Most people own a Bible. Far fewer actually believe what it claims to be.

That is not an accusation. It is an observation about something that happens gradually and almost invisibly to believers at every stage of faith. The Bible moves from living encounter to familiar object. From the voice of God to a book we intend to get back to. And somewhere in that slow drift, our hunger for it quietly goes dormant without us even noticing it happened.

Hebrews 4:12 does not describe the Bible the way most of us treat it.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Living… Active… Piercing... Discerning. These are not the words you use to describe a book that sits on a nightstand collecting dust between Sundays. These are the words you use to describe something that is still moving, still speaking, still cutting through everything we use to protect ourselves from being known completely.

The Word is not a record of what God said. It is what God is saying... Present tense… Continuous. Directed at you specifically, in whatever room you are sitting in right now.

The Sparring Partner

I was seven or eight years old the first time I understood what it meant to be genuinely hungry for the Word. My sparring partner was my grandmother, a Jehovah’s Witness with decades of Scripture knowledge and a willingness to debate theology across a kitchen table with a child until 3 a.m. who had more questions than sense. We were worlds apart in age, experience, and doctrine. But we shared one thing completely… Neither of us was willing to stay on the surface.

I have carried her with me ever since. Not her theology… but her function. When I encounter a new concept or receive a revelation in the Word, I debate it against her in my mind. I use her as a mental sparring partner to stress-test what I am receiving. Could this be wrong? Is the Bible teaching this from an angle I cannot currently see? What would she say that would force me to go deeper rather than settle for what is comfortable?

She became, without knowing it, part of my executive board for approaching the weightiness of Scripture. The Holy Spirit as guide. My grandmother as the voice that refuses to let me get lazy. My own drive for truth as the engine underneath both.

I am also still, in the spirit, trying to save her. That motivation has never left me either.

The Question Underneath the Question

Here is what I want to ask you directly. What is actually driving your hunger for the Word right now? Or more honestly, is anything driving it at all?

Because there is a version of faith that loves God genuinely but has lost the appetite for Scripture. You know He is real. You believe the Gospel. But the weight of daily life, the trials, the exhaustion, the sheer accumulated pressure of existing in a broken world, has made opening the Bible feel like one more task on a list that is already too long. You intend to get to it. You just keep not getting to it.

Psalm 42:1 describes something entirely different.

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”

Panting... That is not casual interest. That is the desperation of a living thing that knows it will not survive without what it is looking for. Psalm 119:20 goes further:

“My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.” Consumed… at all times.

How do we get there? How do we move from intending to read, to being unable to not read?

He Is Already Right Next to You

Here is the reframe that changed something for me and I think it might change something for you.

We romanticize the idea of walking beside Jesus in first century Galilee… (or at least I do…) Hearing His voice directly. Asking Him questions face to face. Watching Him heal someone and then sitting with Him afterward to ask what it meant. We tell ourselves that if we had been there, we would have been different. More devoted... More hungry… More consistent.

But the Word that spoke the universe into existence, the same Word that became flesh and walked those roads and spoke those parables and absorbed that cross, is sitting right next to you right now. On your nightstand. In your glove compartment. On the device you are reading this on. He has not gone anywhere. He has not gone silent. He is as present and as accessible as He has ever been. All we have to do is read.

The path of discovery is the gem… not the destination you are trying to reach. Every question that keeps you up at night, every concept you cannot let go of until it makes sense, every moment where the Word opens up a layer you have never seen before... that is the living, active, piercing Word doing exactly what Hebrews 4:12 says it does.

Find your grandmother… Find your sparring partner... Find the question that will not leave you alone at 2 a.m... Find your thirst.

Then open the Book that has been waiting beside you the whole time.

Next Monday, we continue going deeper. If someone in your life has lost their hunger for the Word, forward this to them today. Sometimes, the right words at the right moment are all it takes to rekindle something that never fully went out.

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The Son: We Have Been Reading Right Past Him - 6/22/26

Lawrence

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