(upbeat music) - Well, we're gonna close out the week with a good, honest question from a podcast listener named Seth. Hello, Pastor John. I believe intellectually that learning about God can provide a greater joy than whatever temporary pleasures I may get from the many distractions that this world has to offer, and I have experienced times in my life where it has.

However, these times are generally short-lived and expire very quickly. Could you give me some tips on how to be more satisfied in the things of the Lord than in the things of the world, and in a way that endures? I know that spending hours watching television or playing games throughout the day is a waste of my time, yet I struggle to stop doing these things.

Please help, Pastor John. - Well, let me begin by congratulating Seth with the simple and glorious fact that he believes there are such things as things of the Lord. That very phrase causes some younger Christians to just gag because they're on a crusade to demonstrate that all things are the things of the Lord, so why are you talking about being more happy in things of the Lord?

Well, it is true that the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, and in that sense, all things are things of God, but we all know that there's a difference between balancing your checkbook and pondering a sweet promise of God. We know there's a difference between the rising of the stock market and the saving of a soul through the gospel, and we know that our joys ought to be greater in a promise than in a balanced checkbook, and we know that our joy ought to be greater in the salvation of a soul than the rising of the stock market, so Seth is onto something, and he's onto something because he's onto the Bible.

For example, Colossians 3, "If then you have been raised with Christ, "seek the things that are above, "where Christ is seated at the right hand of God." Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth, so there's a difference, and he's asking, "How can I delight more in things that are above, "not the things that are on the earth?" Or Matthew 16, 23, Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me, "for you are setting your mind on the things of man "and not the things of God." So Jesus made that distinction, or 1 Corinthians 2, 11, Paul says, "No one comprehends the things of God "except the Spirit of God." So congratulations, Seth, for asking an important question in biblical categories that are incredibly important.

So you ask, "Could you give me some tips "as to how to be more satisfied in the things of the Lord "than the things of the world?" And I think maybe the most helpful thing I could do is to bring you into something God is teaching me afresh at age 70 that I should not have to be taught again after 60 years as a Christian.

So I have one tip for you, I'm sorry, just one. Can do this again another time for more tips, but this is the one that's just so front burner for me right now. And I'm gonna give you one tip and then six reasons for why it really matters. Here's the tip.

When you read your Bible every day, pause before you read and earnestly, with as much heartfelt longing as you can muster, pray to God that he would come and meet you in the reading of Scripture and open the eyes of your heart and show you what is really there and make himself real and bring about amazing changes in your life.

Or to put it very simply, pray earnestly about the reading of Scripture just before you read the Scripture. It's amazing, after all these years, how many times I simply start reading without praying. And I can tell the difference profoundly. So here's what I believe you can expect if you do this.

Number one, in answer to this prayer about the Word of God, as you begin to read, or the sheer fact of prayer, God creates a supernatural atmosphere. He opens you to the fact that this moment is not just about you and a book, it's about you and the living God.

By his Spirit, encountering his very voice, experiencing his supernatural presence in a manifest way, many Christians long for supernatural experiences, and this is one that you can ask for and expect. Number two, in answer to this prayer about the Bible, as you begin to read the Bible, God will open the eyes of your heart to see things in the Word that you would not otherwise see.

You have not because you ask not, applies to Bible reading, and you have because you ask, applies to the very words of the Bible. The very words of the Bible will take on new dimensions. They will signify things, point to things, awaken you to the reality of things that would otherwise not be so.

You wouldn't see them otherwise. Most of us are blind to the glories embedded by God in the very words that he has given us as we read them so casually. Reading the word Spirit, the word glory, the word cross, sin, without praying is one experience. Reading those words after praying may be cataclysmically different, a different kind of seeing in those same words.

Number three, if you pray, God will open your heart to feel the preciousness of glorious things and the horror of evil things that you would not otherwise feel. Most of us do not feel emotions that accord with the realities we're thinking about. This is a work of the Spirit, and he does it in answer to prayer.

Number four, in answer to this prayer over the Bible, before we read it, God will work changes in you that you would not otherwise experience. I mean, changes in your warfare with sin, changes in your desires for holiness, changes in your habits that need conquering, and changes in your capacities for relationships, and changes in your experience of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control.

Where do these come from? They come from the work of the Spirit in and through the word, and I'm arguing, if you ask him, he will do this. Number five, if you pray this prayer at the beginning of your Bible reading, God will, from time to time, provide the very guidance and leading that you have been longing for in regard to big decisions in your life.

God delights to bring fresh vision and guidance into the life of his children while they're spending time with him and his word, and he does it if we ask him to help us as we read. And finally, number six, in answer to that prayer over our reading, before we read, God will give you a fresh sense of his reality.

I know this because it happens to me. It happened to me this morning in a wonderful way. I was reading Psalm 122, and I read the phrase, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," and my thought turned, and I totally was not expecting or planning this, my thought turned not to the political situation in the Middle East, but to the desperate lostness of millions and millions of Jewish people, right here in my city and around America as well as around the world, the millions of Jewish people who reject Jesus as their Messiah.

Jesus made it so clear during his lifetime that if people, including Jewish people, reject him, they reject life. And the reality of God, the God of Israel, the God of salvation, the God of heaven and hell, the God who will one day lift the veil off of Israel and take away the hardness of heart became so real to me.

And I prayed earnestly that God would open the eyes of Jewish people and show me how I can be better used in this way. I was totally unready for this experience at that moment when I read that phrase. And I hope and I pray it will have an ongoing effect on me, and I think God did that because I had paused and prayed that God would speak to me during this psalm through his inspired words.

So Seth, that's my one tip, and I'll say it again. When you read your Bible every day, pause before you read, and earnestly, with as much heartfelt longing as you can muster, pray to God that he would come and meet you in the reading of Scripture and open the eyes of your heart and show you what is really there and make himself real and bring about amazing changes in your life.

- Thank you, Pastor John, for this simple but profoundly important tip for Bible reading and to fuel our delight in God. May God open our eyes to behold wonderful things in his word. Well, it is time for the weekend and time for us to break, but on Monday, we return to the topic of Scripture because we have a listener who wants to know if the circumstances of Paul's epistles, the letters that he wrote to very specific people and very specific cities and into very specific sets of circumstances, does all of that specificity render those epistles less relevant for our lives today?

And how would we know? It's a good question. John Pepper will pick it up on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)