 The Bible we're gonna talk about the Bible today how the Bible plays a role in our life Some little information. I'm gonna give about the Bible. So children as you're sharpening your pencil trying to figure out how that works The Bible was written over the period of a thousand six hundred years in over a thousand Countries on three continents by 40 authors in three different languages The Bible was written by poets prophets farmers kings soldiers Shepherds princes priests historians fishermen tax collectors Scholars businessmen and doctors the Bible was written in caves in ships in palaces in prisons and in deserts The Bible is not outdated as many of us think it's still the most read book in the world It's still the best-selling book in the world If it's outdated, why do people get killed for it? If it's outdated, why do people's lives get changed by reading it? If it's outdated, why is there so much attack against it? unlike any other book Look what the Bible says about the Bible Hebrew chapter 4 and verse 12 it says this For the word of God is living somebody say living Let's say a little bit louder say living No other book is living. I want you to see what else it says and powerful say this with me powerful No other book has power inside or a life inside. I have a book It's not living now it can impact your life But it has no life inside. I Have a book It's impactful, but it has no power inside the Bible is the only book in the world that has life inside and has power inside if You're looking for power if you're looking to crystals if you're looking to wishcraft if you're looking to witchy boards You're trying to find power. It's a counterfeit power It's a dirty power It's a bad power There is only one clean Holy power that builds your life and God says my book contains it Not only God's word contains power, but God's word contains life Some of us are not looking for power. We just are looking for life and God's word has both I want you to see another thing that the Bible says about the Bible second Timothy chapter 3 verse 16 For all scripture is given by inspiration of God Now one translation says and more accurate word for Inspiration because some of us when we read inspiration. We're like, oh, yeah, the Bible is like really inspiring book No, no, no a lot of books are inspiring books. This is different when it says inspired by God This is what it means when God Breathe so all scripture is God breathe God Breathe into this book now for some of you may be like, okay so Remember when it happened for the first time God made a man out of the out of the dirt He was just a corpse and God and man became a living soul Anything God breathes into carries life Creativity look at you today. You are conscious being you're you're a person that can make things this book Has the same effect. It has the breath of God inside of it Which means when you read it you're inhaling what God exhaled for those of you put heads Switch whatever you're inhaling that stuff is not good for you Begin to read the scriptures This stuff. Yeah, it won't make you lightheaded. No, it won't make you relax, but it will make you a rest It'll give you freedom It'll give you peace and it will give you joy because God's breath is inside of God's book Amen Here are a few thoughts as other people smarter than me who have said about the Bible Don't say and get ready to say man Don't say that the that God is silent when your Bible is closed Complaining about a silent God with a closed Bible is like complaining that no text messages are coming through with your phone turned off When in doubt pull your Bible out That's your neighbor say he was speaking to you Mark batterson said when you open your Bible God opens his mouth You want to hear God? Get near his word Deal moody said the Bible will keep you from sin and the sin will keep you from the Bible Billy Graham said if you are ignorant of God's word, you will always be ignorant of God's will and That is very true Now I'm gonna have two main thoughts About the Bible today and two of them will come from the example that you are seeing here right now The first one is if you're writing your notes, I want you to write this down the Bible is the bread that feeds That feeds The Bible is the bread that feeds I want us to open book of numbers and we have the scripture behind us in the numbers It says the Lord said to Moses behold I will rain down bread from heaven for you and the people shall go out and Gather a certain quota every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not The Bible is like the manna that Israel received in the Old Testament when they came out of Egypt I want you to notice this God every day Reigned bread from heaven This book is also from God Comes from heaven. I want you to notice This manna God gave them it wasn't so that they could look at it is so they could eat it God's book is not only so you can have it in the shelf of your house so you can spiritually feed yourself The Bible says they had to gather every day that man I mean in God and put it into their mouth God make the book available, but you have to gather it Meaning open its pages every single day and begin to feed yourself For those of you who only rely on Sunday mornings You are spiritual infants and it's okay if you've been in church for maybe a few months But if you've been a believer for years already learn to feed yourself Amen, I want you to notice that manna not only it was coming from heaven It was available for them every day to gather and it fed them But I want you to notice this is that manna was despised by God's people They would say things like man this manna our whole being is right up manna again And I find that interesting that Christians are the ones that tend to despise God's word Outgrow the need for God's word Yeah, I've read the Bible. I know what it says. There's nothing new there Do you know the Bible is alive, which means every time you read it something is new You know, you can be a spiritual baby. It's a milk for you. You grow spiritually. It becomes your meat the same Bible It changes for you nothing changes in the Bible But it begins to new things begin to speak new things begin to feed you why because it's living and it's powerful I Have many books in my library and I visit books, but I have to live in the Bible No other book comes close to what this means for a Christian and I want to encourage you those of you who are heavy into self-help books Those of you who are like, yeah, but I just want to learn how to be successful businessman But I just want to be learned. I just want to learn how to be a great husband I just want to learn how to be how to think positive I just want to learn how to overcome my you know toxic attitudes and all of this stuff Please understand all other books can tell you what to do only the Bible can give you the power to do it actually I Want to challenge you today this year to make a switch Stop treating the Bible as an outdated and old book because it is not an outdated book Does it have poetry history and some scientific stuff? You bet it does it has a song of Solomon It has some historical things, but the core of it is spirit and life now I Want to with the permission of parents if you are a child and Your parents allow you to eat and you're not on the water fast and if you are on the water fast We need to talk to your parents So I want you to come forward and I want to give you a little bit of bread So just come quickly and then we're just gonna go ahead if you're hungry only if you're hungry and you're part of Hungry Jen So go ahead just come up on the stage right now and we're going to have a little feeding session. Yeah Go ahead. Let's begin to break the brew. Oh a lot more came out Danny, would you give me another loaf the one that we didn't finish and nobody will don't throw it Just just let's feed them. Let's feed them. All right, you can take go ahead and not the whole thing Just a little bit just just a little bit Okay, now give this to your dad. He's probably not fasting Go ahead, uh-huh leave as many crumbs as you can We have a lady that's gonna clean it. I'm just kidding. Amen. All right. I think I've seen more kids coming out for bread than for prayer Go ahead give you a big piece Man, I'm so tempted to eat right now Okay, we can put the rest of it on the on the end right here Yeah All right, everybody got fed Now let's believe that it will multiply Amen, so Bread feeds us. This is what we must understand is that spiritually The word of God feeds our spirit When you are not a Christian You don't understand that The reason why is because your spirit is dead to God Which means your spirit doesn't need to be nourished fed. It's dead. We don't feed that people Only living people have hunger Dead people don't have any hunger So if you're in that place where this idea as I start talking about the word of God and everything You're like, man, I just that's just not my thing. I would question if you are spiritually living Or maybe you've neglected your spirit so much that your spirit is Struggling and hurting and it's malnourished Part of our prayer and fasting as we're praying and fasting what's very important for our local church to grasp today Is to begin to be in God's word now you may say it's like yeah, we understand that this is the problem majority of Christians do not have a biblical worldview That's why they support abortions That's why they think like the world They talk like a Christian, but they think like the world why because only this changes how you think If you're not in God's word, but you're only in a local church You will think like the world and the difference between you and somebody who's not a Christian There will be no difference Because we need to change the way we think and we need to embrace a worldview of the God of the Bible instead of a CNN Fox or NBC Amen The second thing I want to highlight about the Bible is not only the Bible is the bread that feeds Write this down in your notes. The Bible is this seed that produces fruit now You don't eat seeds Mostly we shouldn't we plant them You don't plant bread in the backyard hoping to get a tree Nor do you eat these you plant these seeds in the soil with one purpose Not because you're getting rid of them Not because it fertilizes the ground because it has one goal to produce something bigger than itself The word of God is not only to sustain you But it's also to make you successful In fact, Jesus and Matthew 13. I want you to see what he said But others seeds fell on the good ground any good ground we have in the church today Others fell on the good ground and yielded a crop Seeds did not yield seeds The Bible is not given to make you religious But to make you fruitful effective successful They yielded crop 30 60 and 100 in fact Jesus has a problem with the soil That causes the word Not to produce success See the Bible is not only to keep you spiritually fed it's also to keep you practically fruitful Meaning your mind is fruitful. There is peace Your relationships are fruitful. You're not like soap opera Your life actually has peace in your relationships Your finances are fruitful that not only you're on the budget, but you're seeing the favor of God in your finances Your eyes are fruitful. You're not scanning women in the gym, but your eyes are fixed on your own muscles Your heart is fruitful. It's not full of anxiety and depression Your word I've hidden in my heart that I will not sin against you David said that means there is success in God's word This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth But you shall meditate any day and night that you will make your way successful and you will have great success Joshua 1 8 God's book wasn't given to Joshua to make him religious. It was given to make him effective You may say but it's outdated really husband's life your wife is that outdated and The peace of the Lord show that surpasses your understanding is that there's that outdated? You shall know the truth and the truth with such a free is that outdated? Meek shall inherit the earth is that outdated? Book of Proverbs is that outdated? Of course not It's not outdated. It has a seed power seeds have a potential of making forests That means that God's word has the potential of churning your life upside down and make you from a failure to a success Now of course success I don't mean some of the Instagram pages that we follow where it talks about Rolls Royce Bentley and a jet Because you can have a Rolls Royce gently Bentley and a jet and have a really beautiful Instagram and have a very ugly life Have a very ugly ugly attitude You can't put relationships together your thoughts are like crazy There's World War three going on in your own family, but Instagram looks good a lot of us are way better than our Instagram than in our real life God's word is not sent to make you look good on Instagram It's sent to make you be great in life The devil hates us being successful. He hates Christians from being successful So what he does the Bible says when the sower went out to sow What did the bird do and Jesus right away told us who the bird is so we don't get it confused He said the bird is the devil He said the bird came and snatched the seed Because the devil knows once the word takes root somebody say root Once it takes root in you It will produce fruit through you He can stop that God's word cannot be stopped nobody can stop it So guess what he can do he can stop it from getting inside of you Because once it's inside it will bear fruit as long as he can stop it from getting inside He becomes successful I can go on the limp right now and say If you're not reading the Bible the devil is already in your business You already fell for a trap Now whatever excuse he used with you might be different than the one he uses with me I didn't have time kind of too busy. It's boring. I don't get anything out of it. It's outdated. It has a lot of errors Way less than your life All these dumb lame excuses the devil uses and all of us fall for some excuse I don't feel like reading it. I just don't have you know, I just don't have all of that So the moment we fall pray, this is what happens is the enemy puts us in that so he can steal the seed The bible says the bird devoured the seed see birds live off of these seeds. I'm not saying that the devil Lives off of God's word. You know what he lives off of you not living off of God's word We empower the enemy when we don't feed ourselves When you don't feed your soul you empower evil spirits When you don't feed your spirit you empower your anxiety You empower your fear You empower lust you empower depression the moment the bird is fed because i'm not fed The bird gets stronger. I am starving and then I get defeated. So I want to challenge you today Don't feed the bird feed yourself The bird is after the book The devil gets stronger When you get Hungrier and not fed Our life doesn't have success that god wants us to have His kind of success his way success if god's word Doesn't take root. I'm not just talking about just oh, I read the bible. Yeah, I cut up with my reading plan That's good. That's great Penetrating it in your heart is a different story And that's what I want to finish this message with how do I get the bible inside of me? I want you to kids. This will be easier. So I want you to write down five things You can draw those five things and the rest of us. I want you to write down how to get the word inside of me Because we already have it in our house, but now how to get it into our heart Number one and this is a very simple one first is to read it somebody say read it Read it Jesus says in matthew chapter 12 verse 3, but he said to them have you not read What david did meaning jesus expected people to read the bible an average american household 87 percent have a bible Most people have three bibles in their home I have like 30 Only 11 percent actually read the bible And 30 percent of people in the united states surveyed have no more read than several passages or stories Now some people will say well, I don't understand it find the translation that you do And for those of you that are king james die hard fans Let me just remind you the bible was not written in king james It was written in hebru and it was written in greek Pick a translation that you can understand. Here's a graph behind me about different translations There is devotional reading like a paraphrase Meaning, you know, it's not necessarily word for word like the living bible the message bible the passion Part of the devotional you can read as thought for thought NLT and niv then there's a deeper study Which is the new king james king james esv and other translations find a translation that's easy to understand Your goal is not to be a scholar your goal is to be a disciple So you don't read the bible to learn hebru now if that's your desire god bless you But our desire is to understand what it says Amen The other part that I want to mention is that if you want to understand a little bit deeper Of what the bible says i personally recommend a bible study To read the bible with a bible study the one that i used for decades Is the jack hayford, which he passed away this last week Went on to glory But he along with many scholars wrote a bible study For people that are more in charismatic pentecostal that believe in the gifts of the holy spirit Believe in the move of the holy spirit And so I would highly encourage just buy this and just read this with it has greek has hebru has other stuff But it's easier to understand when it comes to reading the bible. This is what i've learned The desire to read the bible comes from reading the bible For those of you who maybe say well, I just don't desire to read the bible This is where you get the desire not at the altar In the bible You open it And you start reading it And then the desire comes Do not wait for the desire Choose to read the bible and the desire will come Desire to pray comes from praying not from not praying Amen number two is listen to the bible The scripture says in romans faith comes by Can you say a little bit louder? Can you say a little bit louder for people in the overflow? So faith comes by hearing It doesn't say faith comes by reading If faith comes by hearing I wonder what else comes by hearing I hate comes by hearing because we listen to gossip Fear comes by hearing because we listen to negative news So not only we should read the scripture. We should also listen to the scripture Actually biblical authors wrote the bible with the intent Not to be read but to be listened to If you read the old testament you will see that the law was supposed to be read in front of people Paul writes his epistles and says read it to the church and to other churches meaning He didn't plan it for people to go and make copies because they didn't have copy machines He intended for it to be read which tells me that if you only reading the bible But you're never listening to the bible You're missing a component of how the scripture can get inside of you and affect your life Practically what would you do is this is that on the background As you're cleaning the house Mowing the lawn probably not right now, but later on Washing the car You're driving somewhere to work now most of us. We love to be entertained So which are none our best beats Something that could keep us in a good mood And our problem is this we focus better. We focus so much on feeling better Then being better Feeling better doesn't mean you're gonna be better You're gonna be all cranky miserable self that you were before After you listen to that stuff and then what most of us do because you know, it's popular now Hey, this person released a song full of cuss words Full of profanity full of Sexual perversion and we turned it on I don't listen to the lyrics. I just like to beat And then you're wondering Why you're masturbating? Why are you watching porn? Why you're negative? Sorry those kids here Why you're doing all of this bad stuff? Why is all of this stuff happening? Why am I tempted in this area? Faith comes by hearing so is junk May this be the year Where you clean up your music library And look at that and say does this glorify jesus not is this popular Not will I be able to relate my co-work is why because i'm listening to the same stuff everybody's listening Everybody else is flowing with the stream. You're not a dead fish You're not supposed to be everybody else Plus the question is what do you want? You want peace you want joy you want righteousness or do you want simply to be cool? While being Fool come on kids got that like yep fool cool if you're cool you can be fool But if you are filled with something that is pure and something that is and you may say first, but I don't like it Appetites develop with time You didn't like cuss words either you just grew with it A lot of times and we just become numb we listen listen listen until somebody new comes into our world a christian You're like oh, I feel so guilty about it, but I never felt guilty about it listening for years Why is that because appetites they develop with time? I want to challenge you may this be the year Where you don't just read the scriptures you listen to the scriptures Let's purify our ears Let's purify this gate and not allow all kinds of garbage come inside of us Amen number three and that is to meditate on the bible His delight is in the law of the lord and in his law he meditates day and night psalm one two The bible mentions 23 times idea of meditation and 19 times it is mentioned in psalms When it talks about meditation it talks about meditating on god's works god's laws testimonies all which are found in the bible Now one of the reasons I wanted to highlight the meditation is because all of us know how to meditate If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate If you know how to rehearse something in your mind a conversation Have you ever had a like a full blown episode conversation in your head? You literally like when you you said something to them they responded back to you said it back to them All of that happened in your head never happened in real life So that means that we know how to meditate we know how to think on something and to kind of grow it out Of proportion and so if you know how to worry you know how to meditate One of the reasons I want to highlight meditation is because in our culture today meditation is being hijacked by people who Propagate new age And meditation is presented to help you deal with your anxieties along with yoga and other stuff Christian meditation is different and here are the reasons here. Here are the differences number one is that christian meditation Is filling your mind Eastern meditation and I'm going to go as far as to say demonic meditation Is emptying your mind So all that eastern meditation the yoga instructors and the self guru guys will tell you Is you want to get into bright posture line your chakras and then you want to try to empty your mind Christian meditation is not emptying. It's filling it Think about this. You have a cup Full of air. How do you empty the cup full of air? There's only one way fill it with water There's only one way to remove that anxiety remove that negativity is to fill it with something else not to empty it with that The second difference between eastern meditation and biblical meditation is that eastern meditation Is very passive. It's all about calming yourself and just trying to honestly be like dead person You're just really trying to calm yourself. The biblical meditation is not passive. It's aggressive It's a spiritual warfare. It's taking thoughts captive. You you're going into war Biblical meditation is war. It's not a vacation Another difference is that biblical meditation opens the door to the holy spirit Eastern meditation exposes you to demons Because as your mind is vulnerable and empty and you start practicing all the stuff you can get A demon Along with emptying your mind Christian meditation is you get peace and you get god's joy Eastern meditation is about detachment. I'm trying to disconnect myself from this world I don't know disconnect myself from my family. Everybody's driving me crazy. I'm just trying to be disconnected Christian meditation is about attachment. I'm trying to attach myself to god's word I'm trying to attach myself to god's spirit I'm trying to attach myself to god's precepts and god's laws and god's commandments and it's a world of difference amen Number four and that is to memorize verses in the bible So not only we have to read it Not only we have to listen to it, but we can meditate on it and memorize it Jesus answered and said to them you are mistaken Not knowing the scriptures Meaning you're ignorant of the bible. You don't know the bible. Jesus says And that means that a people have not memorized it or have not learned it into memory Jesus quoted the old testament at least 60 times In fight in the wilderness He didn't have a Torah with him where he scrolled or he didn't have a google where he google said, where does this say about? Where does this say about I shall not live by bread alone? Oh, I found it. Oops. There's no reception Jesus Quoted the bible from his memory Not from google nothing wrong with google and having a good Reception on your phone But you have to know the bible by memory not all of it start with john 316 Start with other verses begin to memorize scriptures make it your habit one scripture a week I'm going to memorize put it on your bathroom door put it on your On your car put it somewhere on your phone So when your phone turns on so that you can see that verse so you can remember and memorize Verses and the last thing and that is to obey what it says And this is the hardest one if you think that reading listening meditating and memorizing is hard All of that leads to this one Therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock So a man who built his house on the rock is actually a guy who listens Reads memorizes it and does it a statement. I want you to write down that really is impactful The biggest problem with bible study is not a failure to understand a passage But failing to apply the words of god. We do understand You know if you memorize the verse husbands love your wife's as christ loved the church and you memorize it in hebrew in greek And you have it on your wind On your mirror, but you actually don't love your wife You've missed the point kids if you memorize the verse Kids honor your father and your mother And you have a bible study like you gather with other kids and you discuss that verse And you see how it applies into your life But you actually never honor your father and your mother and all the reading and the memorizing really makes no difference If it's not applied Finally A few years ago. I was in a conference when Powerful worship team was there and one of the worship leaders came up to me and said, hey, you know I want to grow deeper in god And I asked him this question point blank. I said, do you read the bible? And I saw right away his face changed and there was a long pause And um, he said sort of which is Another way of saying not really Don't really read the bible. So i'm like you telling me You're worshiping here About a god you actually barely know. I was like, you know the lyrics. You don't know the lord And I was like, I know you have a gift to sing And you have a he's also a very talented musician But I was like gift and anointing are two different things I was like, you don't know the lord And so I challenged him. I said, I want you to start reading every single day. Don't just improve your craft Improve your relationship with god And I was like and that is through the word About few months ago the same worship leader meets me in another in another state He comes to me and he says listen. I want to thank you He says you rebuked me sharply But he says I well deserved it Posed out his bible app and he says it's been three years Where every single day I've read the scriptures He opens up and he's like he shows it to me and and he's like that changed my relationship with god and now he says I know the god I worship Not just I worship about a god that somebody else knows Can I ask you a question? Is the bible your church snack your snack? Or your meal You know snacks they don't keep us alive. It's just like throughout the day you're like Chips, you know, some of us carry in our pockets just in case throughout the day and some of us we snack on the bible meaning once in a while Yeah, let me just scroll through. Oh, yeah, I saw the scripture on the instagram. Yeah, this was a really good verse Let me share this right now. Let me just screenshot it and post it. Don't make the bible your snack make it your meal Amen Those of you watching us online Those of you watching us online and those of you that are here If you would have fed your physical body Yeah, like you've been feeding your spirit in the last 12 months Would you be here today physically? Some of us don't fast physically. We just fast spiritually It's like 40 day fast every three months Not reading the bible. Why just don't have time. It's just it's really busy. You don't understand I'm a single mom. I got kids. You don't understand. I have three jobs. You just don't you just don't understand I might not understand your situation, but I do know you have a bigger problem. You have a spirit that's hungry for food And I want to challenge you if you need to cancel netflix if you need to cancel hulu if you need to cancel Spotify Whatever you need to get rid of from your soil all these thorns and all these rocks So the seed can penetrate and once the seed grows then let the seed decide what else is allowed in your life Because it's sharing too much distractions right now. Let those things go out So that your seed can penetrate I want hungry jan Not only to be a demon slay in church Not only to be a praying fasting church, but to be a church where our families our children are in god's word When I grew up in my family, you know my dad my mom gave us a children's bible Every single night before we went to bed. We all had to read the bible We all had to study the bible in our own way And then we had to finish it with praying and that instilled this thing where as a christian You are in god's word every single day as a child Not just cartoons god's word I want to challenge your parents today The world is after your kids The world wants to indoctrinate and brainwash your kids from a tender young age Don't think that they're not deserving god's word because god's word is for them. Did you have you notice who ate the bread? the kids They can also eat the word Just don't give him king james version Something simple amen Hey, thanks for watching this video If you enjoyed this content and this was a blessing to you Would you help us and hit thumbs up so that it could help more people to discover this video It cost you nothing But it can go a long way to help with the algorithm as well as if you're not subscribed to our channel Hit subscribe click on the bell so that you can be reminded each time that we upload videos Thank you so much for being a part of this community If you're interested in learning more about hungry jen our internship our conferences Deliverance and so many other things go to hungry jen.com for more information And as always remember better is not good enough. The best is yet to come