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God Unveiled

God Unveiled

KINGDOM TRUTH #4: IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOD IS LIKE, LOOK AT JESUS AND SEE GOD UNVEILED.

It had been a long, long time to be misunderstood. God yearned for His people to know Him, but early on they had chosen to walk away. They broke their connection with Him which left them fatally sick and spiritually blind. 

In rare honest moments, when something in them cried out for home, their hearts must have asked: Who are You, God? But they had lost their ability to see.

God wouldn’t give up. He began the long process of reintroducing Himself. Through Passover He painted a picture of His heart—“I am the God who rescues.” The powerful display at Mount Sinai declared: “I am the God of love and justice.” The Tabernacle pointed to His desire for intimacy, proclaiming: “I am the God of closeness.” 

God was showing the people who He was, but blind hearts can’t see even clearly-presented truth. God must have heard people talking about Him over the years—dialogs at synagogues and around dinner tables. How often He must have wanted to bust through to correct misunderstandings. To show Himself for who He really is. Who are You, God?

It had been a long, long time to be misunderstood. God yearned for His people to know Him, but early on they had chosen to walk away. They broke their connection with Him which left them fatally sick and spiritually blind. 

And then, when the time had fully come, the God who wants closeness came closer. God stepped off His throne in Heaven and stepped into a single cell in the womb of a woman. For nine months, Jesus grew. Then He was born. Thirty years passed while He walked among the people, experiencing life with them, hearing their misconceptions about Him with His own human ears, but not letting anyone know who He was. Patient, patient, patient.

And then, at age 30, the Head of the Angel Armies, the Possessor of All Authority, the King of Heaven and Earth, made His presence known. The invisible God had stepped into the visible—into something His blind people would be able to see. 

In Jesus, God’s heart was on full display. God Unveiled. He was endlessly compassionate—the purest, most perfect Being turned no one away. The hemorrhaging woman reached out to touch Him. The blind man called out to Him for healing. The 10 lepers, considered untouchable, ran up to Him. Children crawled in His lap. The cast-aside, the overlooked, the contagiously sick, the overwhelmingly sinful, the arrogantly righteous, the hopelessly broken—they all came to Him. And Jesus, God Himself, lovingly welcomed them all.

People made fun of Him. People didn’t understand Him. People hated Him. People stood in awe of Him. But not one single person was afraid to come to Him, the One to whom angels bow. Not a single person. The misguided woman at the well accepted His living water. The righteous Nicodemus sought Jesus out despite the social ridicule he faced. The “greatest” of sinners—prostitutes, thieves, criminals given the death sentence—came to Jesus freely. God is welcoming, inviting, loving . . . good.

And then, the invisible God stepped into the visible—into something His blind people would be able to see—in the Person of Jesus, who was born into this world, walked among us without sin, and died for us.

For centuries, the hearts of humanity had wondered, Who are You, God? 

And in Jesus, God answered. “Here I am.” The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Hebrews 1:3).

Jesus unveils the reality of the universe: The one, true God is relentlessly, infinitely, lavishly good. He doesn’t want us to know about Him, He wants us to know Him. And He will stop at nothing to make that happen. Right now, from the throne of Heaven, God pours out a love and a desire for closeness so intense it’s humbling. 

If you encountered Jesus when He walked on the earth—if you pushed past the crowd, making eye contact with Him—you would’ve found this: an inviting smile and His welcoming, overwhelming love. And that same heart sits on Heaven’s throne today. 

If your heart ever echoes Who are You, God? look to Jesus for the answer: “Here I am.”

And then come to Him. He has been waiting for you. 

***
©2023, Walk Thru the Bible

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How to Make Bible Reading More than a Checklist

When life gets busy and schedules get chaotic, does Bible reading sometimes feel like another thing you’ve got to get done? It’s really easy for reading the Bible to just become part of a checklist, but when we’re rushing to “get it done and checked off the list,” we’re not really creating moments for God’s Word to speak to our hearts and go deep in our lives.

Michael Gunnin from Walk Thru the Bible gives us 4 questions to ask ourselves to create moments of application for God’s Word to sink into our hearts and lives. We’re not talking about in-depth Bible study here, but how to move from getting our daily reading done to having it make an impact in our lives.

Want to go in-depth on how to study Scripture? Check out our free course, Bible Study Simplified!

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The Impact of One Life

Never underestimate the impact of one well-equipped Bible teacher! His one life makes a difference.

Every year, Walk Thru the Bible trains and equips nearly 17,000 pastors and Bible teachers in the world’s most under-resourced regions. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America, more than 80 percent of them have never received any formal training in leadership or theology. They do not have access to resources, and many in their congregations may not even have a Bible. A severe shortage of training opportunities and resources, coupled with the exponential growth of Christianity in the Global South, has created an urgent and growing need.

As Walk Thru the Bible fills this need through providing equipping and resourcing opportunities, we witness how God can use one life to ignite passion for His Word in entire regions.

In rural Kenya, Pastor Christopher Bera is one of those individuals who is making an enormous impact. Kenya is home to more than 52 million people, and is the 48th largest country in the world by land area. As Pastor Bera travels to his churches, in rural areas and in places like Mombasa, he teaches Walk Thru the Bible’s Old and New Testament live events to his people.

“When I was trained by Walk Thru the Bible, I learned so much. I began implementing what I learned from the training in my churches and in my ministry,” he said. “Walk Thru the Bible’s training has been a wonderful resource for me and my churches. The Old and New Testament overview events have simplified the study of the Bible and all of our leaders understand it better. Many of these are pastors who have never received any formal biblical training. Now they can teach it to their people.”

“When I was trained by Walk Thru the Bible, I learned so much. I began implementing what I learned from the training in my churches and in my ministry,” he said. “Walk Thru the Bible’s training has been a wonderful resource for me and my life & churches. The Old and New Testament overview events have simplified the study of the Bible and all of our leaders understand it better. Many of these are pastors who have never received any formal biblical training. Now they can teach it to their people.”

He explains that by using Walk Thru the Bible training and materials, he has grown the leadership team in one area to more than 50 leaders, and about 30 of those leaders are actively involved in teaching in the churches and schools in their community. “This team is reaching more than 10,000 students and others every term,” he said.

He and his team have also planted a church in Kamasielo, a rural area in western Kenya. “This church started as a weekly meeting to discuss Walk Thru the Old Testament and Walk Thru the New Testament,” said Chris. “After a little while, the meeting attracted so many people from the area that they formed a church. By using Walk Thru the Bible teaching, that church has grown to 60 members.”

In Pastor Bera’s experience, Walk Thru the Bible offers a unique opportunity. He recently traveled to Mombasa to visit his churches there. He introduced the Walk Thru the Bible overview event to some of those small, home churches, which are also located in an area with many Muslims. “Walk Thru is an easy way to introduce people to the Bible, to open the church to people of other faiths,” he said. “We aren’t allowed to do a crusade or a revival in Mombasa, but we can teach this material. Just in that one area, we can reach 2,000 people a year.”

By equipping Pastor Bera, one life, with high-quality biblical resources, Walk Thru the Bible is directly making a difference in countless lives in Kenya. He has a dream that in ten years, his team can reach at least 100,000 people in Kenya with Walk Thru the Bible. “When you teach Walk Thru,” he said, “it is like pouring oil into the Indian Ocean because it just goes, very quickly, to reach other places. Kenya will be different because of Walk Thru resources. People are being taught the Bible with true doctrine and in a very easy to understand way. They are becoming grounded in the Word of God.”

When one life has the resources they need to teach the Bible and to teach others to do the same, there’s no limit to the harvest their ministry will yield!

Learn more about Walk Thru’s Mission!