“How to study the Bible is such a hard thing to explain. I feel like at times I am just staring at words on a page. But other times it’s like something opens up and I’m finally able to connect. I think a ton of it has to do with how I’m approaching the Scriptures. Am i putting myself above the scriptures? Or am I putting myself under them? Am I treating them like a recipe or like a river? Am using it to show God how He has screwed up this time? Or am I opening them to listen to God voice?”
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O GOD OF TRUTH, I thank thee for the holy Scriptures, their precepts, promises, directions, light. In them may I learn more of Christ, be enabled to retain his truth and have grace to follow it. Help me to lift up the gates of my soul that he may come in and show me himself when I search the Scriptures, for I have lines to fathom its depths, no wings to soar to its heights. By his aid may I be enabled to explore all its truths, love them with all my heart, embrace them with all my power, engraft them into my life. Bless to my soul all grains of truth garnered by thy Word; may they take deep root, be refreshed by heavenly dew, be ripened by heavenly rays, be harvested to my joy and thy praise. Help me to gain profit by what I read, as trasure beyond all treasure, a fountain which can replenish my dry heart, its waters flowing through me as a perennial river on-dawn by thy Holy Spirit. Enable me to distil from its pages faithful prayer that grasps the arm of thy omnipotence, achieves wonder, obtains blessings, and draws down streams of mercy. From it show me how my words have often been unfaithful to thee, injurious to my fellow-men, empty of grace, fully of folly, dishonouring to my calling. Then write thy own words upon my heart and inscribe them on my lips; So shall all glory be to thee in my reading of thy Word!
–A Prayer from “The Valley of Vision”
