Prayer and the Scriptures daily are indeed vital.
Prayer is or should be a conversation with our Lord Jesus Christ!!!
That is absolutely vital!!
Yet if a conversation and if in fact He is your Lord - then listening to what He actually says to you is what you are to do!!!
There is a very good change that He is going to tell you to read something in the Bible so He can go over it with you - but He might also have other plans based on what is the right thing to do that day!!
How does someone not understand this?? Is it because they don't actually seek Him, but have made prayer about sending a request off to some far off placed called heaven - like a person might have their child write to Santa Claus in the North Pole?
Romans 10: 6-11 But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: “DO NOT SAY IN YOUR HEART, ‘WHO WILL ASCEND INTO HEAVEN?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” But what does it say? “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus
as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, “WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”
We are believing in HIM, Jesus Christ!! And we are believing is raised from the dead, alive, and so His words to us are near us!! We are believing that He is there with us to tells us what we need to do "Today" And with that belief we find that He is there with us and does talk to us, and does give us instructions, as our Lord! He is not dead! He is not in some far off placed called Heaven, so that we have to send off our prayers to Him hoping that at some point He will get them - like a letter sent off to a far-off fictional character.
So it is that His sheep hear His voice, and the day to do it is "Today", since He is with us!
Heb 3:7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,
“TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE,
Of course, we hear His voice "Today", because the word is near us, in our hearts and mouths.
Yet some write prayer books, instead of just talking with Him. Some may prayer and reading the Scriptures a religious rule as opposed to actually talking to Him and listen to His words with are near you! Some search the Scriptures thinking that will give them eternal life as opposed to actually seeking Him and what He - the Great I Am - as to say to them.
Moses went over this with a people who said, "Let not God speak to us" - Paul went over this with a people who Jesus said did not hear His voice. Isaiah started off by writing:
Is 1:2 Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth; For the LORD speaks,
“Sons I have reared and brought up, But they have revolted against Me.
“An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger,
But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.”
An the Pharisees, like Saul, studied the writings faithfully, prayed, and kept to the traditions, but when the Lord spoke Saul had no idea who He was.
Acts 9: 4-5 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He
said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,
Now the first words I heard the Lord tell me were, "Read Your Bible", and so I did. I learned a lot from reading it, and the most important thing I learned since then was that He is always with me - so I can talk to Him. He normally likes to have me spend some time in the morning with me. So I sit in my favorite chair, I tend to pray the Lord's prayer with some extras and proceed to ask Him what He wants to go over. He wants me to have my Bible present at that time - but not always does it go that way!! He usually starts talking to me when I get up, and sometimes He wants that we should take a walk and talk, as opposed to talking to me while I sit in that chair. I don't carry my Bible with me on the walks, but we talk as we walk. There have been times when He has had me skip all that for different reasons - like perhaps I have a lot of things like my business or sometimes He wants a post made on this forum. Not every day is the same but everyday called "Today" I listen to Him!
People - it is not about knowing your Bible, it is about knowing Him, Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords and King of kings!!!
You will almost certainly get to know much about what is written in the Bible, if you do actually get to know Him. But if you think it is about the Bible, why then to you not believe what is written in it? It explains that you must seek Him and listen to Him!! It explains that His sheep hear His voice, and that He leads them out with His voice. And Jesus told those people in front of Him while He was in the flesh:
Jn 54:46,47 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
If they had believed Moses, they would have known Him before He took on flesh and came down out of heaven, because they would have been hearing from Him then. Anna knew Him. Simeon knew Him even though He just appear as a small child to them - because they had been listening to the word of God, as opposed to leaning on their own understanding! Yet those religious people who depended on their pious prayers, their leaning their study of the Scriptures, and all the other religious routines they had did not know Him. The routines might be helpful, but if helpful they help you to remember to actually seek Him and what he has to say to you!
Is 29:12 Then the book will be given to the one who is illiterate, saying, “Please read this.” And he will say, “I cannot read.”
Is 29:13 Then the Lord said,
“Because this people draw near with their words
And honor Me with their lip service,
But they remove their hearts far from Me,
And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned
by rote,
Can we not read the Bible and understand it tells us to listen to the Lord?
It is the conversations back and forth with Him by faith that saves us, because faith comes from hearing a word from Him, not from saying a prayer by routine or from reading your Bible!
Is 1:15“So when you spread out your hands
in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you;
Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen.
So it is not the prayer of the reading but the reasoning back and forth with Him, which requires you listen to Him!
Is 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD,
“Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.
So your prayers mean nothing if not accompanied with the faith that He is there to answer you with His voice! And your routine of reading your Bible daily means nothing if you don't seek Him for teaching! His words are spirit, not ink on pages, and His words your personally hear from His Holy Spirit mean life to you!
Jn 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
Still the religious person thinks their religious routines will save them. They might say Jesus Christ is Lord, but they don't confess Him as their Lord because they don't actually get instructions from Him! If they did they would know you can actually say that you have to read the Bible every day, because He makes that decision not them, if He is actually their Lord!
