How you doing? I'm Miles McPherson and welcome to the First Mile. Just after I
got out of college, I moved to San Diego to play football and the first thing I
did was buy a new car.
I practically lived in that thing. As soon as I got some time off,
I decided to drive all the way across country from San Diego to New York to
show it to my family and my boys.
Now this was long before GPS and because I didn't know how to get there, I needed
directions and a map. So I went to Triple-A and they gave me this. It's called
a TripTik.
This is a little booklet with a map on each page outlining my trip and sure
enough 2,300 miles and two and a half days later, I was a driving maniac.
I was in front of my house in Long Island, New York. Now that you accepted
Christ as your Savior, the question is do you have a map to guide you on your
spiritual journey?
What is the road map for your spiritual journey? In other words, do you have
directions on how to grow spiritually from where you are today to where you
want to be tomorrow?
From who you are today to who God wants you to be tomorrow?
How are you going to know how to react and deal with everything that's going to
come your way and do it in a way that pleases God? Like my trip to New York, God
is going to take your life on a spiritual journey that you've never
taken before and the map that he has given us is the Bible. Now even though
many people have a Bible, they don't know how to use it or how to get from it the
directions they need for everyday life. So I want to briefly tell you three
things about the Bible that you need to be aware of and then I'm going to give
you a tool to teach you how to read it and understand it.
The Bible says in the book of Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, "For the word of God
is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the
division of the soul and spirit of joints and marrow and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of your heart."
The first thing you need to know is God's Word is living. It's alive. It will
speak to you.
It will interact with you. It will challenge you. Second, God's Word is
powerful. God's word can change the way you think,
what you desire, how you see the world, it can transform your heart and third,
God's Word can discern and proceed what's really going on in your heart in
your mind. You cannot hide anything from it's truth.
So when you read the Bible, it's important to know and expect it to read
you.
and most importantly, transform you. Now the question is how do you understand it
and how do you read it?
I want to give you a free book called 21 Jump Start. This book is a gift to you
and it's designed to help teach you not only the basics of your relationship
with God, but also how to read and begin to understand the Bible. It is a devotional
through the book of John which conveniently has 21 chapters. If you
do anything 21 days in a row, you will form a new habit.
So today's challenge is to complete one chapter per day for 21 days. Basically
finish the book, by reading one chapter a day and if you do that, you'll be forming one
of the most important habits of your life, reading and understanding the Bible.
If you accept this challenge, follow the instructions at the end of this video,
so we can be praying for you.
In addition to your free copy of 21 Jump Start, the resource section has more
messages about the Bible, how to understand it and my free devotional app
called, Miles-A-Minute where you're going to get a one-minute video every single day for
a year and super bowl-winning quarterback, Drew Brees' testimony.
So check it out and God bless you.