I didn’t grow up with the Bible. As a child my family didn’t attend church so I was not introduced to Bible stories or Bible characters. When I was nineteen a friend gave me a Bible. He had been telling me about Jesus and sharing the gospel with me, but when he encouraged me to give my life to Jesus I declined because I could not for the life of me see how Christians had any fun. It was then that my friend handed me his Bible and I took it.* Over the next five or six years I tried to read that Bible every now and again. But it just never made any sense. I would get bogged down and frustrated and close it and put it away. The problem wasn’t with the Bible, it was with me.
1 Corinthians 2
14 Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
When I was twenty-five I finally made the decision to give my life to Jesus. After that, reading the Bible was completely different. It seemed somehow alive and I loved to read it. The Bible hadn’t changed. I had. I now had the Holy Spirit leading and guiding me into truth.
John 16:3
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.
The ministry of the Holy Spirit in giving us this knowledge is called “illumination”. Illumination allows us to understand and to love what we are reading in the Bible. Before we begin our relationship with Jesus, our minds are clouded by sin which makes the truths of the Bible difficult to grasp or believe. In Christ, however, through the Spirit, our hearts and our minds are opened and tuned into the scripture so that we can understand.
Ephesians 1:17-18
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Illumination is the work of the Holy Spirit applying God’s revealed truth in the Bible to our hearts, so that we understand for ourselves what the scripture is saying. With this is mind I want to introduce to you the idea of what I call “illuminated reading”. Illuminated reading is inviting the Holy Spirit to guide you in your daily reading to see what He wants you to see. As you start your Bible reading time, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the scripture to you. I actually pray along these lines:
“Holy Spirit, as I read through the Word today, would you show me what you want me to see.”
And then as I begin to read, some passage or verse will usually stand out from all the rest. It is almost as if the Holy Spirit highlights a verse or passage as I am reading. When that happens, I like to take time throughout the day to reflect on what jumped out at me. My hope is that you will continue reading the Bible with this method. Read one chapter each day, ask the Holy Spirit to “illuminate” what He wants you to see and then take time throughout the day to reflect on what He shows you!
*All these years later and I still have that Bible. That it stayed with me through all the various trials and journeys of my life is amazing to me. I am including a picture for you below. The highlighting that you see was in the Bible when my friend gave it to me. The fact that it was his personal study Bible was not fully appreciated by me until my own journey with Jesus began six years later.
