I’d like to begin with a story of something that happened to a team of missionaries in Mongolia. Some of you know that my wife and I spent 10 years in Mongolia where I managed a television station and ran a field ministry sharing the gospel in the Mongolian countryside. Our countryside ministry consisted of showing a series of Bible films to tell the story of the Bible and then do Bible studies after each film to introduce people to Christ. Every month, our team would go out to various cities in the Mongolian countryside communities with maybe less than 500 people at a time, share the films and share the gospel. In one instance, the team was traveling from community to community showing the movies and doing the studies on a circuit. As they did that, some people would leave the community and travel to the next community and tell them these missionaries are coming with Bible movies, you’re gonna want to see these Bible movies. So it got to the point at their last stop when a whole community was literally waiting for them as they drove into town so they could see the Bible movies. They were excited about seeing the story of the Bible. Mongolians are very superstitious, so though the majority aren’t Christians, they have respect for spiritual things.
As they were setting up the projector and other equipment to show the first movie something terrible happened. There was a power surge, and the power surge blew out the projector. A big puff of smoke rose from the projector. It was fried. At that time we didn’t have backups and so there was nothing they could do. They could not show the movies. When they announced to the crowd of about 200 people they couldn’t show the movies because the projector had burned out, the people got angry. They started yelling. They started shaking their fist at our missionaries. They began to pick up their chairs and with their chairs, they rushed the stage and pinned our guys against the wall. They were going to beat our missionaries with the chairs over the situation.
Before they struck, the people said to the missionaries, “We want to see those Bible movies, you better promise to come back and show us those Bible movies or else!” Of course our guys said, “Yes of course, yes we promise we’ll come back.” And so that promise saved them for being beaten with a bunch of metal chairs over not showing some Bible movies.
About two weeks later, our team went with a new projector and equipment to show the Bible movies and saw many people come to faith in Christ.
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There are places in the world where people want to hear the story of the Bible. There are places in the world we’re getting to know the story of the Bible is more important to some people than anything else in their lives. So let me ask a question.
How important is the Bible in your life?
Did you know that there is a direct correlation between how well you know your Bible and how intimate you are with God?
What does it mean to be intimate with God? How would you characterize your relationship with the Lord? Would you say you understand him, that you know what motivates him? Would you classify your relationship with the Lord as intimate?
When the Bible refers to intimacy between two people it uses the term “know.” So and so “knew” someone. The use of the word, “know” when referring to intimacy and knowing God was experiential. Consider I John 2:14. “I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning.” By saying, “from the beginning,” John is noting that spiritual fathers have been intimate with God for a long time.
How is your time with the Lord?
There are two things we can do to increase our intimacy with the Lord. Spend more time in scripture. Spend more time in prayer.
Imagine a marriage where you only spend a few minutes a day with your spouse. You wouldn’t be very close or intimate, would you? Nothing beats time in a relationship. The same is true in your relationship with the Lord.
Prayer and intimacy are related. Prayer bares ourselves to God in an intimate way. Reading or studying the Bible isn’t enough. Prayer is the key to personal intimacy with God. And prayer isn’t enough. Scripture is the key to knowing God’s heart. Which is more important, scripture or prayer? That’s like asking, which is more important, inhaling or exhaling?
So, let me share with you my favorite passages of scripture, and a few stories from Mongolia, to help you along in your journey of intimacy with God.
I’ve never met a person who regretted spending more time in scripture and in prayer. It is like a marriage. The more time you spend with your spouse, the better you get to know and appreciate one another. It’s all about intimacy.
“For this is not an idle word for you, indeed, it is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:47).
Is the scripture your everyday priority? How do you know what takes priority in your life? You can determine that by analyzing what you spend your attention on. Aside from work, which takes up so much of our time, where does scripture fit into your day? Do you block out time everyday for Bible reading, study, and prayer? Does that happen in the morning or some other time of the day?
Now, let me step on a few toes.
Some people say, “I pray in the shower.” Others say “I pray when I drive.” And usually when they give those answers what they mean is, they don’t block out a specific time for just prayer or just Bible reading in their schedule. In other words, it’s a way of avoiding a concentrated time of prayer and fellowship with God that builds intimacy with him in an intentional way. Imagine someone saying, “Well, I talk to my wife when I drive.” But then they don’t talk to her at any other time. That wouldn’t make for a great relationship, would it?
Take a look at your morning habits. What is the first thing you do in your morning schedule? If you’re spending more time on social media than on God’s word, you may have a problem. If prayer is only a few minutes a day or less, then you have an intimacy problem.
Now, I know that I’ve just stepped on a few toes with these statements. But let’s remind ourselves what Moses says in Deuteronomy 32:47 when he says of the word of God, “this is your life.” What does that mean?
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When we concluded our time in Mongolia and our children were grown and we were preparing to return to the states, we went through a special off-boarding interview with our ministry of Cru. During the interview, the interviewer wanted to know the priorities in our relationship. And my wife said something that I’ll never forget. She said, “Tom is my whole life.” I was really taken aback when she said that. But the more I looked at our relationship the more I realized it was true. She always thought of me first, she always put my goals, and my dreams, and my aspirations first in her life. I was her whole life. And that motivated me, I wanted to make her my life too.
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Jesus Christ has made us his whole life. Let me make this more personal. Jesus Christ has made you his whole life. How do you want to respond to him?
When Moses says the scripture should be our whole life, he’s really telling us about intimacy with God. He’s telling us that Jesus Christ should be our whole life. And he should be the first priority in everything that we do, think, and say in all things throughout every day that we live. It really is like a marriage. Your spouse is your priority or not. And in our relationship with the Lord, his word and our relationship with him is our priority or it’s not. There doesn’t seem to be, in the scripture, any middle ground.
The more time we spend in scripture and prayer the more it will transform our lives.
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When we lived in Mongolia, our Mongolian missionaries went to a small community where they shared a hotel with a Buddhist monk who had traveled there from Tibet. The Buddhist monk would come up every three months and he would talk to the people in the community about their lives. The people would come and pay him money and then he would listen to their problems and he would tell them how to change their lives. He usually did this by telling them to perform certain religious rituals, and then they would have better crops, or their marriage would improve, or their kids would be more compliant or so on. There was only one problem. They’d listen to him, and they did what he said, but nobody’s life changed.
When our team arrived to show the Bible films the people of the community gathered to see them. As the Bible films were being shown, followed by Bible studies after each film, the people in the community began to get the idea that they didn’t need the Buddhist monk to change their lives. If they just did what the Bible said, they could change their own lives. They became so convinced of this that they began to act on what they learned from the Bible and came to the point where when the Buddhist monk came to take their money and listen to their problems the people in the community drove him out of town and he hasn’t been back since. A whole community was transformed because they gave priority to the Bible in their lives.
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For Mongolian Christians, and for many Mongolians in general, having the knowledge of the Bible was a very important thing. Many people wanted to know what the Bible really had to say about the important issues of life. While there were many Mongolians who did read the Bible, most Mongolians aren’t big readers. So they wanted to listen to the Bible or to watch it in some capacity on video. This gave us an idea for a television show that we could use to share the story of the Bible. It was really a very simple concept. The name of the program was, “What Does the Bible Say?” All it was was a daily half hour program, hosted by a Mongolian pastor or one of our staff, where for 30 minutes each day they would do nothing but read the text of the Bible. No commercials. No explanations. No sermons. Just reading the text of the Bible for 30 minutes.
Now you would think that’s something like that might be a little bit on the boring side. We didn’t use any fancy graphics. We just focused the camera on the speaker as he read the text, sometimes showing some countryside scenery. The program aired twice a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon before prime time. To our surprise, What Does the Bible Say became our number one program pulling more audience than all of our other programming. In fact, for both times slots, What Does the Bible Say was the number one watched show on television. People really did want to know what the Bible had to say about their lives.
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Let’s look at our second passage and notice something unique.
“Let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows and understands me. That I am the Lord who practices loving kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight” (Jeremiah 9:24).
Did you catch that? You can not only “know” the Lord (that’s intimacy), but you can “understand” him. Can you say you understand the Lord?
Imagine how awesome this really is. The incredible, holy, eternal God of the universe, who the universe cannot even contain, who is so far beyond us, who says in Isaiah that he ways are not our ways, that God says that we can understand him.
At the time the Old Testament was written, not including person and place names, there were only about 7,000 unique words in the Old Testament. Compare that with modern day English, where we use 14,000 words in our translation to help us describe things. There were fewer available words in Hebrew in the day the Bible was written, especially the Old Testament. God said, even with that limited vocabulary, that we can understand him. He uses the finite limitations of our human language, and says that by using that language, we can know him and really come to understand him.
In fact, the scripture says in I Corinthians 2:16 that “We have the mind of Christ.” We get to think God’s thoughts. How’s that for understanding him?
What does it mean to understand him? Why does he do the things he does? What motivates him? What does he take pleasure in? Do I take pleasure in the things that please him?
The Hebrew word here for understand is hǎś·kēlʹ. The word is rendered in what is known as the infinitive absolute. This means that it adds intensity to the meaning and not just a surface level meaning. In other words, God is saying through Jeremiah, you can know me deeply, and you can really, truly understand me.
But how do we do that? How can we learn to understand God?
The only way to learn these things is to prioritize scripture and prayer.
My first pastor used to say, “God never reveals the deep things of the spirit to the person who just drops by for a little chat.” Nothing beats time and intentionality in relationships, this is especially true in your relationship with God. Consider your friendships. Chances are you are closer to the people you spend the most time with. Do you want intimacy with God? Spend more time with him.
Remember Daniel. The angel called him, “Man greatly loved.” What marked Daniel as special? He prayed three times a day.
Remember the apostle John. He was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” John was closest to Jesus in his ministry and suffering. At the table, at the last supper, he sat closer to Jesus than anyone else. And he was the only apostle who went all the way to the cross, and saw Jesus’ suffering first hand. When we read the epistles in I, II, and III John we come away with the knowledge that John deeply loved the Lord because he spent time with him.
Making Christ your chief affection in life doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s simply a matter of time. You already have a Bible. You already have time. You have everything you need to become intimate with God.
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I have a daughter that has nine children. She home schools them. She cares for their daily needs. She grows her own food in a 4,000 square foot garden. She makes and sells bread as a side business to earn extra money. She leads worship in her church. She prepares three meals a day for her family. She serves her husband’s needs. I know of no one busier than her. Yet she finds daily time for intimacy with God. How? Because Jesus is her priority. He is the chief affection of her life.
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If you want to know God and truly understand him, then Jesus Christ needs to become the chief affection of your life. You have to want him more than anything else.
Did you know, that biblically speaking, there’s nothing in the Bible that prevents us from having a relationship to God as close as Peter, Paul, or John? The scripture says, in James 4:8, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”
Now, I know our natural human inclination is to rebel, and not to dedicate the time that we need to develop our relationship with God. We often make excuses that some things are too hard to understand in the Bible. And that is true, some things in the Bible can be challenging to understand. But many things are not. In fact, most things are not hard to understand. And God has made it easy for us to be able to have a relationship with him. In fact, he testifies about this in the book of Deuteronomy. So let me share this last scripture with you.
“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven that you should say who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it? Nor is it beyond the sea that you should say who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it that we may observe it, but the word is very near you in your mouth and in your heart that you may observe it” Deuteronomy 30:11-14).
Notice what Moses says. He says it is not too difficult or beyond our reach. Understanding the word of God is not difficult. Devoting time to understanding the scripture is not difficult. Now, to be honest, there are some things in the scripture that can be challenging to understand. But those come to light with just a little bit of study, time, and attention. The more we dedicate ourselves to the scripture, the more we will understand.
Moses also says, “The word is very near you.”
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Sometime after the Gospel had come to Mongolia through a showing of the JesusFilm in movie theaters around the country, Campus Crusade for Christ sent a photographer named Chris to go find someone in the deep Mongolian countryside who had seen the JesusFilm and to find out if they were still walking with God and what the effect was of the ministry.
Chris arranged for an old Russian van and a driver to take him into the countryside to translate and go search. He would stop from time to time at different people’s homes in the countryside and asked them if they had seen the JesusFilm. Of course, many of the people said no they had never heard of it and they’d have time to sit and visit and be hospitable and he would talk with them about the Gospel. When he asked them who might’ve seen the film, some said they’d heard of an elderly woman who lived far away who saw the film. So they joined him on the trip to go find her so they went from home to home, traveling the countryside for about two weeks.
At one point, they stopped in a man’s home and they were inside of his ger and they were talking about his travels to see them. He said to the man of the house, “I came from the other side of the world to come see you.” The man stopped and said, “Wait a minute, what do you mean, the other side of the world?” And Chris said, “Well, you know, the other side of the world,” and he drew a picture of a circle and he pointed at one side, “I come from here,” then he pointed to the other side and said, “and this is where you are.” The man of the house was shocked. He stood up. He rushed outside to his wife and he said, “Wife wife, the world is round!”
As he continued his traveling, he eventually found the woman who lived in a ger out in the deep countryside, all by herself with her few animals. And he began to talk with her. And she said “Yes, I saw the JesusFilm and became a Christian.” Then she took out a little copy of that yellow booklet, the Four Spiritual Laws. She said, “This is all I have, I read it every day.” Having just that little bit of the word of God in that gospel tract was more important to her than anything else, she read it every day. And of course Chris arranged to get her a full Bible.
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You and I have more of the Bible than that elderly woman had in the Mongolian countryside. In fact, you and I have more of the Bible, of God‘s word, then even the children of Israel had during the time of the Exodus when Moses spoke those words to them. They had a general revelation of God and they had the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy, but that was all. And they all didn’t have their own copies. There were at that time only a few copies available to the priestly leadership to teach the people with. And yet, even though that was true, God still told them in Deuteronomy 30 that the word was very near them.
You have more of the Bible available to you now than there has ever been in history. You can get it at the bookstore, you can order it on Amazon, you can get it online for free, you can get it in multiple translations. The word is very near you, in your mouth, and in your heart so that you may observe it.
Whether or not we make the scripture a priority in our lives helps us determine what we really want out of life. Do we want intimacy with God? Do we want to really truly know Jesus Christ more than anything else? The apostle Paul said in the book of Philippians that he counted all things rubbish that he may gain Christ.
Let me conclude with a final story.
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Our field ministry team in Mongolia was traveling to a small community of a few hundred people where they would show the Bible movies and do Bible studies. When they arrived, they met an old woman who wanted to tell them the story of how she got her first Bible. Now, she lived in the Mongolian countryside, and it wasn’t like you can go down to the corner bookstore and go buy a Bible in the Mongolian countryside. Bibles were available in the three principal cities of the country, but not very well in the countryside. And she had no means to travel to a big city to get a Bible. So she prayed for a long time, “God please let me have a Bible. I want to have a Bible so I can read your word.” One day she was attending to her affairs, she was walking down the street and she had to use the restroom. So she found a public outhouse. Now, when I say outhouse, I want you to think of the stereotypical, traditional, wood, slatted, filthy old, dirty, broken down shack that is smelly and dirty—all of the terrible things that you would think about what you think about an outhouse. When she went to that outhouse she glanced down the hole and she saw what looked like a book. Now, before I continue, you already know where the story is going don’t you? Well she looked down that hole and she realized it was a Bible. Someone had thrown a Bible down that hole.
Do you know what her first thought was? “My prayers are answered.” Have you ever looked down into a toilet and thought to yourself, “My prayers are answered?” She reached down that hole in all the muck and the filth, and she picked up that dirty Bible, and she took it home, and she cleaned it off, and it became her own precious Bible.
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How far are you willing to go, what depth are you willing to go to have the Bible in your life? To what ends are you willing to go to engage with the Lord daily in scripture and prayer? That woman wanted the scriptures more than anything so much so that she would take a Bible that was at the bottom of a toilet just to have the word of God in her life. Would you do that? I don’t know that I would do that. But that’s how important the scripture was to her in her life.
How important is the scripture to you?
If you want to be a truly spiritual man or woman, if you really want to know God intimately, if you want the abundant life Jesus talked about, then nothing beats spending daily time in scripture and prayer and doing so over a lifetime. And it’s never too late to start. Make Jesus Christ and the word of God the center of your existence. Because, as Deuteronomy 32:47 says, “This is not an idle word for you, indeed, it is your life.”
