WHY YOU WANT TO READ THE BIBLE

 

Dr. Dan Montgomery

As a Clinical Psychologist for 40 years, as well as an ordained Christian minister and theologian, I offer up my lifetime assessment of Homo Sapiens historically and today: 

That apart from God’s grace and guidance, 

we human beings are vain, fickle, and recalcitrant. 

I share this view with world famous existential psychologist Rollo May, who coined this phrase and personally shared it with me 40 years ago.
 

I still commend these classic Rollo May books: The Art of Counseling; Psychology and the Human Dilemma; Love and Will; Power and Innocence; Courage to Create); and The Discovery of Being. 

Are Dr. May and I alone in this assessment? Are we overly pessimistic? 

Or are we reflecting the view of humankind revealed in the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis through Revelation? 

Read the Bible cover to cover this month, 

without rationalist, humanist, or liberal-progressive agendas, 

and find out for yourself. 

The New International Version (NIV), New Living Testament (NLT), and The Message (MSG) are solid and current translations. BibleGateway offers excellent online resources. 

The Bible portrays the universal human condition as sin-filled and estranged from the holiness and purposes of God: individuals who do what’s right in their own eyes:

 "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes 

and clever in their own sight"  
(Isaiah 5:21 NIV)

They follow a pathway that seems rational or ethical or religious to them, but lacks a holy relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: A personal relationship, one that replaces rote lip service to a static image of the Trinity for the vibrant Triune God who created this Cosmos, yes, but who longs for each person of every culture or belief or DNA or sex, to know Him personally and trust him in all life choices.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Three Persons in One God, invite us to live a Spirit-led daily life in conversation with Him about the most intimate goings on in our lives. 

“Lord, I pray to you for help in my relationship with my daughter. We’re picking at each other too much. Please reveal a path for us that I can understand.” 

The Trinitarian God invites us, beseeches us, to engage Him twenty fours hours a day, 365 days a year, decade after decade—until in death we each meet Him face to face. 

At that point, we are either excluded from His eternal presence as a consequence of impenitent lifelong sin (Hell), or we are included in the glorious company of the redeemed, born again individuals who know, trust, and obey the Lord God Almighty (Heaven).
 
My suggestion to all seven billion or so persons who currently inhabit Planet Earth? 

Seek the Lord while He may be found, 

for today is the day of salvation.

 

SEEKING JESUS

If you haven’t received His blood atonement for your sins, pray for this free gift of new life in the Spirit and grace-filled reconciliation to God. 

This gift comes if you confess in your mind and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ gave his Life and Blood on the Cross as a once-and-for-all atonement for your sins so that you can: 

• have life in Him, and have it more abundantly.
• know the truth that sets you free
• follow the resurrected and spiritually ascended Jesus

 You make Jesus the Lord of your life by doing the Father’s will in loving God with your whole human nature, and loving your neighbor (the Family of Humanity) as you love yourself” (Luke 10:27).

God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God. 
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God. 

2 Corinthians: 6:16-18 (MSG)