement known as the Reformation that continue to shape the world today? How did Luther’s earnest questioning lead to the rise of competing churches, political conflicts, social upheavals, and moral relativism?

Bible Gateway interviewed Brad S. Gregory about his book, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World (HarperOne, 2017).

[See the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Authority Of Scripture: An Interview with Matthew Barrett]

[See the Reformation Studies section in the Bible Gateway Store]

Describe the person of Martin Luther and what his intentions were when he published his 95 Theses in October 1517.

Brad S. Gregory: In the fall of 1517 Luther was to all appearances a strongly committed, deeply devout, pastorally engaged, and clearly successful Augustinian friar, university professor, preacher, and administrator in Wittenberg, a small and forgettable central German town. He had been a Catholic priest and a member of his religious order for more than ten years. Interiorly, however, his relentless self-examination made him despair of God’s love and forgiveness.

The principal intentions behind the 95 Theses were pastoral: Luther was concerned that ordinary laypeople were being misled into thinking that Christian life was easier than it was because the indulgences they were buying near Wittenberg were being misrepresented and insufficiently explained. Out of concern that laypeople’s religious lives were being damaged, Luther wrote a letter to the most powerful churchman in Germany, Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, on October 31, 1517, which included the 95 Theses.

[See the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Reformation Study Bible: An Interview with Dr. R.C. Sproul]

Why do you portray Luther as a reluctant rebel?

Brad S. Gregory: Luther didn’t set out in late 1517 to reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, to rail against the pope, to reject so many Christian teachings and practices in which he had himself participated for decades, still less to divide Latin Christendom or start his own church. He came to reject the authority of the Roman Church under the pope’s leadership by 1521 because his evolving views about grace, faith, and Christian experience, based on his interpretation of the Bible, were condemned by other theologians, university faculties of theology, and Pope Leo X as outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. This came about through an unanticipated, dramatic series of interactions in print and in person between himself and his opponents. But it’s not what Luther was aiming for.

That Luther came to denounce as the Antichrist the office he had regarded as the Vicar of Christ must have been in many ways painful and shocking, even as it was coupled with his own growing conviction about having understood the correct meaning of God’s Word.

Why were Luther’s 95 Theses considered so dangerous?

Brad S. Gregory: The most dangerous aspect of the 95 Theses—which were written in technical, scholastic Latin and not at all a clarion call to the laity—was their implicit challenge to papal authority. This was embedded in several of Luther’s theses. He was presuming to say what the pope could and couldn’t do in matters of Christian doctrine and practice; in effect implying that he was the arbiter of Christian truth. A number of his fellow theologians saw this and reacted critically to it, which started a back-and-forth process that also helped Luther develop his own theology between late 1517 and his major treatises of 1520. For the public spread of his ideas, Luther’s pamphlets and sermons, published in German starting in March 1518, were far more influential than the 95 Theses.

Describe the violence fomented by religious differences in the Reformation era.

Brad S. Gregory: The religious conflicts of the Reformation era, the period from around 1520 to 1650, were never simply and only about religion, because religion during this era as in the Middle Ages that preceded it, informed and was meant to inform every domain of life. Violence involving religion and touching other areas of life took many forms: from the Protestant destruction of Catholic religious art and objects in iconoclasm, to Catholic executions of Protestants who refused to renounce their views, to widespread popular uprisings such as the German Peasants’ War of 1524-25, to major destructive conflicts such as the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years’ War. Not all violence in the era was Catholic versus Protestant, either: the English Civil Wars of the 1640s pitted different sorts of Protestants against each other.

All told, the major religio-political conflicts of the era had a huge impact on the subsequent, gradual, and unintended secularization of the Western world.

How did the Reformation’s emphasis on sola scriptura contribute to competing and contentious claims about the Bible?

Brad S. Gregory: Luther’s bedrock principle that the Bible alone is a self-sufficient basis for Christian faith and life proved the be both the powerful inspiration for and the fatal problem of the Protestant Reformation. The divisive disagreements about what Christian truth is, based on different interpretations of Scripture, did not emerge gradually, after Luther’s movement was up and running; they accompany the Reformation from the very start, certainly no later than early 1522, when Luther returns to Wittenberg from the Wartburg Castle and denounces Karlstadt. This is only one example among many: already in the 1520s, in a host of different ways, those who agreed with Luther that Scripture alone should be the criterion for determining Christian doctrine disagreed among themselves about how Scripture should be understood—on the sacraments, faith and works, ministry, ecclesiology, political life, and more. Their communities divided accordingly, without any shared means of determining how disagreements should be resolved; a feature obvious throughout the history of Protestantism down to the present. And because religion in the 16th century was interconnected with everything else, these disagreements affected everything else: they were socially, politically, and culturally divisive.

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Rebel in the Ranks: How Martin Luther’s Reformation Changed Much More Than the Church]

How did the Reformation unintentionally secularize Europe?

Brad S. Gregory: The processes of secularization that followed in the wake of the Reformation continue to work themselves out in complicated ways, not only in Europe but also in North America. To make a very long and complex story short, the success of the Reformation combined with the persistence and renewal of Roman Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries made Christianity into an enduring, disruptive problem in new ways, layered on top of problems that already affected late medieval Christianity.

Because religion was connected with everything else, everything else was also affected. The eventual solution was to disconnect religion from everything else, which went together with redefining “religion” as something that could and should be separated from politics, economics, and public life, even as everyone was allowed to believe whatever they wanted to in their religious lives.

Redefining religion so as to separate it from the rest of life, making it a matter of individual preference, and politically protecting it as a matter of belief and worship all contributed to secularization understood as the diminished presence of religion in shared, public life.

What effect did the Reformation have on the political thinking of America’s founding fathers?

Brad S. Gregory: The American founding fathers, like many interpreters since, tended to draw a connection between the Reformation as the dawn of modern liberation and individual religious freedom, even though Martin Luther, John Calvin, and all the other major Protestant reformers of the 16th century opposed such notions and would’ve been appalled by the political protection of individual religious preference that’s enshrined in the founding documents of the United States. In American history, freedom of religion has provided a framework for people who believe different things about matters of faith to coexist in relative tranquility; the same framework has allowed for the political protection of unbelief, and so has unintentionally contributed to secularization.

Why does the Reformation, something that happened 500 years ago, still matter today?

Brad S. Gregory: We’re still living with the mostly unintended effects of the Reformation—above all the consequences of its concrete conflicts and doctrinal disagreements—in the early 21st century. The modern Western world is in many ways a sustained attempt to deal with the unintended and unwanted problems related to the disruptive fracturing of Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries; from modern philosophy and the Enlightenment as efforts to ground morality and politics in reason without reference to religion, to modern capitalism and consumerism as efforts to get everyone on board with the same acquisitive program regardless of their religious views. We can’t understand ourselves or our world in 2017—or its increasingly obvious and grave problems, and just how deeply rooted they are—unless we understand how much they owe to attempts to deal with the problems derived from what started 500 years ago, in 1517.

How do you want your book to influence its readers?

Brad S. Gregory: I’d like readers of my book to gain a greater appreciation for the ways that the present is the product of the past: not just the recent past, since the economic collapse of 2008, or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or the end of World War II in 1945, but also of the much more distant past, and how so much that they take for granted—about the character of modern political life, the never-ending pursuit of more and better stuff, the high value placed on self-determination and autonomy, and countless things more—cannot be understood apart from historical processes that were set in motion by the religious disagreements and conflicts of the Reformation era. Most Americans are shockingly ignorant when it comes to history, which means they’re shockingly ignorant about the character of present that is the product of that history. With Rebel in the Ranks I’d like to contribute in some small way to changing that.

Bio: Brad S. Gregory is Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2003, and where he is also the Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. From 1996-2003 he taught at Stanford University, where he received early tenure in 2001. He specializes in the history of Christianity in Europe during the Reformation era and on the long-term influence of the Reformation era on the modern world. He has given invited lectures at many of the most prestigious universities in North America, as well as in England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Israel, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. Before teaching at Stanford, he earned his PhD in history at Princeton University and was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows; he also has two degrees in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. His first book, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Harvard, 1999) received six book awards. Professor Gregory was the recipient of two teaching awards at Stanford and has received three more at Notre Dame. In 2005, he was named the inaugural winner of the first annual Hiett Prize in the Humanities, a $50,000 award from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture given to the outstanding mid-career humanities scholar in the United States. He’s the author of Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World (HarperOne, 2017) and The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Belknap, 2012), which received two book awards.

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“Every choice we make, big or small, points us down a particular life path,” writes Chip Gaines, the funny and talented co-star of the popular TV show, Fixer Upper and author of the new book, Capital Gaines: The Smart Things I’ve Learned by Doing Stupid Stuff (Thomas Nelson, 2017). Have you considered, today, what choices God has prepared you to make—what risks he’s preparing you to take to succeed in life?

Throughout their career and marriage, Chip and Joanna Gaines have used their gifts to bring joy and hope to others, and they’ve taken some huge risks while doing it!

In the new 5-day free devotional 5 Days / 5 Ways to Step Out In Faith, see how you can benefit by getting a close look at some of the hardest life lessons Chip Gaines has learned throughout his life. “Vocation is a powerful thing. Don’t let it just happen to you. Chase after it, even if right now “chasing” feels a lot like limping.”

Be inspired to step out in faith! The most important step is taking the first one. Sign up right now!

A “dream” is how Crossway’s executive vice-president of creative, Josh Dennis, describes the publisher’s newest edition of the Bible in the English Standard Version (ESV) translation, the ESV Illuminated Bible, Art Journaling Edition (Crossway, 2017). The elaborately detailed work, which features 500 illustrations, is, as Dennis puts it, an edition created to “highlight the beauty of the Scriptures themselves and invite readers in.”

[Browse adult coloring books and Bibles and Bibles for journaling in the Bible Gateway Store]

On shelves October 31 and available in four cover designs—green hardcover, navy cloth over board, burgundy TruTone, and black top-grain leather—the ESV Illuminated Bible is not the publisher’s first foray into illumination, an ancient practice of beautifying holy works to help explain and ultimately preserve their messages. In 2011 Crossway released an illuminated edition of the four Gospels. This edition, however, is the publisher’s first illuminated treatment of the entire Bible.

[Read about Bible journaling in the Scripture Engagement section on Bible Gateway]

Dana Tanamachi, the Seattle-based hand letterer who did the lettering and design for the book, worked with a team of researchers to create more than 500 images. Noting that the final product incorporates a number of traditional elements of illumination—the use of gold ink, expressive flourishes in the typography, and so on—Tanamachi explains that, just by leafing through the book, one can get “a healthy introduction to the storied art and practice of illumination.”

Not only does the Illuminated Bible offer a fun, and visually tantalizing, history lesson on illumination, it also celebrates the act of journaling. The Illuminated Bible joins Crossway’s expansive line of journaling Bibles, which welcome readers to make notations on the page through features such as wide margins and, in some cases, lines for readers to add text. As a Bible edition that makes art an integral part of experiencing the text, the Illuminated Bible beckons readers to add their own marks to the holy book, something that many had already begun to do with Crossway’s journaling Bibles.

Noting that the response to its journaling Bibles has been extremely strong, Dennis says many readers have used these editions in unexpected ways. With this in mind, Dennis says, Crossway saw the Illuminated Bible “as an opportunity to design a product from the ground up that would be ideally suited for anyone who desired to add their own illuminations or artwork to their Bible.” Crossway recognized, Dennis says, that there was a “need for a product like this because of the way that people were using our journaling Bibles.”

Crossway is filling a gap in the market with the Illuminated Bible, and the company sees the the new edition as a logical extension of its existing lineup of Bibles.

“The Illuminated Bible includes a lot of what people have enjoyed about past journaling Bibles—wide margins, and space for note-taking, drawing, or journaling,” Tanamachi says. “But it takes it a step further by including beautiful, thoughtful, and inspiring artwork that hopefully sparks even more creativity and self-expression within people.”

Dane Ortlund, Crossway’s executive VP of Bible publishing and Bible publisher, sees the work fitting well into a larger context of mainstream Christianity: “The mainstream Christian tradition has a long history of offering a meaningful way of revering the text and acknowledging it as special and sacred,” Ortlund says. “The Illuminated Bible is inspired by and stands in that venerable tradition.”

For Dennis, the Illuminated Bible also allows those with several editions of the holy book to have a copy that they can interact with in a different way. “A study Bible is a great choice for deeper digging into the Scriptures—loving the Lord with your mind,” Dennis says. “The ESV Illuminated Bible provides space to visually connect with Scripture, to imagine, and, as the psalmist prayed, to invite the Lord to open our eyes to the beauty within his word.

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⇨ Read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 on Bible Gateway
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Ten Commandments Past and Present: An Interview with David L. Baker
⇨ See resources about the Ten Commandments in the Bible Gateway Store
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Non-Profit Group Essentials in Education Seeks to Expand Bible Literacy
⇨ GrayDC News
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Reading the Bible with America’s Founding Fathers: An Interview with Daniel Dreisbach
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, American History’s Entwined Relationship with the Bible: An Interview with Angela Kamrath
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Bring Your Bible to School Day 2017 Update: Close to 500K Students Brought Hope to the Nation
⇨ Focus on the Family
⇨ Browse Bibles for children in the Bible Gateway Store
⇨ Browse Bibles for teenagers in the Bible Gateway Store
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Audio Scripture Ministries Celebrates 50 years of Ministry
⇨ Mission Network News
⇨ Listen to audio Bibles on Bible Gateway
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Ten Commandments Monument Moving from Public School to Catholic School
⇨ TribLIVE.com
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Ten Commandments Past and Present: An Interview with David L. Baker
⇨ See resources about the Ten Commandments in the Bible Gateway Store
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Bible Shipment Detained in Sudan by Port Authorities Without Explanation
⇨ Evangelical Focus
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Bible Translator Shares His Story
⇨ Sentinel
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Bible Translation Organizations
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The Long View of Bible Translation: Discipleship
⇨ Hare Translation Journey
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Hungary Commemorates Reformation with Two Coins Bearing an Open Bible
⇨ Coin World
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, What Was the Reformation and Why Does it Matter Today?
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Read These Five Verses on Reformation Day
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Authority Of Scripture: An Interview with Matthew Barrett
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Was the Reformation a Mistake?: An Interview With Dr. Matthew Levering
⇨ See the Reformation Studies section in the Bible Gateway Store
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Inside the Museum of the Bible
⇨ CT
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, A Collection of Bible Museums & Exhibits
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⇨ See other Bible News Roundup weekly posts

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How does the Bible story of Mary of Bethany equip you to use “unseen” moments to draw your heart closer to God?

In this Q&A, Sara Hagerty (@SaraHagerty) talks about her book, Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed (Zondervan, 2017).

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Meeting with God in the Airport by Sara Hagerty]

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Bitter Becomes Sweet: An Interview with Sara Hagerty]

How did “hitting a wall” in ministry affect you? What happened specifically?

Sara Hagerty: Lives around me were changing for Jesus but my life was stagnant. My passion for ministry ebbed and a vague emptiness took its place. I’d have dinner with a teenager who’d just asked Jesus into her heart and find myself mindlessly repeating answers I’d said for years. I knew how to share about God’s love with others, but I no longer felt like I was living in it myself. There was a voice in my head that wondered, Am I just saying these things about God, or do I really believe them? So, I’d come home and check in on my heart, carving out space to sit with God and ask that question out loud. Except when I got there, that space and time alone with him felt awkward—like I was supposed to share the kinds of things you mostly only say in hushed tones to a close friend, but instead this was a conversation with a distant acquaintance. I didn’t quite know how or where to start. More than 30 minutes with my Bible open but without a Bible study to plan, and I didn’t know who I was supposed to be. I wasn’t sure who God was, either, in my less-productive quiet time and in the seemingly “nonessential” moments of life.

Where did these questions lead you?

Sara Hagerty: These questions would eventually guide my eyes toward finding the unseen beauty of a hidden life in God. But as it is with most beginnings, first they were unnerving. I knew God was benevolently disposed toward me but I’d always assumed his benevolence was also connected to my “producing” something for his kingdom. When I felt productive in ministry, it wasn’t hard to imagine that God had loving thoughts toward me, or that he looked at me with warm affection. I had a harder time trying to imagine what he might be thinking about me during the hours of the day when I wasn’t doing anything tangible for him. What was the expression on his face when I didn’t have a trail of changed lives lined up behind mine? How did he feel about me on Saturday morning while I was lying on the couch in sweatpants, exhausted from the week?

So, you were faced with the choice—keep doing more for God or give up the striving?

Sara Hagerty: Yes. Something inside of me knew there had to be more to my life with God than being productive and sharing the good news with others. Something inside of me craved the God I’d find when I wasn’t changing the world. I’d always thought my craving for more in life would be satisfied with more ministry, more impact, more good works for God. But instead of filling me with more, the escalating effort I put into those things left me feeling empty.

As I saw it at the time, I gave in to burnout, but there was more to it than that. I’d been driven by a passion to see lives change, but I also craved the validation I received when my life made a notable impact on someone else’s. Over time, the deep satisfaction I’d found in my work lessened. The nagging drive, albeit subtle, to which I’d responded to do more and more, continued to leave me feeling inadequate. My expectations for myself increased as my ability to meet those expectations diminished. Even worse, I had begun to see myself as critical to God’s success. But now I just couldn’t do it anymore. So, I left the ministry I admired.

What impact do you think social media has on our idea of greatness?

Sara Hagerty: In this digital age, we might well wonder, “If it wasn’t posted on social media, did it really happen?” We can’t live for the beauty of the hidden life while simultaneously feeding on likes and comments. As long as we don’t make big impact synonymous with greatness, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. However, the unintended consequence may be that we begin to think that anything that isn’t big and observable isn’t great, which renders the rest of life a waiting room. Wasted time. When we live a life of constantly reaching for the next big thing, we miss the greatness God is calling us to right here, right now. In the small, the ordinary, the hidden moments. The white space. Great kingdom impact comes not just from actions that make a dramatic and observable impact, but from all the accumulated moments we spend looking at God, to bringing him glory in private, and letting him shape our insides. One more social media post can never settle me as much as exhaling my thoughts before God. I want—I need—to talk to God when no one is looking.

What did you learn as you explored the “unproductive” life?

Sara Hagerty: I discovered layers of God I hadn’t considered when I was barreling through life, when he was only a leader and a coach to me. Slowly, my desire to see and feel who he was within the pages of his Word prompted me to look at the lines on his face. To take a long and thoughtful look at him—and not just once. As I did so, I saw that he not only invited me to see him—in the minutia of stories I’d read for years in order to gain broad themes and lessons—but that he also saw me, right there in my middle minutes. His life on the earth and in these pages held expression. Toward me.

When I slowed, I saw that he, too, looked through the layers of me to know and respond to my heart. He wasn’t driving me to produce in such a way that all I saw was the back of his shoulders and his firm gait as he charged ahead of me; he was turned toward me and looking into me, with a soft-heartedness and an ever-unfolding invitation. His face held a gentle expression. Loving expression. Toward me, who was doing nothing for him.

This increased your desire to connect more intimately with God?

Sara Hagerty: In a year that felt like failure by all my ministry productivity standards, I grew desperate to lock eyes with God and see the expression on his face toward me. I knew if on an average Tuesday afternoon I could see God as the Initiator, the One who gently draws me close and with tenderness, then I could finally find deep-soul rest. I wouldn’t have to work so hard to get God’s attention because I already had it. Every single ordinary minute of my day would be an opportunity to encounter the unwavering gaze of God.

This is hiddenness. It’s not a natural concept for our human minds to apprehend. There are times in life when God tucks us away. He might hide us in a difficult job or an unwelcomed circumstance where we feel misunderstood. He might hide us in a crowd where we feel unseen or behind the front door of our home, changing diapers and burping babies. He does this all so that we might see another side of him, this God who looks deeply and knowingly into us when no one else is looking or noticing, and come alive under that eye.

But you still believe this desire to be noticed is natural, maybe even placed there by God?

Sara Hagerty: The truth is, we’re made by God to be seen and celebrated. We like to hear our own name. When we’re noticed and affirmed for our accomplishments or character traits, we feel that internal sigh of deep satisfaction that says: Yes, I matter. To someone. It’s God who gives us this craving to be known, to realize that we do matter. Author and pastor Dallas Willard said it this way: “Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being…We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways that no one else does. That is our destiny.”

How has Facebook and Instagram affected your longing for approval?

Sara Hagerty: The problem is not that we long for significance, but that we’re shifty or misguided in where we look for it. When we crave most the eyes of others—their opinions and accolades—we break our gaze with the only eyes that will ever truly see us. We forget the beauty of the Creator-eyes turned toward us—the ones that saw the inception of our life and loved what he saw. We’re still hungry for the thing for which we were made: to be seen, to be known, to be celebrated, to participate in something much larger than ourselves. But too often we settle for lesser things. It seems easier to get a “Like” online than it does to get quiet before God, to seek his face and listen for his whispers. Especially if we’re not sure what the expression on his face might be, or if his whispers will be kind. We wonder if God could ever like what he sees in us when no one is looking. And we forget it was in that same kind of hiddenness that our very selves took shape in the first place.

Why is finding this “hiddenness” so difficult?

Sara Hagerty: In the words of Paul, these hidden times can help us to, “think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth” (Colossians 3:3). We don’t naturally fall into this way of thinking. We breathe and pay our bills and use our words, all in the temporal. We need help to look at the unseen, the things of heaven (not the things we can touch with our hands or gauge with a measuring stick). Our truest life—once we come to know him—doesn’t reside in the temporal world. Hiddenness is God’s way of helping us to detach from “the things of earth,” which we were never intended to grip. Paul goes on to say, “For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:4).

Sometimes hiddenness feels like death—of dreams, of the applause we crave from others, of tangible kingdom advancement, of apparent impact. Yet it’s right here in hiddenness that we are invited to fall in love with the God-Man we haven’t fully seen. It’s here that we find our real life.

What happened when you started asking God how he felt about you when you felt unproductive and unsuccessful?

Sara Hagerty: I started a new dialogue with God that didn’t include a plea for him to use me in someone else’s life or to make my life matter. It was a conversation with God in which I saw that he cared for the inner workings of my heart and the insecurities that plagued me. I began to feel the pulse of his life in the biblical stories for which I had lost my passion. Not even whole sentences, but phrases from his Word that had once been pat answers were transformed into poetry, renewing my mind and sparking fresh and intimate conversations with God. Not only was He becoming more real to me as I took time to not just study but to soak in Scripture, he was personal. To me. This age-old God was newly vibrant to me. And I was starting to think he might actually like me.

How do you compare this time to a tree—where we visibly see the branches and fruit, yet the root system underneath is what holds it all together?

Sara Hagerty: I’d spent most of my 20s envisioning growth to be outstretched branches—majestic when hit by the sun and against the pure blue sky—and mostly forgot about the roots. But I could no longer grow tall in God without caring for my root system; without acknowledging that something buried beneath the surface must exist to give life to the trunk and branches I showed the world. Noticing and tending to my roots—my inner and hidden life with God—seemed secondary when there were important ministry branches to climb and spiritual fruit to produce and pick. So I focused all my time and energy on branches and fruit, while God was ever so gently inviting me to back to the soil. To hide in him rather than perform for him—to shift my attention from branches to roots, from my visible work for God to my unseen life in God.

How did this transform your relationship with God?

Sara Hagerty: I was merely a God-follower when I had eyes, mostly, to serve and respond to the world around me. I became a God-lover when I noticed him seeing me and knowing me. Those exchanges, then, began to fuel how I interacted with the world around me.

Do you believe God purposefully hides people, putting them in unseen places?

Sara Hagerty: Absolutely. God loves to hide. Behind circumstances and callings and misjudgments and scorn from even the dearest of friends, he hides us. I join throngs of other women and men placed purposefully in hiding, who are also in training to be passionate lovers of God. They are cleaning toilets, working low-status jobs, changing bedpans, fielding criticism, and battling fatigue. And finding him in the midst of it all.

No moment is too small, too mundane, too insignificant to hide in God and waste time with him. We may feel veiled and unnoticed, but God is training us to turn our eyes toward him, to find him there.

Our hidden places aren’t signs of God’s displeasure or punishment. The psalmist says that the one “who dwells in the secret place of the Most High” has a refuge and a fortress in God (Psalm 91:1). God doesn’t banish us to this hidden place. He invites us. And finding God in the secret can teach a heart to sing. This invitation to embrace hiddenness grows from a seasonal, one-time invitation into the question of our lives: When no one else applauds you, when life is hard and makes no sense or simply feels like drudgery in the still, quiet, will you hide yourself in me? Will you waste your love on me, here?

What is a favorite Bible passage of yours and why?

Sara Hagerty: Whether it’s a reflection of my fickle heart or illustrative of the ever-unfolding nature of his Word, my favorite passages change frequently. In recent years, Mary of Bethany’s story has been making a deep impression upon me. In Matthew 26:6-13, Jesus highlights this woman in the shadows—shadowed because she wasn’t doing anything that we might see as “especially significant,” but also shadowed by the critical eye of those around her.

Yet she moved his heart. Mary moved the heart of God, and in a way that didn’t amass crowds or applause or fanfare. Those with whom she had spent time—who knew her—thought it to be foolish. It wasn’t popular, but it was for him and he received it so gladly that his response was: “wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.” He noticed what others called wasteful. And he loved it. My mind immediately thinks of so many of my little movements towards him—unseen even by those closest to me—that Jesus would cherish them.

What are your thoughts about Bible Gateway?

Sara Hagerty: It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I use Bible Gateway near-daily. Whether I’m wanting to search a different translation than what I’m reading or trying to remember a source, this website could possibly be my most visited site. In an age when we can so clearly see the many ways that technology is pulling us away from what God is doing right in front of us, Bible Gateway is doing the opposite—making God’s Word more accessible.

Bio: Sara Hagerty is the author of Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things, a wife to Nate, and a mother of six, including four children adopted from Africa and one toddler who’s found his voice amid them all. After almost a decade of Christian life, she was introduced to pain and perplexity and, ultimately, intimacy with Jesus. God met her and moved her when life stopped working for her. His Word and his whisper took on new shape and form to her in the dark. Sara writes regularly about life delays, finding God in the unlikely, motherhood, marriage, and adoption at SaraHagerty.net.

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This is the first lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

When I was in eighth grade my church gave me a brand new black Bible with red-colored edges and my name embossed in gold on the cover. It smelled fresh and crackled when first opened. I felt a special connection with this Bible.

Bible Open in Hands Illustration

I tried many times to read that Bible, from page one to the end, like a book “ought” to be read. But frustration grew as I got bogged down in Leviticus, and then completely stalled out in Numbers. So most of the pages of that Bible remained clean, but I was vaguely glad to have it on my shelf.

When I was 17 someone gave me a New Testament in a fresh new version that was very easy to read. I had met some lively, enthused college-age kids who saw the Bible as a book full of life and light. So I read that New Testament straight through in a couple of weeks. The speeches of Jesus flashed like lightning. Hebrews explained Christ. James explained life. Romans laid out a progressive, perfectly rational, description of God, the world, and me. As I read the New Testament, it had a “ring of truth” to it. Each idea made sense. It all fit together. I remember thinking how my assumptions about God had been so simplistic and so skewed, but the light of Scripture was revealing a God who made perfect sense. I also knew that I was being changed. My attitude. My language. My behavior. I didn’t even choose to make changes; they were just happening.

Fast forward ten years. I was headed to seminary to do three years of study before beginning a career as a pastor—a course change from my life-long passion to become a surgeon. I signed up for Greek to study the New Testament in its original language. And Hebrew, for the Old Testament. (Taking both at once was a terrible idea.) Ahead of me lay many courses in Scripture. And here is a frightening truth: I could have become self-righteous and Pharisaical about it all.

Two mistakes we can make with the Bible are 1) being ignorant of its content because we just don’t read it; or 2) being obsessed about knowing the Bible in its details; being proud of our knowledge, but ignoring the spirit of the word and not being shaped by it.

We’re calling this weekly series of lessons in the months to come “How to Live the Bible.” Our goal is to deepen our relationship with God through God’s Word. To “live the Bible” means continual life transformation through the work of the Holy Spirit using the implanted word of God. We will probe how we can develop a biblical mindset, worldview, attitude, and instincts that lead us to right living and effective witness. The Bible has shaped the history of the world. It’s the foundation of whole civilizations. It holds the keys of salvation from evil and sin. It should shape us.

The Bible is not just a book of rules. And so “How to Live the Bible” is not about how we can list the commands of Scripture that apply to us, and complain about all the people who are not obeying. That accomplishes nothing. We need to learn how to consume the truth of Scripture and for truth to become the spiritual muscle tissue of our lives. Then the mandates get fulfilled.

Along the way we’ll come to a few major themes. For instance,

LAW — Is the Bible filled with laws to be obeyed, and is this how we “live the Bible?” For instance, what about the Ten Commandments? What about the Old Testament laws? How did Jesus change things? What did Paul mean by being “dead to the law”? What about the new “law” of love?
LOVE — How does the “great commandment” form the basis of living the Bible?
ETHICS — What is the method whereby we use biblical revelation for ethical decisions (personal ethics, business ethics, social ethics, medical ethics, etc.)?
THEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE — How can a believer gain a comprehensive structure of belief? Living the Bible is about gaining a grasp of reality and living in reality at all times.
BIBLICAL MINDSET AND INSTINCTS — How do we gain minds and hearts that will instinctively react to all life circumstances out of the truth of Scripture?
SIN AND VICES; RIGHTEOUSNESS AND VIRTUES; JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION — What are the ways God shows us the dark side of ourselves and how does the Holy Spirit transform us?

Living the Bible best happens when our instincts and motives are so thoroughly shaped by the God’s truth, that we automatically make good decisions without even thinking about them. Everyone admires believers who are even-tempered, consistently courteous and kind, able to hold convictions while respecting others. Scripture must form our character.

Everyday life includes highs and lows, accomplishments and failures, gains and losses. Whatever our circumstances, we need what James called “the implanted word” which can rescue us (James 1:21). We are to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only.” Or, as Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24).

And so we begin this 30-week journey of learning together “how to live the Bible.”

Prayer: God, lead us in this journey. Do a mighty work in us, for your glory.

[If you believe this series will be helpful, this is the perfect time to forward this to a friend, a group, or a congregation, and tell them they too may sign up for the weekly emails here]

By Carlos Whittaker

When I was 21, I was in one of the darkest seasons of my life. I was in my fifth year at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, and I was a mess. I was a lost soul looking for any sort of validation. But I wasn’t necessarily looking to fix myself. I had a job. I hadn’t been expelled (yet). I had a condo. I had a girlfriend. People from afar still saw me as having it together. But, man, was I not together—drinking heavily whenever I could, sleeping till noon, and missing work all the time. I didn’t have a name for it, although now I can look back and see that I was suffering from heavy depression and anxiety. I was 2,500 miles away from my parents. I felt so alone. I had slowly but surely pushed away all my friends.

It was a pretty scary and sad time. Sad is the easy word to define here. But I was also scared, and that word is a little harder to nail down. What did I have to be scared of? Nobody was after me. I had parents who loved me. But I felt this fear. I didn’t know why. It just lingered.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

Man, I wish I had known more about this struggle back then. I didn’t. But I was about to be right in the middle of it. It was a Wednesday night in the middle of summer. Somehow I had figured out a way to extend going to a four-year liberal arts school into almost six years. My girlfriend had broken up with me the day before. Looking back, I don’t blame her. I was a hot mess. The week before, I had been fired from my job at Buffalo’s. I had stopped showing up. And on this particular Wednesday, I just sat in my condo and cried. How had my life ended up so sad, and why did I have this feeling of fear? I wasn’t telling anyone about my struggle. I was determined to figure it out on my own.

That night, after spending the entire day inside my duplex, I remember feeling even more fear. It was kinda spooking me a bit. I checked all the closets to make sure nobody was in them. (Don’t fool yourself; you’ve done this before.) I remember even praying a shotgun prayer before I fell asleep. It was a heart cry loaded with, Dear Lord, help me not feel this way when I wake up.

I woke up around 3:00 am. The feeling that came over me can only be described as dark. I had never felt so scared in my life. I pulled the covers over my head and started praying.

Dear God, I pray that you make this stop. I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll behave, God. Please. Whatever is in here, make it leave!

I knew nothing was in my room, but I knew something was in my room. The darkness was darker than just the lights being off and the sun yet to rise. Something was up. And that something was dark. My window was open, and the curtains were flapping a bit more than normal. I was freaking out. After about two minutes of nonstop prayer, I knew I needed to be rescued from whatever was happening in my duplex that night. I needed my dad, so I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen to call him.

Yes, I had to get out of bed to call him. The phone was 15 feet away. This was before cell phones.

Why would I call my dad? Because although I didn’t know much about this whole dark, evil, and spiritual warfare stuff, I was most certain that I was in it right then. And I was sure that my dad would know how to help me out of it.

It was midnight in Fresno, California, where he lived. Would he even hear the phone ring when I called? I hoped so. I flipped the light switch on, and as I reached for the phone to dial his number, it rang. Read that again: Right as I was reaching for the telephone, it rang. And it rang. And it rang.

I had never, nor have I since, felt as scared as I was in that moment.

What was going on? Was I going to pick up the phone and hear the voice of Skeletor on the other end?

Everything froze. I slowly reached for the phone, picked it up, and put it to my ear.

“Carlos, it’s dad. It’s okay. I love you. I was woken up to pray for you, and I want you to know it’s okay. It’s time to come home, son. It’s time to come home.”

I grew up in a Southern Baptist home where we sang hymns and nobody lifted their hands in worship. I didn’t grow up in a house where we talked about this spiritual warfare stuff. I didn’t grow up in a church where people fought against demons and things that go bump in the night.

But you know what I did grow up in? I grew up in a home where I would seldom go a day without seeing my father on his knees with the Father. My dad was a giant. And apparently he had direct access to the Holy Spirit ’cause things just got crazy.

You see, that is the sort of moment that you can’t ignore. You can’t forget.

Guess what I did.

I didn’t say a thing. I just cried. My dad prayed for me and then hung up. Then I started packing. I packed up everything I could fit into my Honda Accord. I mean everything. And the next morning when my Vietnamese neighbors I shared a wall with woke up, I let them know they could have everything I’d left in my duplex. “What happened? Where are you going?” they asked me.

“I’m going to be with my dad because whatever he has, I want it. I want all of it.” And I drove west from Rome, Georgia, heading toward Fresno, California. I had no idea at the time that I would not return to Georgia. But I did know that I needed to sit under my father’s roof again. I needed to pay attention to whatever I had been ignoring for so long. I believed it now. Yeah, it took a crazy moment like that for me to believe. And even still, to this day, sometimes I think things like, It was a coincidence. Every once in a while, the stars align. What are the chances? And, every time, the response I get back from God is, “Yeah, Carlos, what are the chances?”

The battle is real, my friends. The sooner we accept that, the sooner our spider killing can begin. And the sooner the spider dies.

You may have heard the saying, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to make you think he doesn’t exist.” When we sit in denial of the reality of spiritual warfare, we are denying the enemy exists and that he is trying to distract us from the work God wants us to do to clean out the cobwebs and get rid of our spiders. So much of the struggle we face comes from the enemy feeding us lies and us buying into them. The sooner you stop allowing him to have control, the sooner you can get on to living without cobwebs in your life.

________

Taken from Kill the Spider: Getting Rid of What’s Really Holding You Back by Carlos Whittaker. Click here to learn more about this title.

Are you tired of trying to live for Christ—only to fail time and time again with the same old behaviors? Do you pray for guidance, ask for deliverance, and vow to do better, yet fail to progress?

As an author, speaker, pastor, and blogger at Ragamuffin Soul, Carlos has lived much of his spiritual life in the spotlight. But, like any Christian, his faith story has its ups and downs. He spent decades trying to figure out how to be a “better person.” Time and time again, he strived for holiness only to get caught in the web of destructive habits, behaviors, and thought patterns.

But, the buck stops here. Or, rather, the spider is killed here.

In Kill the Spider, Carlos shares personal material ranging from hilarious, self-deprecating stories to passion-filled wisdom—to show others it’s not enough to try and “stop sinning.” He teaches that knocking out deep-rooted habits and issues comes by treating the issue, not just the symptoms.

With transparency, humor, and vulnerable stories, Carlos offers a breath of fresh air to any believer looking to finally step into the freedom in Christ. So, sit down. Open the book. And grab a shoe. We’re going on a spider hunt.

Carlos Whittaker is an author, blogger, speaker and worship leader. He has been on the leadership team for Catalyst as well as leading worship at many of their events. He regularly speaks at the largest churches all over the country. He and his wife Heather and their children live in Nashville, TN. Learn more about Carlos at CarlosWhittaker.com.

KiDs Beach Club Explorer’s Study Bible (NKJV)

Since KiDs Beach Club® first began in 2003, teaching children about God’s Word has been the focal point to giving each child a Jesus experience inside their public elementary school. From 2003 through the fall of 2014, only one Bible was given to a child in each club each week the club met.

Beginning in the spring of 2015, giving every single child in every Beach Club their very own copy of God’s Word became a priority. This special day of Beach Club became known as Great Treasure Day.

This month KiDs Beach Club® celebrated a very special Great Treasure Day as the 50,000th Bible was handed out since that very first Bible back in 2003.

After weeks of anticipation and watching the tally of Bibles given to kids climb on the front page of the ministry’s new website (@KiDsBeachClub), it was projected that the 50,000th Bible would be given away on October 10 at the new Beach Club at Gilbert Elementary School, Irving, Texas, which is the second club to be sponsored by Christ Church Irving.

KiDs Beach Club at Gilbert Elementary School

Gilbert Elementary had dozens of children in attendance for Great Treasure Day. All were giddy and excited to receive their new Bibles. What they didn’t know before they arrived that afternoon was one of them would be the 50,000th child in the history of KiDs Beach Club® to receive a KBC Explorer’s Study Bible (Thomas Nelson, 2009) in the New King James Version (NKJV) translation. Read what happened and watch the video.

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How to Succeed in Life: Free Email Devotional by Chip Gaines

New: ESV Illuminated Bible, Art Journaling Edition

Bible News Roundup – Week of October 22, 2017

Finding the Unseen Beauty of a Hidden Life in God: An Interview with Sara Hagerty

How to Live the Bible — Beginning the Journey

The Night the Devil Visited My Duplex

KiDs Beach Club® Donors Help Give School Children 50,000 Bibles Since 2003

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