How to Make the Scriptures Come Alive • Deshen Daily

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit… (Hebrews 4:12 KJV)

As discussed in God the Word, the Word of God is present today with us as the Bible or the scriptures—knowledge in written literature. How can we turn inert, dead written letters into the powerful and living Word of God?

Though the Bible is everywhere, yet God hides in plain sight: many know the Scriptures and never experience God in them. Someone can read the scriptures, fill their heads with theology, and yet never come to know God or experience what those words are talking about.

The first foundational truth in making the scriptures come alive is to understand that the Holy Spirit is the life of the scriptures. Scripture is lifeless, like any newspaper or textbook out there, without the breath of the Spirit; the scriptures will not work as the Word of God until the Holy Spirit is involved. So the essential question is this: how do I get the Holy Spirit to breathe divine life to the lifeless knowledge in scriptures?

The Holy, as the life of God, works through the knowledge of God. He is not only the Spirit of power but the Spirit of knowledge or wisdom (Isaiah 11:2). The recent Deshen Daily devotional titled “The Ink of the Spirit” described the mysterious relationship between the Word of God (as knowledge to us today) and the Holy Spirit: written letters, like the words you are reading, are simply the result of the ink taking different forms on paper!

The Holy Spirit breathes life unto the lifeless scriptures through two capacities of the human heart: understanding and believing. The person of Jesus shows up when the Spirit breathes life unto the scriptures in our hearts as we understand and believe the knowledge of God we hear or read.

I have condensed so much in that brief devotional above and minimized explanations. Please ensure you fully grasp every single sentence and paragraph.

The Bible can be a dead theological or religious book or the living God expressing His presence and power in your life through knowledge. Do not be satisfied to read and memorize that Christ is in you—experience His presence. Similarly, do not be pleased by learning about healing or quoting “by His stripes I am healed”—receive that healing. The scriptures are there to bring us into the experience of the living God—God the Word! Let them come alive in you!

Ask the Father to teach you how to make the scriptures come alive.

Watch Deshen Live Bible Study on this topic: How to Make the Scriptures Come Alive.