When I came to the Lord as a raw recruit, I knew nothing of Him, and zilch of the Bible. As soon as I began to read it, I realized I had to choose how to respond to it.

Was it all really true? Or mostly true, with some not true thrown in by fallible men — leaving me to sort it out?

I decided I had to begin by believing it was and is God’s truth. I chose to (1) read ALL of the Bible and (2) BELIEVE everything I read.

That led to one more choice: whether or not to SURRENDER to the Word. To what God says about Himself and to what He says is right.

The alternative is to passively read it as if it were like any other book, then walk away unchanged. It is easy to do, but make no mistake, this IS a choice.

God’s Word is, as it says, living and active:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12 (NASB)

The Bible is unlike any other printed work on the planet. How you respond to it is how you are responding to God Himself.

I had to choose, as you must, whether to let the Word of God change me. Was I going to adjust myself and let it all have complete authority over me?

My pastor husband told me that of all those he led to the Lord and watched grow, my growth amazed him most. I believe this is why: I read, I believed, I treasured, I gave God’s Word real authority over me and let it change me.

The most life changing thing I learned from God’s Word is that I needed His Spirit. That I could have His Spirit. That through Christ, God gave us His Spirit to dwell with us. That I had to invite His Spirit to come fill up my whole being.

When I did, He came, and He began to meet me in His Word. His presence changed everything about how I understood and interacted with His Word.

For those without the Spirit, or those who haven’t made up their mind about its truth and authority, the Bible can remain just words on a page. But for those who seek truth, who are willing to let His revealed truth set the standards and values for life, who let it dictate how to choose and live and be — God arises from His pages to meet, to strengthen, to show His pleasure, to educate, to enable.

God the Spirit meets me in His Word every time I go there.

Because of that, I have personally discovered the truth of what Jesus said in several parables: He who has, will be given more.

I have reverence and respect for the Word of God. I choose to read all of it because I want to know everything God reveals about Himself and His relationship to me. Reading the entire Bible gives the Holy Spirit a way to connect the dots for me, an experience that keeps building day by day and as I read through it yet another time.

If you’ve ever used a road map, you know how valuable it is to have a visual idea of where every place is in relation to every other place. I love maps!

One day I realized that in the course of traversing His Word through its breadth and length, the Spirit had been constructing a marvelous map in my soul, revealing little known intersections of His truth, love and grace. They could not have been discovered by a little casual reading here or there.

He connects something in Psalms to a verse in the New Testament, then cross references it with a story in Numbers, which all together illuminate God’s ways with men… with me… with the disobedient… with the enemies of His kingdom and rule. The kind of stuff you can’t find with a concordance or looking up every instance of words like “justice” or “love.” Because illustrations of how God expresses both justice and love are vast and often don’t even include the word.

Altogether, it feels like the Spirit is letting me in on secrets. It has been said that God doesn’t hide things from us, He hides things for us. The Word itself confirms this for us when it says,

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2 (NASB)

We are not kings, you and I, but as children of the Most High God, we are royalty. The glory of someone refers to their high honor, their supreme ability, the thing they take pride in.

The Spirit reveals His mysteries to me because I look for His treasures. I don’t read doubting, I read on tiptoes of expectation. His Word enriches my soul. It guides me when I don’t even have it with me. It is better than the voice of my mother nagging and the warning in my daddy’s eyes if I contemplated misbehaving. It is rich with love. It builds hope. It describes my invisible God.

The Bible is the Word of my Lord and friend, the Spirit. Choosing to become a student of God’s word is the second most life-giving gift I given myself. The first, of course, was believing in Jesus Christ.

Like everyone else, I encounter unfathomable things, uncomfortable things that make me squirm. Words and commands that ask more of me than I want to give. Still, I choose to trust them while waiting to understand them. I chose to honor them as the living words of my Father, my Savior, my King.

The Word of God has changed me, challenged me, pruned me. Without exception, I’ve received more than I have ever given up in surrendering my life to God’s Word.

I have more life and more abundance of heart. I have found unexpected freedom — from things I had always clung to, but which, it turns out, were fencing me in, weighing me down, holding me back from life.

God’s Word is a treasure. Men poured out their lifeblood so you could have it. People in some countries fight one another to possess even one page from it. Go read it. Read every word, every page, and then read it again. It’s a treasure whose value increases every time you touch it with love and faith.