If you want to grow in your faith reading the Bible and praying daily are essential. You just cannot have a strong faith without them.

You might be able to coast by just doing the bare minimum but eventually, you are going to start to struggle. So if you want to get close to God or grow in your faith, that’s the best place to start.

Grounded in the Word

We believe the Bible is true. Every word of it. It’s is a collection of books telling the story of how God gets His family back. It is also about one person in particular, Jesus. If you want to get to know Jesus better then the Bible will tell you everything you need to know about Him.

As well as all that, the Bible is the best instruction manual for life. It advises how to live our best lives; ‘life to the full’. If we don’t read our Bibles then we aren’t going to know how to live our best lives. We are going to start doing things that we shouldn’t and believing things that aren’t true.

This is what we mean when we say the Bible keeps us grounded. It helps us know what to do and helps us know what is true.

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Joshua 1:8 NIV

By taking the time to read your Bible every day you will find truth that helps you when life gets hard. It will help you to be successful in your life.

Powered by prayer

If the Bible keeps us grounded and on the right path, it’s prayer that powers us.

To give you a break down of prayer you first need to understand that there is the physical world; the one you can touch, see and hear; and then there is the spiritual world; the one where you interact with God. These two worlds aren’t really separate, just different. When something changes in one it effects the other.

Now here is where it gets a little technical. The original words for spirit in the Bible can also be translated as breath. When we speak we take breath from our lungs and we shape that breath into words in our mouth. We then speak those words out into the world around us.

The same happens in the spiritual world. When we talk and pray we are taking both our spirit and the Spirit that God has put inside of us and we are shaping it. We are then releasing it into the spiritual world around us. So when we pray we’re not just saying words we are literally shaping the spiritual world around us. This then helps shape the physical word.

That right there is how powerful prayer can be. When we take time to pray every day we are, little by little, shaping the world we live in.

Led by the Holy Spirit

So the Bible keeps us grounded and prayer makes us powerful, but it is the Holy Spirit that leads us, that gets us moving. If we read our Bibles and pray but don’t listen to the Holy Spirit we’re like a strong man that stands there posing but not really doing anything.

The Holy spirit is the one who tells us to do things, or stop doing things. He’s the one who gives us pictures in our minds or things to say to people. We’re going to speak more about the Holy Spirit next week, but know for now that He’s important.