You just got up early before anybody else is moving around, except you can
hear your wife stirring. Teenager is probably not up, but school is coming so
he might be dragging himself out. And you’re reading your Bible in your
favorite quiet secluded place. You’re reading about God and about his ways. And
then quietly, perhaps unexpectedly, God supernaturally shifts your mindset and
you are no longer merely reading about him. You are quietly aware he is here. The
living, risen Christ is in this room, and he is speaking to you through that page.
And your soul shifts from thinking about him to speaking to him. Now you are
turning the word into statements to him to the effect that this is who you are.
And then — supernaturally — another mindset shifts, and you find yourself not simply
speaking to him what you are learning about him from the text, but you find
yourself saying, “I love you. I love you. I love your patience. I love your mercy. I
love your power. I love your wisdom. I love the way you shut down proud people
and look tenderly on the broken, which makes me realize, Jesus, how sorry I
am for last night’s sin.”
And the word, as you move on, is awakening and informing the ongoing communion with
the Living God through Christ, and in that communion you are seeing his glory —
how many facets of this diamond there are. And you are tasting his goodness, and
you are being drawn to trust his promise, and the anxieties of the day are
beginning to fall away with an inexpressible peace. And you get up — you
may have been there 15 minutes, you may be in there half an hour, you may have
been there an hour. You get up, with the promises of God giving you a supernatural
peace that passes all understanding, and you go find your wife.
And you you put her cheeks between your hands, and you look right into her eyes,
and you say, “You are a precious gift of God to me. Just felt like saying it.” And then,
you go up to your kid’s bedroom, and you knock on the door. “Yeah.” And you open the
door, and you say, “I just need to say how sorry I am for last night’s outburst. It
was wrong, and I need you to forgive me before
I go to work.” And you eat breakfast, and you go out to the garage and get a shovel. You
put it in the trunk and head off to work because, yesterday, you remember a guy
grousing at work about how he’s gonna have to plant a tall tree tonight in his
yard, and it’s gonna take a really deep hole, and he hates digging, and after work,
you go help him dig. And maybe, supernaturally,
he says, “What’s the reason for the hope that is in you?” And you tell him what you
read in the Book in the morning, and maybe, by grace, supernaturally, he
glorifies God on the day visitation. That’s the aim of reading the Bible supernaturally.