The number one thing that the devil is after. In this video, we are going to look at what the
devil is trying to get out of our life and that is the word of God. We're going to also learn
on how to combat that and how to pretty much help you to get the most out of the Bible and
to stop the devil from succeeding and taking the Bible out of your life. I will also share
practically how to get into the word of God and some of the things that I practice in my life.
I believe it will be very beneficial. If you're struggling with reading the Bible, understanding
the Bible, this is a video for you. If you're struggling with motivation to read the Bible,
this video is also for you. Let's start from the beginning. The devil is after the Bible, meaning
is after taking the word of God from your life. I like to say like this, The Bird is after the
Book. Matthew chapter 13 verses 3 to 4, it says, Then He spoke many things to them in parables,
saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the
birds came and devoured them. Now so that you don't get confused on what the bird represents,
Jesus in Matthew 13 verse 19 says to us, When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not
understand it, then the wicked one. So the bird is the wicked one, comes and snatches away what was
sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside that means that the bird is after the
book. It wants to steal the seed. It wants to eat the seed. A few things I want you to keep in mind.
Number one is, The less we read the word of God, the less we desire to read the word of God. A lot
of people don't understand is that motivation and desire to read God's word comes from reading it.
You don't get hunger for the word of God by not reading the Bible. You get hunger for the word of
God by reading the Bible. You don't get desire for prayer by not praying. In fact, the more
you go without prayer, the less you want to pray. The hunger for spiritual things work the opposite
as the hunger for the physical things, like for example, If I don't eat food, I become hungry for
food. Spiritually, it doesn't work like that. If you don't Read the Word, you actually would desire
less to Read the Word. So if you want to get a stronger desire for God's Word, it comes from
consuming God's Word. The second thing I want you to keep in mind is that if you feed your soil with
the seed of God's Word, you will starve the bird, the enemy. But if you don't feed yourself with the
seed of God's Word, you will feed the bird. The birds that ate the seed got fed from that seed.
Now the devil doesn't get fed from God's Word. What he gets fed where he gets stronger is if
you don't get fed by God's Word. You empower the enemy by not equipping yourself with God's Word.
If you don't get into your Bible, your enemy will get into your business. The third thing I want
you to keep in mind is that the enemy cannot stop the Word from producing the fruit, so he will try
to stop the Word from taking root. The devil can't stop God's Word from bearing the fruit,
bringing change in your life, bringing change in your mind, bringing transformation in your life,
he can't stop that. Once the seed goes into the soil, there's nothing he can do. So what he's
going to do is he's going to fight you, so that God's Word doesn't take root. So it goes into the
soil but it doesn't take root in the soil because once it takes root in your soil, he can stop
the fruit from being produced and being released through God's Word. God's Word has so much power.
It's incredible but he is going to fight you so that it does not take root in your life. You must
fill your mind with God's Word so that you will have no room for Satan's lies. Now what are the
three things that the devil will do from God's Word taking root in your heart. The first one
is you not understanding God's Word. You reading God's Word, not understanding God's Word. That's
going to be the first thing and you see the seed that was sown on the wayside is the person who
read it or heard the word but it didn't understand it. So he will fight you if you don't understand
it. The second soil that didn't bear fruit is the one that had very little root system. In other
words, it's speaking of category of people that get emotionally excited and then the sun comes
up and they just kind of fizzle out and so that's emotionalism. That's the people who only read the
Word when they feel like reading the Word. These are people who have a lot of emotion, very little
devotion. They have no discipline. They have no habit, have no routine and they're not willing
to create one. There's just more of like what if I feel it. If I feel it, I'm gonna read it.
But I don't feel like reading the Bible, so I'm not going to read the Bible and so the devil is
going to use your emotions, so that the Word of God doesn't get take a root in your heart and you
become an emotional, this kind of a person who is not grounded in your faith, because you are deeply
grounded in your feelings. So that's going to be the second one. First one is not understanding the
Word. Second one is when you're just an emotional person. He will use that so you don't get into the
Word and then you won't live by faith. If you're not in the Word, the third thing is the devil will
use busyness and that's the thorns. You know the seed fell into the soil and then it started to
grow but then the thorns came squashed it and thorns are busyness. It's when you're
distracted. When your life is so overwhelmed and so full, it does not have place for God.
It doesn't have place for God's Word. You don't have time for God's Word. You don't have time for
reading. I mean even as you're listening to this video, you're probably running, walking or doing
something else which is totally understandable. I am not God's Word but for God's Word, you have
to give it some time and to do that, you have to uproot thorns. You have to stop being emotional
and follow your decisions to read God's word even if you don't feel like it and the desires feelings
will follow and then you have to understand God's word and this is what the understanding that. I'm
gonna help you with right now. Now before I share that, in an interview, Billy Graham was asked a
question. If you were to live your life all over again, what would you do differently? And Billy
Graham said something in his response that is really touching. He said, 'One of my great regrets
is that I have not studied enough of the Bible.' He said, 'I would have wished that I had studied
more and preached less.' For most of us, we want to 'preach more and read less.' Preach more and
study less. Preach more and actually get into the Word of God less. So how do you combat these
three weapons that the enemy will use to take you from God's word and taking God's word from
taking root inside of you. First one is you have to combat the lack of of understanding of God's
word by finding a translation you can understand. Very practical. Get a study Bible. There's plenty
of great study Bibles. The one that I would recommend is Jack Hayford's Study Bible. It's
called Spirit-filled Study Bible because it comes from a point of supernatural and the moving of the
Holy Spirit. It doesn't deny the miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit and so you don't want to
study Bibles that you know say miracles don't happen today. God doesn't speak today you know
like and they don't believe in healing. They don't believe in none of this stuff and so I would say,
Stay away from those Study Bible. Second one is, Don't focus on your feelings,
Focus on your feeding. So the devil will use your feelings to get you out of the Word of God
and you have to change your thinking and instead of looking at how I feel, you have to say, No,
I have to feed myself with God's word today and so you go into feeding mode instead of into a feeling
mode. Your emotions are the most shallowest part of your nature. Salvation is God's deeper work and
God doesn't do His deeper work in shallowest parts meaning, when God saves you, He saves your spirit;
He doesn't save your emotions first. So God goes for your spirit. He doesn't go for your soul. He
goes through your soul to your spirit. So if you live your life always in the realm of the soul,
you're not going to experience the depth of God and you're not going to experience spiritual
maturity and part of spiritual maturity is stop paying attention to your feelings and actually
start paying attention to your spiritual man and start feeding him. The third thing that I
would encourage is how to fight this busyness that the devil uses against us and that is you have to
create a habit to Read the Word not a Goal. Don't get trapped by self-imposed rules or commitments
that bear no fruit to godliness. Many people set a goal, I'm going to read the Bible every single
day and they create this legalistic rule that they impose upon themselves. I'm not against rules. I'm
not against self-imposed discipline but that's not the that's not the purpose. You need to develop a
habit and the habit is more important than a goal because a habit will make this a part of who you
are. It will become a routine one day. Setting a goal and you know like I'm going to read three
chapters every single day, it's not what you need. You need a habit and so. Now in the beginning,
maybe you need to set up that goal to read through the Bible in one year but the goal is not to keep
a goal, the goal is to keep a habit of living in God's word, whether it's five times out of
the week, seven times out of the week or twice a day or once every other day, whatever it is,
it's the habit that keeps you spiritual and nurtured and spiritually grounded in the Lord. How
do you read the Word or what do you do when you're Reading the Word? How do you get the most out of
the Bible? Let me just share with you my practical pattern or path. I call it getting Washed daily
in the Word through Soap. Now SOAP stands for Scripture Observation Application and Prayer.
Now the Bible talks about being Washed by the Word in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 36. In John
chapter 15 verse 3 talks about being cleansed by the Word. John 13 verse 8 Jesus actually washed
His disciples feet and so I believe when you're reading the Bible, it's kind of like the Lord
actually washing you with the Word. So people who think that you're doing God a service by Reading
the Bible is actually the other way around. God is washing you. He's washing your conscience.
He's washing your heart. He's washing your mind as you Read the Bible. Now how does that happen is
you Read the Scripture. So that's the S. Then you Observe what you've Read. That's O. Application
is you ask the question how does this Apply to my life and then you Pray. Now there's a difference
between exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis is when you Read the Scripture and you're saying, Okay,
What does the Scripture mean? Okay and then eisegesis is when you impose your own meaning
on that. So it's very important as you Read the Bible, you read the Scripture and then you
Observe, What does the Scripture say, What does the Scripture mean, before you ask the question,
How does it Apply to my life? Because if you go straight for the Application without Observation,
you're going to take a lot of Scripture out of context. So you go Read the Scripture,
you say, What does the Scripture mean? Not for me but just general. What did the author mean? Why
was this written? So you observe sometimes Study Bible helps you, commentary helps you but you just
need to use common sense. Read the chapter before, Read the chapter after and just kind of pull back
and say what does this mean and then, How does it apply to my life? Because the scripture wasn't
just given to increase your knowledge, it was given to increase your holiness and then you
Pray through the Scriptures that you've Read and that is how you get Washed by the Word. I call it
the SOAP. Now for those of you who are struggling to hear God, I heard somebody say this, "Don't say
that God is silent; when your Bible is closed." Complaining that God is silent with a closed
Bible is like complaining that nobody texts you, if you turn off the phone. So begin to open the
Bible again. Fight every distraction. Fight this thing that you don't understand it by bringing
understanding through the reading of the word and understand is that if you don't get the feeling
and the desire to read the Bible, probably you're not reading it so just begin to read it. Begin to
Force Feed Yourself until the Feelings and the Desires come in. God's word is the lamp to your
feet, is the light to your path. All of scripture is God breathed and it's profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that you as the man and the woman
of God may be complete and equipped for every good work. God's word is Living and Powerful.
It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It's piercing to the division of soul and the spirit,
of joint and marrow, discerning the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Paul tells Timothy,
'Until I come give yourself over to the Reading of the Scripture to exhortation and to teaching.' In
Psalm, we see that, Delight in the Law of God and Meditating in it, day and night will cause you to
be a tree planted by the rivers of Living Water. Listen, it's time to get into the Word and for the
Word to get inside of you and then stop the Bird from eating the Book. Stop the Bird from eating
your Seed. Stop the devil from lying and planting false feelings in your mind and your thought that
you don't need to Read the Word that you don't feel like Reading the Word. You don't understand
the Word. You're too busy and all of this stuff and then you're complaining, Why your life is not
growing spiritually? Why God is not speaking and why you're spiritually are not maturing? Because
the number one tool that God has given to every believer for spiritual maturity that is the Word
of God. Dive into God's Word today. Let me know in the comments, What you learned in this video. Let
me know in the comments, What is your favorite translation of the bible to read? Also, What
study Bibles do you use to help you understand the scriptures a little bit more and How do you
read the Bible? Do you read it the whole year or do you read spontaneously? Just kind of whatever
the Spirit leads. Let us know in the comments below. If this video was a blessing to you,
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