Well, good morning church, and man, I'm so glad you're with us. Me and another family got the chance to kind of hang out last night, Saturday night. We were watching the game and, man, just enjoying kind of being together, and somebody asked me, just kind of real casually, "Hey, what's the message going to be on tomorrow?" And I said back, kind of flippantly, "Like, the Bible." And everybody looked at me like, "Bro, why are you being so sarcastic?" You know, and then I was like, "No, no, no. We're starting a brand new message series today." And for the next three weeks, we're going to do just that. We're going to study the Bible. And let me tell you why this is so important.
Back in May, we did a survey. I don't know if you remember this. You may have been here this Sunday. But we surveyed all of our folks. Every campus did it. And one of the best pieces of feedback we got from that survey was, we basically came to understand that we kind of have a complicated relationship, maybe the better word is attitude, towards the Bible. Many of us grew up in homes where there was a Bible. Many of us grew up in homes where maybe even you were read the Bible. Some of us at some season probably have read the Bible before. Others of us, maybe it's new to us. Many of us, even though the Bible's in our home, it's not in our everyday life. And so this series, we're going to begin to talk about some of that and what it would look like to change our attitude or our relationship with the Bible.
Now, let me confess some things to you just right out of the gate. Can I be honest with you? I haven't always loved reading the Bible. Like, bro, you're a preacher. You sure you want to say that? There's been seasons for me where I didn't read the Bible. So, I need you to know I get where you are. I think sometimes it can be a process. I think sometimes where we start isn't always where we finish.
I would imagine many of you have had an experience similar to this, where maybe you went to Turning Point weekend or maybe you went to a revival or maybe there was a Sunday morning and it just spoke to your heart and so you left that environment excited to get into God's word. And so the first thing you did was you got your Bible, you found it up on there and you started Genesis 1. Here we go. And you read through Genesis just eating it up and you made it through Genesis. Really cool story. Then you got to Exodus and you're like, "Oh, this is crazy. This is really cool. There's adventure here. There's a story here." And then you got to Leviticus. And if you made it through Leviticus, then you got to Numbers. And man, it's okay. I'm just telling you, I've done that as well. And you probably, your appetite or desire or attitude towards the Bible in the midst of those two books, I imagine it slowed down a little bit.
Maybe you've had a season where you've done this. Something's happened in your life, right? You're not getting along. Relationship's not going great. So, you thought, "Okay, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to the Bible." And you just grab the Bible. You get it and you just open it up and you're like, "Okay." Boom. And man, you pick some random verse in the Old Testament. And you're like, "This is not what I thought it was."
Listen, what I want to do for you over these next couple of weeks is help you see there is a better way to understand and to study the Bible. And so, I want to kind of give you the big idea of this series. We're going to ask three big questions. Okay? Here's the very first one. What is it? We're going to talk about that this week. Okay, it's a big overview. The next one, how does it work? Gray is going to teach that message. I'm already excited. We've been kind of praying through that and working with him on what that message is going to be like. And then we're going to close it out with, who is it all about?
But to start us out, what I want to do is I want to kind of, in some ways, almost take you to my back porch, okay? And I want you to see my Bibles, okay? Like, this is the Bible I study at home. I don't know if you have a Bible at your house that you're kind of scared to take out, because if you're like me, you forget things and you're like, "This one just kind of stays by my chair. It just kind of stays on my back porch." This Bible is special to me. This was one of the first Bibles that I really started reading. You know what I mean? Like, I've got some of those that just kind of stay on the shelf, but this one's got some notes in it. This is a study Bible. I enjoy a study Bible because on every page there's commentary. So, whenever I hit something I'm not sure about, I can jump right down in here and get some commentary. There's notes in here from when I first started reading the Bible until now. So, this is just a Bible for me that's special. It's a study Bible. It's one I keep in my house.
Here's another one that I use. This Bible is special because when I first got engaged, me and Katie both, I gave her a Bible that said Katie Curtis. And so, for us, she's got a Bible that looks just like this. I've got a Bible just like this. This one's special to me just because we both have one that's really similar. I teach out of this Bible a lot of times. I'm going to be honest with you, the print on this one's getting a little bit small. But I love this Bible. It's got a lot of marks in it. It's just got things that I want to remember that are special to me. And so that's my Bible.
I want you to know this. I want you to have a Bible. And so, one of the things we've done for today is, if you don't have a Bible, at every campus you can stop by the guest services desk and we want to give you a Bible. Really honestly, I've got another Bible at home. I hate to be a Bible flex here, but the church got me. Like, you guys bought me a Bible. It was a gift to me and we want to do the same thing for you. So, if you don't have a Bible today, stop by there. Let us give you a Bible so that you can have one. Okay?
Now, let's start with just real broad. On your Bible, you're going to see there's a name. Okay? It's going to say Holy Bible. You can barely see it on the side of mine, but here's what that means. Holy simply means set apart. We believe that this book is set apart. It's different than any other book that you have. Bible simply means book. Okay? So this is a set-apart book.
Now let me give you a little bit more about this because I think this is incredibly interesting. It's more than just one book. When you see this Bible, you need to think library. Okay? Because there's 66 different books inside of this one book. Now, let this kind of blow your mind for just a minute. This book was written over 1,500 years on three different continents in three different languages by over 40 different writers. Now, what's incredible about that is it's just one story. I mean, from beginning to end, it's this rescue story. It's this mission. It's God's story.
And so, if you had to take the Bible and kind of put it in some different sections, the first section you're going to come across is God's story and God's promises. It's the Old Testament. So, when you read through the Old Testament, you're going to understand the way that he pursued us, the plan that he had for us. Typically, every year, we'll do a series on the Old Testament. We'll do one book out of the Old Testament. We're going to do the book of Daniel. We're already planning that for next year. It's an incredible story.
Next section you're going to come across is the Gospels. I love the Gospels. All right. If you've been coming to Venture for a while, you may have already noticed this. Every August and every January, we study the Gospels. This is where Jesus comes and he shows us the way. Real simple. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's right at the very first of the New Testament. It's not very long, but it's just the story of Jesus.
The next little section you get in your Bible is the book of Acts. Now, I got to tell you, and I'm going to say this a lot, I love the book of Acts. I think I love the book of Acts because it's the beginning. It's our roots. It's where the very first followers begin to come together. It's the story of how the church started. It's the book of Acts.
Next section you get is really the rest of the New Testament. And it's basically how the first followers begin to follow Jesus. So that's the sections of the Bible that I want you to kind of begin to get a little bit comfortable with.
But what I want to challenge you today is this concept. I want you to begin to love the Bible. I'll be honest with you, we've prayed that for you, because I just feel like there's probably a little bit of an edge to you when it comes to maybe an experience you've had with the Bible. And so before we get too far into this series, I'm going to ask you to give the Bible a fresh chance. And maybe the first thing about it, the way that you begin to love it, is if you just kind of understand a little bit more where it came from and the significance of what it is.
And so I want to take you all the way back to the book of Acts. And I want you to see what the very first church did. I mean, the first time these followers begin to get together and they were choosing to follow Jesus, the first time people gathered, just like we're gathering in all of our different locations. I want you to know what the first church did, because everything we do, the foundation is right here. Look at this verse. It says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer."
Now, let me take it kind of word by word, because we've been really working on this, on prayer. We want to pray first. We made some t-shirts to kind of help you with that. Like, we start so many of our experiences, right? Before you even get in the building, let me tell you what happens. We meet up at 8:00 and at every one of our campuses, our staff and our volunteers, they just walk through the chairs and they begin to pray for you before you even walk in the building, because we believe in this power of prayer. Prayer was a part of the very first church.
Next thing you see is the breaking of bread. If you grew up Baptist, then you love breaking some bread on Wednesday nights with some people. All right, that's what it is. It's just when you come together and you share a meal. I do that every Wednesday night. We had breakfast together at house church this past Wednesday night. Love it. We get together and we share a meal together. Well, man, we ask people, "How are you doing? How can I pray for you?" We hear their story. We break bread together. We fellowship. God, we're good at that, right? Come on, man. Stick around. If you just kind of come in and get out too quick, stick around, fellowship, get to know the people you're sitting next to.
But you ready? Here's the big thing. They devoted themselves. Devoted. And more than just casually, they had a Bible in their home. They were devoted to the apostles' teachings. Now, these were the ones that watched Jesus. These were the ones that saw what Jesus did. This was before the New Testament. This is the very first church. So, they didn't have a written copy of the New Testament. Instead, they just began to tell stories. Here's what we saw Jesus do. Here's what it looked like to follow him. Here is the foundation of everything we're building on. It was the stories. This is what I saw Jesus do. So, this is what we do. And they got together and they told those stories. This is the root of everything we do.
Now, take that in for a minute, because the root of what we do, the foundation of what we do isn't the buildings. It's not the programming. Listen, I love the playground, but it's not the playground. It's not the person on the platform. The foundation of who we are, what we are rooted in, what we go back to every time is the Bible. In fact, I don't know if you know this or not. People that have been at our church for a long time, you know this. If you were to strip all of the chairs out of this building and you were to pull up the little bit of carpet that we have, you would see Bible verses. They're on every wall. They're up here on the stage under me. They're sitting literally, like, if you go under your chair, you would see a foundation of God's word. It's the same thing at whatever campus you're at today. Before the paint, before the walls, we started with God's word. It's the foundation.
Many of you know this because you've told me and you've shot me pictures as you've now driven down 49 South and you've seen where our campus in Stone County, man, we are expanding. Six years we've been doing three different services. Now, we're going to be able to get back into two services because we're going to go from an auditorium that seats 250 people to 600 people. But look what happened this week. It's the same thing we did at whatever campus you're sitting at. Before we ever get there, we came and we put the foundation of God's word. Before people and families walk into that building, they're going to be walking on top of this foundational truth that is his love and his story for us.
So, why do you love it? Why are we putting this on the foundation of everything we do? Well, look at this verse. This is kind of our theme verse for this series, or for today. It's in 2 Timothy and it's going to help you love God's word even more. You're going to see why it's so foundational to what we do. Here it is. "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."
So the first thing he says, Paul's writing to Timothy and he says, here's what I want you to do. I'm going to give you all this that's going to make you wise for salvation. But I need you to continue in what you've heard. Continue. From the very first church that got together in the book of Acts, here was what they did. Now, for our church today in 2026, what do we do? Continue. Continue being devoted to what? A person, a style, a communicator? No. No. To God's word.
And he loved this because he begins to just blow up. He begins to celebrate. He begins to brag on Timothy's mom and his grandmother. Hello. Who are the ones that put the word of God in you? Some of you are like, I remember sitting on my grandmother's front steps. It was my grandmother's Bible. I still keep it at my house. You have such rich stories about your grandmother. But he would say, I love that. In fact, I want to brag on that. But is it still in your life? I mean, like, don't stop there with just cool stories about churches that were grounded and founded in God's word. Don't stop there about your grandmother and your great-grandmother that used to read God's word and you saw it. He said, "No, no, continue in it. Continue in it day after day."
That's one of the reasons that we love it. But watch this second verse, because this is so powerful. "All Scripture is God-breathed." Now, that ought to kind of take your breath away. Why is this so important? Because it's from God. Because it's useful. Have you ever thought about that? This Bible that we carry around that maybe sits on the shelf, it's not just a book written by 44 different people on three different continents over 1,500 years. No, it's God-breathed. It's the Holy Spirit. It didn't start with men. It started with God. It's foundational to us because Scripture is all about the desires of God. It's about his plan and his pursuit. These words aren't just words on paper. This is God's breath to us. This is God's word to us. Different people, different places, different generations, but one divine source.
And then he says this in there. He says, "Listen, you need to know this. It's useful." Can I just remind you of that? I love things in my life that are useful. I love to put a little Apple tag on my keys because I can't find them without my Apple tag. So the Apple tag is useful. Like, it's profitable for me. Another word for useful is profitable. You and me, man, we hold things of great regard in our life when they're useful. And when they're profitable, he says this is God's breath. This is God's word. You need to know this about it. It is useful. It is profitable.
Look at this verse in 2 Peter. I'm going to show you several scriptures today. Hang with me. It says, "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. Instead, they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." It's so important. It's not just men's opinions. It's the Holy Spirit.
You know, remember when you used to have to write a paper and you would work so hard at writing and you'd go to different places to find information and then at the very end you'd put a footnote. Then you could go back to something and say, "Here's the source. Here's where that opinion came from." The source. Where did it come from? The Holy Spirit. This should give you such confidence. This is the one thing that will never change. This is what you can build your life on. This is the foundation of who we are. Why? Because it's God's breath and because it was carried by the Holy Spirit. It is not men's opinion. It's God's word.
So, I want you to develop a love for it. The next thing I want you to do is to begin to learn it. Okay? This is just going to be a challenge to you. And these next three weeks, we're going to push you a little bit in this, because we heard from you on that survey that maybe you've checked out a little bit when it comes to getting into God's word. I'll tell you what happened, because I'm a part of this as well. Somewhere we kind of came across an opinion that was like, I think I know what we should do. Let's go hire, like, a pastor. And the idea became, let's pay the pastor, and during the week, you study God's word. I'll ease up in here on Sunday and then you teach me God's word and then I'll go back and do my life and my job and my deal. I'll pay a little bit in the offering. You study God's word. I'll come back on Sunday and you teach it to me.
Listen, I'm not hating. I'm just telling you that this isn't just for me. This is for us. That would be like, you remember, that would be like getting a love letter. I need Katie to give me another love letter. It's been a long time since she wrote me a love letter. But if she wrote me another love letter, let me tell you what I wouldn't do. "Hey, you hold on to this till next week. Tell me about it." You kidding me? I would study it. I'm going to use this word, you may even remember it from our summer series: I would meditate on it. I would begin to memorize it, because this is how she feels about me. I would need to be reminded of it during the week. I'm not just waiting on Sunday. And I may not even just trust you with it. This is for me. And that's what I want you to see about God's word. This is for you.
Look at this verse in 1 Peter. It says, "Like newborn babies, I want you to crave it. I want you to crave God's word like pure spiritual milk." You ever think about the things that you crave? I'll be honest with you, I crave exercise. I love to go exercise. I need it during the week. I crave half-and-half tea. It's a habit of mine. I kind of need it every afternoon. I stop in and get half-and-half tea. I crave to be with my family. Like, I just love those moments where it's just us. But this word says, listen, if you're going to be growing in your faith, if you're following Jesus, one of the cravings that you need to look for is a desire to be in God's word.
Now, I want you to know this. It's okay if it's not here yet. It may be one of the things that you're going to pray coming out of today: God, help me begin to have a craving, a deep desire. Cravings create action. You ever noticed that when I need that half-and-half tea, I go get it? One of the things I want you to begin to crave is a chance to be in the word.
Now, here's what I want to do, because when you begin to take action and you decide, all right, I'm going to get in God's word, the next thing I want to do this morning is just kind of show you what that may look like. Okay. Can I just give you a little bit of a pattern? Like, in other words, when you begin to open up God's word, when you do, just like me, and that craving hits and you're like, "All right, here we go. I'm going to start a new habit of being in God's word. What do I do now?" Well, I'm going to invite you onto my back porch. Okay. Now, just imagine I have a golden retriever. Luna is normally with me. I have a cup of coffee. I'm proud of myself, I've learned to drink coffee. And I have my Bible and I have my journal. Don't judge me. Men, you need a journal.
And I start just like this. The first thing I do, and I hate to do this, I'm going to work on this, I hope in January we're going to have a little bit of a different option for this, but the first thing I do is I open up my phone and I know that can be bad, but this is just what I do. And I go to my Venture app and I follow our plan. Okay? So, we have a churchwide plan. Many of you know this. I've got lots of you that text me after you read the plan. I love it. It's something we do together as a church. You've got two options right there. You can either do the New Testament, which is one chapter a day, Monday through Friday, or you can do the whole Bible in a year. All right? Now, I'm doing the New Testament. That's just what I'm doing right now. We're in the book of Hebrews. Okay? So, I find the scripture that we're reading for that day. All right? So, Monday, I think, is Hebrews 9. This is what I do. And again, you do what works for you. Okay? This is just a way. It's not the way. I like to listen to whatever the chapter is and read it at the same time, okay? It just helps me, right? It's just good for me. So, I listen to it and I read it at the same time.
Now, one of the things I want to tell you, if you pick a plan, okay, let me pause right here for just a minute. If you pick a plan and it's one chapter a day, just like our plan is, and you get behind, don't try to catch up and read 30 chapters in one day, can I just tell you that? Listen, you're not earning God's salvation or his love by the way that you read the Bible. It's okay. All right? If you miss a few days, it's okay. Just skip to whatever that day's reading is. You'll get it next year. All right? Skip to whatever that day's reading is and begin to read.
Okay? Now, the second thing is, once you get a plan, that's the first thing you need. The second thing you need is a translation that you can understand. The first Bible wasn't written in English. Okay? So, every translation is just that. It's a translation. So, well, which one do you use? I like the New Living Translation. Okay. I like the NIV. But the big idea, if you love King James, then read King James. It doesn't matter. I just need you to get a translation that you're comfortable with. One that when you open up and read it, it's relevant to you. If you enjoy 1600s English, then go for it. I don't. I enjoy a translation that's a little more modern. They're all a translation. So, pick which one fits for you and then you just get in it. You begin to read it.
So, find a plan. All right. You can use ours. Find a plan, find a translation that you enjoy, and then I want to get you in a little bit of a rhythm. I want you to have some structure to how to spend your time. And so, let me show you what I do. I do a little thing called SOAP. Now, you may be familiar with this. Lots of people use this. This isn't something I made up or our church made up, but it's just the way that I structure my time. So, I've got my passage. I've got my chapter. I'm reading it. I'm listening to it. And the very first thing in this little structure is scripture. I'm looking for one scripture in that chapter that speaks to me. Okay, maybe it's just because I'm a little bit more simple-minded. I can't remember the whole chapter, but I'm looking for the one verse in that chapter that just kind of pricks my heart and I'll even pray a prayer as I'm reading. God, speak to me. God, guide me towards the one verse that you want me to hold on to today. That's the S, is scripture.
The next thing is the observation. Listen, I told you this about the Bible. Remember, it's all these different books all in one. So, there's lots of different context that you may want as you get into that certain book. Okay? Lot of different ways you can do that. One of our house church pastors told me about an app called Through the Word. Lots of times I'll use Through the Word and I'll get some history on that book. Lot of different ways you can do that. Okay. I told you my study Bible gives me a little bit of history right there. So, I'll make some observations. That's the O. Hey, according to this chapter, here's what's going on. Here's who wrote it. Here's who he's writing to. Just some general things that I'm picking up as I'm reading.
Context. Context matters so much. Do you know that? I mean, if you took a picture of me and my daughter having a meal and you shot it out to someone and you said, "Look who I just saw having a meal with another lady." And then you go, "Bro, that's his daughter." Context is pretty important, right? Context matters. So, when you read, I want you to go get some context for it so that you know what you're doing.
Now, the A is real simple. A was application. Don't let me lose you, because this part's really important. Here's what I'm asking in the application part. I'm using the word "I." All right, here's what this is, because you don't want to write about, hey, Katie needs to do this. I hope Katie read this verse. Oh, I hope my kids get this. You don't want to write, you're not writing a sermon. Hey, this is what speaks to me. Here's what I need to do from this. Here's what I want to work on. Here's how I'm going to respond to this. The A is application.
The P is just prayer. God, as I read this, I'm going to pray your word back to you. God, I sense this in my life. I want this to change. Now watch the verse. Go back to the verse with me. It says, "All Scripture is God-breathed." We talked about that. It's useful. We talked about it's profitable. Here's all the things, right? When I'm doing all that SOAP stuff, it's teaching me. It's rebuking some things in me. It's correcting some patterns in me. And it's me beginning to train up.
Last thing I do, and this is just what I do, you don't have to do this, I hate to train alone. I'm just telling you, I hate it. I'm a people person. So, the next thing I do after I've written in my journal and I've gotten the verse that speaks to me, I text it out to two of the men in my house church and I say, "Hey, what spoke to you today?" And they'll say verse 11. I'll say verse 13. They'll say verse 20. And we'll train together. So, maybe one of the things you want to do today is find someone in your house church and say, "Hey, let's read together. Let's do the Bible reading plan together." Training alone's hard. Find some people in your life to begin to do it together.
Now, here's the last one. Okay, there's three things today. Final part. I want you to live it. You with me? It's one thing to love God's word and have a passion for it, and it's another thing to begin to learn it. But if you're not careful, you'll learn it and you'll just become arrogant. Nobody will like you. Or you'll begin to put it into practice. Now, let me show you what this looks like. I love this verse. Many of you know it. "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine," right? Here's his words. Remember, it's God-breathed. "And puts them into practice." That's what I'm talking about. You're living it. Here's what he says you're going to be like. You're going to be a wise man. It's like you're building your house on the rock. Then he shows the opposite. He says, "Then the rain came, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against the house." He says it will not fall, because the foundation is what? It's the word of God.
It's the foundation of what we're built on. It's the foundation of every campus you're at today. It's the foundation of Movement on Sunday nights. We're walking through the book of James. It's the foundation of KXP. You're going to have a memory verse every week. It's the foundation of house church. We're going to open up the Bible together. It's the foundation of Sunday morning. Every Sunday morning we're teaching on a scripture. The question that we're asking is, is it the foundation of your life and your home? Because here's the bad news. You can't build a foundation on two hours in a month. It's what typically you come. It's not enough. Is it the foundation of your home?
I had a college roommate and I learned so much from him. He was just a great guy for me. He challenged me in all kinds of different ways. And when we both graduated, we moved to Jackson together. And he took a job in Jackson. I took a job in Jackson. We were both serving at the same church. And I got to know his family. And I'm going to tell you, they were incredible people. Shelby and Mary Nice were their names. And they would take Katie and I out to eat. You know, when you're in that stage and you just finally get a job and you're paying for stuff. But they would take us to Mexican on Sundays. We loved it.
But I remember being at Tim's wedding and it was probably a young parent, but somebody asked him, he said, "Tim, I got to know this, man. Like, what's the secret? I mean, man, you're an incredible young man. You know, you've done all these things, and now here you are. You're getting married." And he said, "I want my kids to grow up like you." And so, he asked this question. What did your parents do? Don't you, I mean, what a great question. You know what he said? He said, "I don't remember a single morning that I didn't wake up and look over my staircase and not see my dad in God's word." He said, "Man, there's really not a secret." He said, "It was just a choice. It was the foundation of our family. When I went to look for Dad every morning at breakfast, what did I find? Him and God's word."
So, here's what I want to do here. Here's the last thing I want to do. If we're going to live it, if we're going to build on it, then we got to get God's word into our life. And so, I'm not great at this. We're going to do this together. We're going to do it every week. I want to give you one verse to memorize. Okay? So, you're going to do this at every campus. Hang with me right now to the end of the message, but get off Facebook. Come on. We got to do this. Here's our verse. Okay? This is our verse. So, here's what I want you to do with me. I want you to read it with me together. I'm going to count you down. We're going to go down from three and then we're going to read it together. You're going to do it at your campus. Here we go. We're going to read it together. 3, 2, 1. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
All right. Come on. If we're going to memorize it, we're going to have to say it again. All right. One more time and then you're going to be on your own. You ready? Let's do it again. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Now, you ready? Here we go. Psalm 119:105. "Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." You hear what we're saying? This world is dark. What do we have? We have one light.
Man, I'm challenging you in this series. Ask God to give you an appetite, to give you a new desire to get into his word. Come on, let's pray together.
God, I thank you so much that you didn't just leave us, that instead, God, you gave us your word. God, you gave us the story of the way that you've pursued us and the plans that you have for us. God, you gave us more than just stories. You used men to write down your desires and your heart towards us and for us. So God, whether we're in the Old Testament, we're in the Gospels, we're in the book of Acts, or in the rest of the New Testament, there's a message here for us week after week to discover day after day. So God, don't let us be built on just a charismatic speaker. Don't let us be built on routine. God, don't let us be built on tradition. Let us be built on your word that is living and is active. Let us be built on the foundational truths that you have for us. God, that is where wisdom is found. That is where salvation is found. God, that is where we find light.
So, Father, give us a fresh hunger. God, begin to change our attitude, that this isn't just a book that's in our home, but it's in our heart. Father, I pray that you would start in me. That God, there'd be a fresh desire in me to be in your word, to be a student of your word. God, my job is to teach your word. So, Father, help your word become alive. God, speak to us every morning when we get in your word. Father, may your word be a lamp and a light to our feet. It's in your name we pray.