Bibles For America Podcast

We discussed previously how we were created by God for His own purpose and plan but became fallen, sinful, and unable to live in a way that fulfills God’s plan. The consequences of the fall of mankind are tragic, and we see the effect both in our own lives and everywhere we look today. But God can never be defeated! And though frustrated, God’s plan cannot be derailed. In His wisdom, God took three tremendous steps to carry out His original plan of imparting His eternal life into us so we could share His life and express Him. First, God became a man named Jesus Christ. Two verses in John tell us the first step God took. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” When we put these two verses together, we see something remarkable. The Word—who is God—became flesh. God became a man! This first step of God becoming a man is known as incarnation. Consider how amazing that first step was.

As human beings we, of course, have a physical heart. But we’re all aware that we also have something within us we recognize as an intangible heart. But what exactly is this intangible heart? We’ve heard the word heart used since we were young, in everyday language, in literature, in music, and in other contexts. And most of us probably have a general definition of the heart, thinking of it as something inside us that feels emotions like love, affection, compassion, or sorrow. The definition of the heart in the Bible isn’t given in one verse; it’s spread throughout many verses and can be easy to miss. Since the Bible refers to the heart hundreds of times, it must be significant to God and to us. So what does the Word of God say about our heart? And what is its importance to God and to us? If you search online for heart you’ll find details on the physical heart, with photos and diagrams explaining its function and the way it works. You’ll also find a lot of information on caring for it so you can live longer.

This is the last podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. In the foregoing podcasts in this series, we’ve seen that God gave us two precious gifts—His Word and His Spirit—and that these two are actually one. It is a glorious fact that God has become accessible and communicable to us as the Spirit embodied in the Word, but this fact remains objective to us if we do not exercise our spirit to contact the Spirit in the Word. In this podcast, we’ll take a look at how we can receive the Spirit in the Word through the exercise of our human spirit. It’s best for believers to have two times each day to read the Bible—one to meditate on and pray over the Word to receive spiritual nourishment, and one to study and understand the Scriptures. At all times, however, we must remember that the Word and the Spirit are one. We must continually endeavor not merely to touch the letter of the

This is the sixth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. In our previous podcast, we pointed out that it is helpful to have two separate periods of time for reading the Bible. We should have time to meditate on the Word, praying and praising as we read and receiving spiritual food; it’s best to have this time in the morning. The other time of reading the Bible can be at any time of day and is for understanding and learning more about God’s Word. In this podcast, we’ll talk more about this second time—our time for studying the Bible. We must exercise our mind to study and understand the Bible. However, even when we study the Word, we must realize that the Word and the Spirit are one. To understand only the letter of the Bible is not our goal; rather, each time we read we must endeavor to touch and receive the Spirit in the Word. For us to ascertain the facts in the Bible r

This is the fifth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. Last time, we began to look at how to read the Bible. God has given us two precious gifts—the Word and the Spirit; actually, these two things are one. Thus, we need to read the Bible not by any particular method, but by prayer, exercising our human spirit to touch the divine Spirit in the Word. As we come to the Word in prayer, we should love the Lord who is the Word and who spoke the Word. Then we can use our mind to grasp the facts, meanings, interpretations, and significances of the Word. As we do so, we should be ready to heed the Spirit’s speaking and obey the truths in the Bible. Ideally, we ought to read in this way a fixed amount of God’s Word each day. In this podcast, we’ll go on to consider ourselves—the readers of God’s Word. We may not realize that we ourselves affect what we perceive when we read the W

This is the fourth podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. We’ve received two precious gifts from God—His Word and His Spirit. The Word reveals God to us so that we can know Him, and the Spirit transmits God to us so that we can possess Him. The Spirit without the Word is intangible, while the Word without the Spirit is mere letter. God’s Word makes the intangible Spirit substantial to us, and God’s Spirit makes the Word of God living to us. The Bible makes known to us the things of the Spirit, and the Spirit makes real to us the things in the Bible. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are one. Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” clearly indicating that God’s Word is His Spirit exhaled. Thus, the logical way for us to take in God’s Word is to breathe in the Spirit who is incorporated in the breathed-out Word. Since the Word is embodied in the Spiri

This is the third podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. In the first episode, we discussed some of the benefits of reading the Bible and looked at what the Word of God is. In the second episode, we presented five of the functions of the Bible in our experience. First, the Bible is part of our initial experience of God, making us wise unto salvation. Next, the Bible is our food. The Bible also gives us light. Fourth, the Bible waters and refreshes us. And last, the Bible enables us to have God’s instant speaking. In this podcast we’ll consider some of the results of reading the Bible. To live the Christian life we need to read the Bible. We cannot survive without the provisions in the Word. Moreover, through reading the Word, all of our spiritual problems—our real problems—are solved. The Bible is the answer to our questions. How do I enjoy the Lord? How do I escape the w

This is the second podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. In our previous podcast we highlighted some of the benefits of reading the Bible and covered five points concerning what the Bible is. First, the Word is God Himself. Second, all Scripture is God-breathed. Next, the Bible is the complete revelation of God to man. Fourth, the content of the Bible is truth and life. And fifth, the Word of God is life. Now we’ll go on to consider some of the functions of the Bible in our experience. Having seen more of what the Bible is, we can realize that it is unique among all books in that we can experience it. The Bible is a book of divine revelation, truth, and life. What other book is filled with divine life—life that we can obtain and enjoy? By God’s mercy, we have a tangible book that opens the way to all spiritual experience. By reading the Bible in a habitual and proper way

This is the first podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible. The Bible is the foundation of Western civilization—morally, politically, literarily. Even the secular world recognizes the Bible as the most influential book in the world. It is the highest in its record of the origin of mankind, human history, and prophecies and in its wisdom, profoundness, ethics, and morality. While these qualities are compelling enough reasons to read the Bible, they cannot compare with the amazing fact that God Himself is embodied and expressed in His Word. But God does not want His words to remain confined in a book, and He tells us so in the Word: John 15:7 says, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you.” And Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” God’s destination is our inward being, and He gets there through His Word. By reading the Bible with our spirit,

Lusts—we all have them and we’re all susceptible to them. We can never be safe from them while we’re in these earthly bodies. This is because in the fall of the entire human race, the pure physical body God created for us became the sinful flesh, full of lusts. We believers are not exempt from this fact. Certainly, when we believed in Jesus Christ, we were forgiven of our sins and saved eternally. We became God’s children, born again with His divine life. But though our spirit was regenerated, our body was not. The sinful lusts in our flesh remain. That believers still have the lusts of the flesh is proved by many verses in the New Testament, but in this podcast we’ll focus on 2 Timothy 2:22. Here Paul was not speaking to an unbeliever. He gave this word to a young man named Timothy, his brother in the Lord and co-worker in serving the Lord: “But flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” If the lusts of the flesh were no longer a pr

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Many of us have heard these words of the Lord Jesus from Matthew 5:8. But what did He mean? Did He mean that a person who is pure in heart would physically see God, or have a mystical vision of God? What does having a pure heart have to do with seeing God? And isn’t God unapproachable and therefore unseeable? How do we see God? We have the answer in 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 6. Verse 4 says: “In whom the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine on them.” And verse 6 says: “Because the God who said, Out of darkness light shall shine, is the One who shined in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” These verses point out that Christ is the very image of God, and that we can see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The very God became a man, our Lord Jesus Christ, and now in Christ, we

A professor at a world-renowned American university regularly inquired at the beginning of his course, “If you could ask God one question, what would it be?” Students routinely answered that they’d ask for money or material things. But on one occasion a student responded, “I’d ask God, What’s the purpose of my life?” This was right after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. In the wake of cataclysmic events such as 9/11, horrific campus violence, huge earthquakes, killer hurricanes, devastating tsunamis, and unprecedented economic collapse, questions about life that lie deep down in us make their way to the surface. Eventually the trauma subsides, and life, as it must, goes on. We’re occupied with the usual college pursuits of studies, sports, a busy social life, and a plethora of campus activities. But in moments of quiet reflection, if we’re honest with ourselves, the big question haunts us—What is the meaning of my life? Students are attending college in an era of unprecedented social liber

When we believed in Jesus Christ, we were forgiven by God and delivered from eternal judgment. Not only so, we were also born again, regenerated with the life of God in our spirit. We thank the Lord for these wonderful realities! What tremendous mercy God had on us! But let’s take a moment to ask, Why? Why did God save us? Why did He regenerate us? Going back even further, why did God create us to begin with? Our general view of God may be that He is kind, loving, and full of compassion; that as Almighty God, He has everything He needs and lacks nothing; that He is a benevolent Being, whose main role is to care for the needs of His creatures, namely us human beings. God wants to keep me safe, help me get good grades, arrange for me a great job, find me the perfect spouse, solve my problems—the list goes on. When this is our view of God, our prayers naturally revolve around ourselves. We ask Him for things that meet our needs or fulfill our wants. And when it comes to knowing God’s will, we usually pray, “God,

By the step of transmission, God’s breath, from its intangible reality, was received and recorded as written text, readable and knowable by mankind. The next step, Bible translation, involved the process of freeing the written manuscripts from the confines of their ancient tongues and rendering them into modern languages. The capstone of receiving and translating the Bible is understanding the intended meaning of its contents. The Bible may be translated into our language but for us to understand what we’re reading, we need the proper interpretation. God’s Word is food to us (Matt. 4:4), yet for it to nourish us we need the Word to be opened to us, bringing us into proper understanding. Therefore, in Psalm 119:16 and 130, the Psalmist delighted not only in the Lord’s word (Psa. 119:16) but also in the “opening of [the] words,” which “gives light, / Imparting understanding to the simple” (verse 130). Proper spiritual interpretation opens the Word so that we can perceive its proper meaning. Hermeneutics is the

This is the second podcast in a special, three-part series on the history of the Bible. Where did the Bible come from? How did it come to be in English and so many other languages? Knowing the history of this most precious Book will increase our appreciation of the written Word of God and its availability to us today, and will motivate us to treasure the Bible and read it regularly. In this podcast we’ll consider the translation of the Bible. How did the Bible survive and spread throughout all of human history? It is no small matter that today we can read the Bible in a language we understand. Although the Word of God had been completely transmitted and recorded for hundreds of years, for a long time almost no one was able to read it. First Timothy 2:3-4 says, “Our Savior God, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth.” For all men to receive salvation and come to the full knowledge of the truth, they must be able to apprehend the salvation revealed in the Bible and unders

This is the first podcast in a special, three-part series on the history of the Bible. Where did the Bible come from? How did it come to be in English and so many other languages? Knowing the history of this most precious Book will increase our appreciation of the written Word of God and its availability to us today, and will motivate us to treasure the Bible and read it regularly. The Bible is the greatest book in the universe. Much more than merely a Christian book of morals and stories, the Bible is the speaking of God to man. But how did the Word of our God, recorded so long ago, reach us in its written form? The Bible has taken an incredible journey—from God’s mouth to our hands. To grasp the magnitude and preciousness of this journey, we will look into the three major steps by which the Bible reached us: transmission, translation, and interpretation. By the first step of the journey, transmission, God communicated His word to man by speaking to man; this speaking was recorded and preserved in written fo

We human beings are complicated. Every one of us is unique, with different backgrounds and personalities. But with respect to how God created us, we’re actually all the same. The Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that we were all created with three basic parts: a spirit, a soul, and a body: “And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We can illustrate man’s three parts with a simple diagram. Picture three concentric circles; the outermost circle represents the body as the visible part of our being; in the middle, the second circle represents the soul as our inward part; and the central, smallest circle represents our spirit as our innermost, hidden part. Let’s consider each of these three parts and their corresponding functions. Our body through its five senses contacts the visible, touchable, tangible things of the material world. It’s the most outward and visible part of our being

In Philippians 4:6, we’re given a seemingly impossible command: “In nothing be anxious.” Each of us has a long list of anxiety-inducing circumstances—relationship issues, financial woes, naughty children, pressure at work, no work, and so on. And in addition to our personal life, the world today seems to manufacture large-scale anxiety-inducing events—economic uncertainty, war, social upheaval—delivered to us on a conveyor belt of 24-hour news coverage. Is God’s command outdated or unreasonable, given so many difficulties? God’s Word is unchanging, and its truth stands, uninfluenced by circumstances and changing times. So as believers, we have to take this command seriously. But how can we obey such a command? How is it possible not to be anxious in anything? We need to look at what precedes this command and what follows it. One principle of studying the Bible is to never isolate a verse and interpret it on its own. Context is important. What precedes “In nothing be anxious” is Philippians 4:5, one of the mos

When it comes to the Bible, we’re familiar with words like “read” and “study.” But we might not be accustomed to the word “eat.” “Eating the Bible” may sound strange to us, yet God gave us His Word to be our spiritual food. So though we may read and study God’s Word, if we don’t eat it as food, we’ll be spiritually hungry and, as a result, weak in our Christian life. In this podcast we’ll discuss the necessary and enjoyable practice of eating the Word of God. Let’s say we haven’t eaten for a while; we’re really hungry and even faint from the lack of food. Suddenly, we catch a whiff of a delectable aroma floating by. It’s a pleasant scent, but we remain as hungry as ever. Smelling the aroma of food isn’t enough. We have to get to the food and eat it to be satisfied and strengthened. Being inspired by something we read in the Bible is kind of like smelling a delectable aroma. It’s not that we get nothing at all; we just aren’t satisfied; nothing spiritually “sticks to our ribs.” To eat the Word of God, we have

Athens, around A.D. 50—leading city of ancient Greece and center of one of the greatest cultures the world has ever known. Yet in this city famous for learning and philosophy stood an altar bearing the inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” Within every human being persists a desire to worship something. But without knowing what we are to worship, we may worship the wrong object, construct an object to worship, or like the Athenians, simply conclude that we worship someone, even though we don’t know who it is we worship. One day Paul, a man sent by God to speak the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, came to Athens. He spoke to the Athenians to tell them that God is a knowable God. What Paul spoke in Athens two thousand years ago is just as relevant to us today. Paul said that God is the One who made the world and everything in it. As the Creator, He is also the Lord, the owner, of heaven and earth. This living God does not live in a temple made with human hands. Nor is He a being that is according to the thought