Never read a Bible verse – ever
‘Hang on’, I can almost hear you say, ‘you’re leading the church into 40 days in the word so I’m going to be reading Bible verses until they’re coming out of my ears! What’s this about, then?’
It’s to do with the word ‘verse’. The original text of the Bible didn’t have them. We added chapters and verses hundreds of years after the books were originally written and they’re only there to give us a convenient way way of navigating the Bible. So the problem is simple – verses are usually too short, too abbreviated, too truncated to give us any more than an isolated idea. They are often nice quotations (and all the ‘verses’ you’ll read in 40 days are of this order) but often they only carry part of a bigger story.
So I’m going to make a suggestion for you. Whenever you read one of the 40 days verses in the manual and think about how it impacts you, take the time to read the paragraph where it sits. Very often you’ll find a bigger story emerging and you’ll hear God’s voice more clearly through the Bible’s pages. It will give you a way of immersing yourself more deeply in God’s word and, I hope, enrich your appreciation of all God is doing on our 40 days programme.
