It seems to have become a pattern with me on the race to
begin “series� that I seem to leave unfinished; they have a part one but the
part two’s never seem to really arrive in a time that one expects. Of course, I
will tell you on my journey this year with the Lord that seems to be true of
Him too. He begins things in me and for a while it seems like the lesson gets
left hanging in the air for quite some time. But just when I think He’s
forgotten the lesson or that I maybe just missed the ending of it, He comes
back around with a new depth to it and challenges me to change all over again.
So, as I continue into this part two of “who is God outside
the Bible to Tiffany Handley�, let me go through a few reasons why it’s on my
heart to challenge people to know the Lord outside of the Bible, and how the
Lord has told us that He is so knowable
outside of the Word. Before I was walking with the Lord, I was one of those
people who would ask Christians if they really
believed that everyone was damned if
they didn’t believe in Christ. And when the response was yes, I would ask the
same question that I have since been asked several times as well, “So you’re
telling me that if someone in the middle of nowhere who has no missionaries and
no Bible will be damned because they do not know Jesus?â€�… The answer is yes–the only way to salvation is through
Christ Jesus.
I honestly used to struggle with this even as a Christian.
It did not sit well in my gut that unreached people groups were being damned
because people hadn’t partnered with God into His commission. He gave us the
nations. They are our responsibility. Was it my fault then that so many people
had not heard the name of Jesus and were thus going to spend an eternity away
from Him? These are not easy or light
questions to be laying in front of Him, but He has been faithful to answer so
many of these questions for me recently.
Here is what He has been saying to me, and in so doing He
has not only laid to rest my question about unreached people groups but He has
also challenged those of us who have daily access to Scripture. 
Now, Scripture tells us that before Creation was the Word
and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Four months ago I put a fat
question mark in my Bible next to this verse. How could John begin his Gospel this way and just continue on? What
does that mean? It means that His word is eternal–that His word is more
than a book, is more than words on paper, His Word is alive, His word is a Being. He is not limited to those pages. It
means that if every Bible on earth were to disappear, His Word would still
remain. Because Jesus is the Word, and He wrote it on our hearts and in our
minds.
I know without a shadow of a doubt that God is knowable even
without a Bible. I would even go as far as to say that there are people who
have never opened a Bible who know the Lord more intimately than some people
who read it for Breakfast, spout it at lunch, and preach it at dinner. There are people who know Him as Healer because they have been healed, who know Him as their Rock because they have lost everything and still know that He is faithful.
As this race has gone on, I have gone through glorious
seasons where His Word is alive, breathing, where I cannot read a single
passage without wanting to explode, to burst, to shout from mountaintops, to
cry and sing and dance…I have also gone through seasons where getting in the
Word is more mundane than eating stale crackers. It’s in these latter seasons
where reading becomes a chore and where reading actually becomes a
performance-based way to God. I think I have to read the Bible in order to be a
good Christian, when in reality the Bible has become nothing more than words, a
doing idol. The Word was given to us
not so we would memorize passages and spew them at appropriate moments in
conversation, but as a way to get closer to Him, as a way to draw near Him, to
know his character, to know His voice, to know His goodness. It was not given
to us so that we would mark it off our daily checklist.
If it has become that
for you, then I challenge you to put it down for a few days and to just listen during your quiet time. Do not
speak out prayers, do not utter a sound, put away your journal, turn off music,
tv, everything. And just be. We are
made to be human beings, not human doings. And in that quiet start listening
for His still, small voice. It’s so good. My soul groans the way I know His
soul groans to be known.
So. I pose to you the same challenge: to know the Lord out of
the Bible. To know Him as He wants to be with you. He is real. He is alive. He is speaking to you right now. He is so good. So good.
