Do you understand what you're reading?

Acts 8:30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?

I recently had a conversation with another church member over the telephone. As we talked about spiritual things, she made a remark that made me laugh....and made me think...and inspired me to write. She said (and this isn't word-for-word, but close enough since this is an anonymous source) "Yeah, I just got through reading a lot of good stuff in Romans but I can't really tell you what any of it means."

I wonder how much of a common occurance this is for born-again believers? How many times have we read over a passage-had no idea what it meant- and then we just leap-frogged onto the next chapter...only to find that the next time we run across the passage...it's still in the bible...and we still don't have a clue what it means? I know this used to be my approach when I was a young convert. I was very concerned with memorization, but not exremely concerned with application. Consequently, I got pretty good at quoting verses (shucks even whole chapters of smaller books)...but probably had no idea what many of them actually meant (in context).

I know that as a pastor I can preach a sermon with a definite aim or focus....and yet....I can have 5 different people come up to me and they have 5 totally different takes on what I was trying to say.....many times- nowhere near the intent of the message. I think the devil delights when we don't "understand what we're reading." (ref: Acts 8:30)

Thankfully the Ethiopian eunuch wasn't content with his misunderstanding of scripture. And as always, our faithful Lord had Philip at the right place at the right time to help guide. Clarity of the scriptures brought salvation to the Ethiopian man that day. I believe that for the diligent student of scripture, God will give that individual a clear understanding of His written Word. So the next time you're confronted with a difficult passage....instead of procrastinating and skipping over it- why not dig deep, pray, and let God give you the understanding? I wrote an article about this on my website- have a look if you're interested : Do you understand what you're reading?

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