God Has Some Pretty Awesome Breath!

Many of my posts are written for Christian and secular audiences alike, but this post imparticuler is written for Christians.  This post is for improving your faith and knowledge of God, for those who already have faith and knowledge of God.

I have been churning this post around in my head for a while (as you can tell, do to the lack of posts for a couple months) and I thank my friend Shelby for setting the keystone of this post in my mind.

Knowledge of God is the only knowledge that ultimately matters.  Without knowledge of God, all other knowledge is in vain.  The sad thing is that some people gain knowledge of God for its own sake.  Gaining knowledge of God for its own sake is very dangerous.  It makes us prideful and decieted.  The reason we should gain knowledge of God is in hope that we might know the Lord better.

The most obvious way to start gaining knowledge of God is through reading the Bible.  Yes, that thick old book full of amazing wonders.  It may seem a bit scary to read such a book.  Many people say that it is a rule book for Christians.  We Christians know different, in Paul's 2nd letter to Timothy he states:

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16,17, NIV)

Just think about that for a minute.  All Scripture is God-breathed.  God inspired men up to thousands of years apart to write the Bible.  God spoke through sinners like us so that we would jot it down not knowing that thousands of years later we would have a book of it.  The Bible is literally God speaking to you, not some over rated rule book!  So what is the point of God speaking to us through this book and what is it useful for?  You've got it!  It's so we may use it to teach each other God's word, rebuke and correct each other as well as ourselves, against ungodliness.  Here comes the juicy part!: training each other in righteousness so we may be equipped for every good work.

The Bible is the only book that can cut our pride down and make us feel God's raw love at the same time.  The more we know about God, the more we find that God doesn't just know about us, He knows us personally.  He knows our horrible true colors and still loves us despite every disgusting shade.

When we read the Bible we usually tend to treat it like a buffet.  We take some of God's words to heart while disregarding other things He says.  Treat the Bible like your favorite bag of chips.  You take that bag of chips to your bedroom and eat all of them, you don't just take one chip and throw out the rest (I mean seriously, who does that?!)! Don't be a tater hater!  Much like eating those chips you have to read the Bible and take everything you read to heart, not just this little verse and that little verse.

A good way to begin reading the Bible is to start with Jesus: The New Testament!  After you read the New Testament you can read the Old Testament.  Always connect what you are reading to Jesus.  Without Jesus, everything in the Bible was written in vain.

There are many other ways to study God such as reading devotionals and apologetics.  Before you read either of these I would encourage you to read some of the Bible first.  Many false devotions and apologetics can take God's word out of context and if you aren't careful you will believe the lies that are being fed to you by those false teachings.

Once you are reading the Bible it is important that you encourage your Christian friends to read the Bible also.  Start them out with some verses that connect with their lives, something they can easily relate to.  Please note that I am only telling you to encourage fellow Christians to read the Bible, if someone is an atheist, most of the time they have no business reading the Bible.  Many atheists read the Bible for the sole purpose of finding dirt on the Christian faith and it is very easy for them to take a verse out of context and claim things that aren't true about Jesus, God, and the Bible itself.

In the beginning when God made Adam, He breathed the breath of life into him (Genesis 2:7) to make him come alive.  Since every word in the Bible is God breathed, every time we take God's words to heart He is breathing eternal life into our hearts.  I would say that God has some pretty awesome breath, wouldn't you?