When I was first called to be a pastor many years ago and began to study the scriptures sufficiently so that I might be able to teach them to others, the hours passed endlessly without regard to time.
I believed that in order to share the Word of God with someone else, I had to know it myself. In reality, I learned so I could teach. I studied so I might be able to stand at the pulpit and speak.
Some 35 years later I have learned that the true goal is not to study to teach, but to spend time in the presence of the Lord so I can report what I have seen.
A scribe does exactly this. He reads the Bible, and tells others what it says. A Prophet comes into the presence of the Lord and spends time in fellowship with Him, then shares his experience with others.
People do not need to know what the Bible says as much as they need to experience the reality of the God it reveals.
When my two sons were growing up in the mountain community of Northern Arizona’s Mogollon rim, I would spend 8-10 hours a day tucked away in my home office pouring through as many Bible commentaries as I could find on any particular chapter that I would be teaching that week in church. If one of my boys would come into the office to speak to me, sometimes I would become impatient that they had interrupted my study time.
How wrong I was, how misguided my direction in those early days. To know the Lord and be in His presence does not require that we isolate ourselves from our family. If I had understood then what I know now, that all I had to do everyday was just spend time with the Lord and read through His word, He would speak through me when I stood before the people.
It is not the opinions of men and what the various commentaries have to say that people need to hear, it is what the presence of God is like when one seeks to know Him with all of their heart.
To see the Lord and hear His heart beat as John longed to do when he laid his head upon Jesus chest. To be looking into His eyes so closely that when He gazes in any direction we look also to see what He sees.
The world today is filled with many Bible teachers, but there is lack for many who spend countless hours in the presence of God. Those in the church wait for someone who has been inside the Holy of Holies to bring them news of the Glory they saw when God came to meet them there.
In reality every person who calls on the name of Jesus as Savior, may now penetrate that once closed Holy place. By Jesus sacrifice there is access to every believer, whomever they might be. To simply meditate on the Word of God each day and seek to know the Lord in those verses. To understand the words of the Bible in light of the Living God who inhabits them. For relationship by the Word, not religion through the mechanics of the word.
It is only that we be armed with a knowledge that Jesus comes and reveals Himself to all those who seek Him with all their heart and wait for Him, that His presence can be experienced.
You need not wait for your pastor or favorite Bible teacher to bring you revelation of God. You need only yourself to come into His presence night or day with an eager and expectant heart, to hear and experience all that He has waiting for you.
Rob Robinson
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