4 Steps to Putting the Bible into Practice This Week

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As Christians, we are responsible for putting the Bible into daily practice is. If we don’t take the time to apply it, Scripture becomes nothing more to us than a collection of old manuscripts. Paul reminds us, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9). When we put the Bible into daily practice, God will be with us. Information without application becomes stagnation. One of the first steps towards applying God’s Words in our lives is reading it. The reason we do this is so that we can get to know God, learn His ways, and to understand His purpose not only for this world, but also for us individually. There is incredible power in reading Scripture daily and the knowledge we receive from it serves as a foundation for applying biblical principles to our lives. If you’re ready to stop merely agreeing with the Bible and start putting it into practice, here are four steps in the right direction.

Get in the Word

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That should be self-explanatory, and we all would say this is important, but less than half of us actually read our Bibles once a week, much less every day. If you’ve never really read the Bible before start with the book of John. It’s the fourth book of the New Testament, you can find it in your Table of Contents. It tells the story of the life of Jesus. Read a chapter a day. That will take you three weeks. When you’re finished, you can keep going to the next book, the book of Acts, which will take you a month to finish. When you’re done with that, look on the Bible app and follow one of the hundreds of Bible reading plans out there. It all starts with getting in the Word every day. The instructional manual to your life is right there. You just have to pick it up and start reading.

Always Leave the Bible With a Next Step

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This is critical, and this is where the classical Sunday School approach can do more harm than good. Growing up for me, Sunday School was all about information transfer. I went to Sunday School to learn more about the Bible, which in and of itself isn’t bad, but it can’t be the final goal. Remember what Jesus said, it’s not enough to merely hear the Word of God, we have to put it into practice. And that’s why the phrase ‘next step’ is so important to this blog. When you read the Bible, don’t just ask “What does God want me to know?” You need to also ask “What does God want me to do?” Before you put your Bible down, you need to have a next step. How will what you just read change your day, in a big way or small way?