Learning to Love God’s Word

Kelly Needham: It’s a book that is alive, and it’s not like buying a new appliance for your house. It’s doing stuff! 

Dannah Gresh: Kelly Needham says your Bible should be affecting you . . . changing you.

Kelly: When you read God’s Word and spend time in it, it’s doing things in you!

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for September 2, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of A Place of Quiet Rest, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Where's going to be talking about my very favorite subject. To introduce that let me read two sentences, and I want you to think about if they’re true, and how they might apply in your life. Here’s the first sentence. “The people or things I spend the greatest amount of time with influence me the most.” Is that true? And then, “I choose to do what I most want to do.” Would you say that’s true in your life? 

Now, I know you might feel like your time is not really your own, and you can’t do what you truly want to do. I get that. But our desires, our wants, do drive us. And where we “hang out” will influence our thinking and our behavior.

I think that relates to something in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, where Paul says, "We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (v. 18).

What does that mean? Well, basically, you and I are being transformed into the same image of whatever we're gazing upon. You could say it like this, “You become like what you behold.” In fact, I have a large framed piece in my home that says this: “You become like what you behold.” 

This is why it’s important to recalibrate our hearts on a regular basis, a daily basis, by spending time with the Lord, in prayer and in His Word. Because, let’s be honest, there are a lot of things competing for our attention and our love. And remember, this transformation process is a gradual process. That’s why Paul says it happens “from glory to glory.” It doesn't happen overnight. 

Our guest today, Kelly Needham. Kelly is a good friend. One of the things I most love about her is the passion to help people get into their Bibles. Kelly is married to Jimmy, a musician and pastor in Texas, near the Dallas area. They have five children. Kelly’s been a guest on Revive Our Hearts multiple times. She’s a like-minded sister who shares our vision to help women experience revival by loving and living God’s Word.

This is a conversation Erin Davis had with Kelly just a few weeks ago over a video call. We’ll be sharing it in our Revive Our Hearts staff chapel next week. We thought it was so good that we wanted to share it with you as well. Let’s listen. 

Erin Davis: Hey, Kelly, how would you describe your own journey to love and live God's Word? 

Kelly: Well, it actually started in the quiet of my junior high bedroom, where I had, for the first time, opened my Bible outside of Sunday school, outside of Sunday morning. I do not remember why. I don't remember the occasion. But I remember the moment of reading something in God's Word and having that visceral experience of, “God is speaking to me? Like, this God is real!”

The Word came alive in my heart in a way that I just hadn't experienced before. Again, I don't even remember what I read. But at that point, it just created an insatiable hunger for more. I wanted more of that. 

Not every season has been the same, but since then, there just has been a pretty consistent, “Give me more of the Word of God, because that's where I meet the God of the Word.”

Erin: I was sixth grade, Kelly. I was not yet a follower of Jesus, but it was “mean girl drama” in sixth grade that made me reach for that Bible, because I felt desperate. And the same thing. I just felt like, “Whoa! What just happened? What did I just experience?” So we share that in common.

I know you to be a discipler of women. You're very connected to many women, both online and in your own community right there where you live. What would you say are the greatest challenges women face in just maintaining our affection? I'm not even talking about the practicalities of the doing, but maintaining our affection for the Word.

Kelly: Well, I think familiarity is one challenge. It sounds strange. We should be familiar with God's Word. But I think the longer we're in church, the longer that we are walking with Jesus and even hearing great teaching . . . I just feel like we have access to so many great types of content centered around the Word. The familiarity we have can almost make it feel like old news, and then, by comparison, we've got this phone with us that's giving us new, new, new all the time. It can feel really hard to spend time in the old, in the timeless, when there's new available to you. So I think that that's one big challenge. 

And I think just a classic answer, but the busyness of our lives really fills us. We’re kind of stuffed full to the brim, to where we don't have any more space in our minds to even start to wrap it around the words we're reading on the page. And so, if we fill our minds with constant input all the time, it's so hard to open God's Word and have any mental energy for it.

Erin: You are so right? I find so many times that I get myself to the chair, I get the Word of God open, and there's just a mental fog based on, you're right, just the bombardment of my brain that is so constant. Of course, I hate that tension, but it's there. 

I think it's easy to point to external factors, and those are important for us to recognize. But what do we have to fight internally if we want to become women of the Word?

Kelly: I think for many of us, I think the word that comes to mind is “doubt”—doubt in the power of the Word of God. I think maybe that could also be categorized as a type of cynicism, right? It's like, “Yeah, yeah, it's God's Word, yeah, this, yeah, that.” But I really just need a book about this particular need that's going to really help me do this thing in my life. It’s that felt need that we have. It doesn't seem to be that this really is all I need for life and godliness. This book tells me that, but I kind of doubt that. I think I need this shortcut somewhere. And so I think this is like a weed that grows out of a type of cynicism or doubt that God's Word is as powerful as it says it is, that it is all that we need for life and godliness. 

I think that leads into another maybe internal thing that we deal with, which is impatience. “Fix the problem now, please.” If the Bible's not going to do that, then I don't really have much time for that. I'm going to go somewhere else, because I'm already short on time. Why linger in this thing if it's not going to immediately fix the problem? And so that lack of patience, willingness to wait on the Lord, to wait on Him, isn't there in us. I think that's another internal factor keeping us from spending time in the Word and loving it. 

Erin: Yeah, you're so right. Transformation through the Word is slow work. It just is slow work, and that's God's design. But we don't love that. I have a new believer in my home Bible study, and man, her enthusiasm for the Bible! I just need to be near her, just to get some of that every week, because to her, it's like, “I didn't know the Bible was one big story. I didn't know that the Psalms talk about the range of human emotion. I didn't know that the Old Testament points to the New. The New Testament points to the Old.” 

Watching those light bulbs for her is truly convicting, because I can, spiritually speaking, roll my eyes a little bit because I've heard it. I know those things, and so I think you're right. I think we can get desensitized. You mentioned this, but it's true. In many ways, we have access to more Bible teaching and good Bible teaching. 

I mean, if I wanted to, I could listen to Piper today. I could probably listen to some Spurgeon somehow, some of these "greats," and lots of tools, lots of content. And yet, our biblical literacy rates here in the American church (this isn't true everywhere) are shockingly low. You've touched on some of them. But what is the disconnect? Why is all that content coming at us not necessarily fanning into flame our affection for the Word of God?

Kelly: Yeah, it feels very surprising, doesn't it? You think the more great Bible content we have access to, the more great Bible tools we have, we would just become extremely biblically literate, right? Man, it isn't happening. 

Put yourself in the opposite situation. If you put yourself in a country that has maybe banned the Bible or doesn't have access to it, and you also don't have access to great Bible teaching and all that, and you come across a Bible somehow; I mean, it's up to you to figure out what's in there. It's up to you to spend time in it. It is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword. So when you read God's Word and you spend time in it, it's doing things in you. It is a book that is alive. It's not like buying a new appliance for your house. It's doing stuff, right? A thing that's alive in your life creates messes and does things even without you trying. And so I feel like spending time in the Word. It starts to do that in you. 

But we spend time in it when we're the only option to get more out of it. I think that the thing we should watch out for with all the great content we have is, it can make us lazy. It can make us only depend on meals from God's Word that are once prepared by other people.

I think for every Christ follower, we are called to make our own meals. Every now and then you go out to eat, and you get a really wonderful meal. But most of the days, what's best for my body most days is that I'm at home making something that's going to have healthier ingredients and be cooked fresh and from scratch for myself or for my family. 

I feel like that's true of the intake of my time in the Word as well. Because, like you said, I could start every morning with a great sermon and that'd be my Bible time, but I'm getting content from that person who spent hours and hours in God's Word. They fed me this great meal, yes, but they also walked with God through all that time and preparation. 

That's part of what I need. I need those moments in those chapters that I don't understand or that I'm wrestling through, praying, and talking to Him. I need that self-prepared meal from God's Word. With all the rich content out there, I can think, Just why would I prepare my own meal when I can go get a five-star chef to prepare it for me? That makes so much sense until you know the nutritional value of what's there for your soul to make it yourself, to make your way through a text in a way that's not going to be as wonderful as that Bible teacher. That's actually really good for you. And I think we're missing maybe an awareness that that's needed. 

Erin: That's a beautiful, beautiful analogy. I was just reading some Billy Graham, and he said that one of his regrets is that he wishes he spent less time teaching and more time studying. He said, "The opportunities were there, and people were telling me I needed to be teaching, but I really needed to be in the Word more." So to hear Billy Graham say I needed to be making my own meal, so to speak, more than I was teaching others, I think is so convicting.

One of my teaching mantras and mantras for my own time in the Word has long been: whoever's doing the work is doing the learning. And so, when somebody's already done the work . . . And they have done the work. They've spent hours, as you said, reducing that to a three-point sermon with a take it home point. But they've been doing the work, so they've been doing the learning. We miss out on some of that when we're always depending on them. 

It's not a new problem. Paul said, “You guys should be on steak, and you're still on milk” (see Heb. 5:12). So he used the food analogy too, but I think we have to fight it.

So what's at stake here? I mean, obviously we want a woman to hear this and have a renewed affection for the Word. But a woman is a follower of Jesus, let's say, and she has a weak relationship with the Word. Her salvation doesn't depend on it, right? Like, grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, period. Amen. But, what is on the line when women remain apathetic toward God's Word? 

Kelly: I think we become unfamiliar with it, except for in sound-bite forms. This is very, very dangerous, because Satan is very adept at using God's Word in sound-bite form out of context. It's right in the beginning, “Did God really say?” Back in Genesis 3. He's creating some questions around what did God say? 

And familiarity with God's Word is dangerous. It makes me think of the book of Hosea, which is a wonderful book to read in this conversation, because one of God's critiques of His people at that time is there's no knowledge of God in the land. 

It says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Or later, I think it's in chapter 8, he says, “If I were to write my word by the ten thousands, they wouldn't recognize it” (Hosea 8:12 paraphrased). Wow, can we recognize God's Word. If we have not spent time in it ourselves, reading these verses in context, kind of just slowly making our way through chapter by chapter, book by book, over years of time, we're not gaining that familiarity. Then when all these really excellent, gifted Bible teachers come in and begin telling us what it means, we're not going to have a defense to know if it is true or not. 

It's good to have people you trust, but honestly, any one of us, we're all sinners. I mean even myself. I feel like I want to tell people who would listen to me teach, “I hope you have your Bibles and you're reading it.” Because, Lord protect me, but any one of us, whether on purpose or inadvertently, can make mistakes and teach things wrongly. So the greatest defense that we have is to be familiar with it ourselves, and to so much so that it's like the way that we are familiar with our houses. 

Like, if you've lived in a house for more than a decade, you know which boards creak, and you know which cabinet doors fall off if you pull too hard, or where the spoons are. Or if I need the WD40, I know what cabinet that is in? Like, you know where things are because you've spent time there. And people who spend a lot of time at your house begin to figure out, “Oh, I don't need to ask where the creamer is for the coffee. I know where that is. I don't need to ask where the cups are. I know which cabinet to go into.” That just comes from time spent in it. 

I feel the same about the Bible. I need to be spending time in God's Word in a way that I'm gaining that type of familiarity with it, that when someone else is teaching it, teaching a part of it, and trying to tell me that this room is like this; I can go, “Wait a minute. I don't know if it is. I've spent time in that book. Let me go reread it.” It's just a great protection for us. It's a danger, I think, if we're not slowly growing in awareness of that. It's a good safeguard for our souls. 

Erin: So true. It starts with a keen awareness of the fact that we're all capable of being deceived, and that there is a deceiver who is relentlessly trying to deceive us. I gotta tell you, I'm writing a Bible study right now, so I'm in Google a lot, looking up a lot of Bible verses in Google. And now there's this feature where AI pops up some AI answers, and I'm a little bit terrified, because they are close. AI will say the Bible says . . . and gives me this bulleted point list. They're close, but they're not right. You're right. I have to be grounded enough in the Word so that when that pops up, whether it's in Google or in my church service or in a Bible study I go to . . . It's so dangerous when we think something is truth, and it is actually not true at all. So I love that thought of being familiar like we are with our homes. 

You and I, Kelly, we're both in the full years. We have lots of kids at home. We have lots of vocational demands. We have lots of relational demands. I wouldn't trade it. I'm really, really grateful for this season, but it does certainly come with practical end-of-the-day challenges for even somebody like us. We do long to be in the Word. We recognize our own need for it. 

So not as a prescriptive formula, there's variety here, but I would just love to hear what does your time in the Word really look like in this season of your life? How is it different from other seasons? 

Kelly: Well, I have to readjust about every quarter. That's one thing with children right now, with young kids who are changing a lot. About every three months I having to just reevaluate. Is this time and place working? And honestly, that's my first question when it comes to getting into God's Word. It's not really even what to read. It's when and where am I going to read it? That really is the most important thing for me. 

I used to love to be awake before my kids, but honestly, with how summers have been right now, as we're talking, I'm not able to do that. I'm up late with my kids. So for me, the when and where for me has been as soon as everyone has eaten breakfast. We've gotten through that. I put my youngest, who's one year old, in our living room. It's something we call living room time, where he's just got to stay in that contained room. That's when I pull out my Bible. 

So there are kids around while I'm reading. But they generally know, “Hey, Mom's having a conversation with a person I can't see.” It’s the same way as if I had someone sitting on my couch and I would ask them to respect and honor that person. I'm asking them, “Can you solve the problem yourself? Do that.” I'm reading through the Bible this year in that way. 

I've even made a decision this summer and through this year to have a five-day-a-week plan to build in the flex that I need as a mom. There are just travel days, and there are other things where maybe I'm just listening or reading a psalm. But I want to be able to be physically reading my Bible. And having the weekends off, so to speak, in my Bible reading plan, has given the flex room for me to stay consistent meeting with Him without feeling discouraged. If look down at my reading plan and go, “I'm two weeks behind.” I can't catch up from that. Then we feel discouraged and are tempted to give up, and I feel the same. That's what it looks like right now. When school starts, we'll revamp again, and I’ll go, “All right, Lord, when do I need to meet with you? Midday? Evening? It always just has to move around to what is the most likely consistent place that I will be able to sit with Him, even if it's not my preference.

Erin: I love that freedom to adjust quarterly or annually or semi-annually. I’ve definitely held onto kind of a romanticized idea of a season of my life when it was early in the morning. I did have a lot of time, and I could really exegete a book of the Bible. That was a sweet time. Those seeds are still in my heart. They still have roots. They're still producing fruit. But that is not doable for me right now, and that's good, because God never said it had to look that way.

I can sometimes hold my feet to the fire and think, Oh, you're backsliding because you didn't spend an hour exegeting Leviticus this morning. And that's just not right where I am. But God gives me a lot of freedom. The important thing is to get to the Word.

Kelly: I think a lot of women struggle with that, an idealized version of Bible reading and Bible time that causes us to do it all the way or not at all. I think that is something we need to put to death, especially if you have young kids.

It's like the Word is meant to be a meal. That we live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. And if you have young kids as moms, you know the way that you eat changes. When you have littles, you're often eating on the go or eating leftovers while you're feeding your children. Your body still needs to eat, and our souls need that same sustenance. It might not be you sitting down alone and quiet eating your meal with the Lord. It's so wonderful, and what a treat that is, right? Aim for that if you can get it, but you still need to eat. You still need the Word in your soul, and even if that means it's a little noisy around you and you're getting interrupted by questions. 

It's a great opportunity to help your kids see God is real. You can have your meeting with somebody who, though they can't see Him, this is a real person they're trying not to interrupt your time with. It's still a great training opportunity. I don't really want to do training with my children while I'm meeting with God, but you know what? That's the season I'm in. I have to be willing to receive the season I’m in, and that's hard sometimes.

Erin: I've had to give up the dream of it being alone time. I have teenagers now, and they're developing their own rhythms in the Word. There is some beauty in us having Bible time together, though it is very different. It's not that moment of peacefulness, serenity in my house alone. It's a different kind of time in the Word. 

So a mantra I've developed, both for physical exercise and my time in the Word is: if I miss one day, don't miss two. So sometimes I'm going to miss a day, and as we said, our salvation does not depend on it. I don't lose a gold star on my sticker chart in heaven if I miss a day. But if I miss one day, don't miss two, because two will turn into ten, and then I'm the one that really misses out. So I love that we're giving people freedom and also saying, “Stick with it. Find a way to stick with it.” 

Kelly, you and your husband Jimmy have a podcast, and the tagline is this, which I adore: get into God's Word and get over yourself. That's a great thought. How does getting into God's Word free us from our self-absorption.

Kelly: It does, because the Bible is primarily not about us, and it does have so much to say about us. That's how we learn about how we were made, the purpose of our lives, so many things, but it's primarily the revelation of God. So, a revelatory book telling us about the One who made us, but the One who made the world. 

We're just all so hungry for glory, for something big and weighty and huge. We feel it in our bones, right? We tend to because we live in the culture. We’re just trained to look for that inside ourselves. You know, “What can I be great at? How can I succeed?” 

But then, when I read this, we are getting these glimpses as we spend time in God's Word of just the biggest, brightest sun in the sky, of who God is in His character, in His ways. It is surprising. It is unusual. It's not what we would do; it's not how we would do it. It's beautiful, and it captures our attention in a way that pulls us away from ourselves. 

I think so many of us are trying to get over selfishness or self-centeredness by just telling ourselves to stop it. “Get over it. Stop thinking about you.” That just doesn't work. I don't remember who it is who says, “The only way to get rid of one affection is to supplant it with a bigger one, a better affection.” And so the only way to get over me is not to say, “Stop thinking about yourself, Kelly.” It's actually to be more obsessed with something else, to see something bigger and brighter and better. 

And so, as you're getting glimpses of God in His Word, it's not hard to stop thinking about yourself because you have something new to look at, to enjoy, to be enthralled with. It's so much more impressive than you are. It's like a gravitational pull that just slowly pulls you away from self, and that's where freedom is. Because we're the creatures, not the creator. We actually thrive when we're not thinking about ourselves, but about the One we were made for. 

So much of the Scriptures is just meant to showcase God. It's over and over again, setting before our spiritual eyes who God is in a way that can just so wonderfully and beautifully drag us away from ourselves—not in in a way that's difficult, but in a way that's attractive and sets us free from self. I think that's one of the focuses of Scriptures, to help us see ourselves rightly. 

Erin: Yeah, I mean, even a child's exposure to the Word in a Sunday school context reveals who shuts the mouths of lions, who appears in pillars of smoke and in fire, who parts oceans, who raises from the dead, who's coming back as a warrior King. I'm so ready to be stripped of my obsession with self, because you're right, there's freedom there. 

Kelly, you're going to be teaching the Word at our upcoming digital event, Loving and Living God's Word. I'd love to just wrap up this time by praying for you. I would ask you to join me in praying for Kelly as she delivers the Word, and so let's do that now. 

Jesus, even just talking about Your Word has made the affection for it just grow in my heart. That's what You do. That's a supernatural work of Your Spirit. So, I thank You for this time, and I just thank You for my sister, Kelly. I thank You for the giftings You've placed inside her. Thank You for the passions You've given her for Your Word.

As we're going to tap into those for this upcoming digital event, I pray that You would do all the heavy lifting. I pray that You would go before her and work within her. I pray that You would do what we just described—that You would just strip her of her love for self, even as she's prepping. 

I just pray that You would do more than we know to ask. But we're going to ask You to do something really dramatic and supernatural, not for our glory, but for Yours, through her teaching as we gather online. We love You. We love Your Word. Thank you so much. It's in your name I pray, amen. 

Well, thanks, Kelly. I look forward to spending time with you at the digital event soon.

Kelly: Can't wait.

Dannah: The digital event Erin Davis and Kelly Needham have been talking about is happening a week from tomorrow, the evening of Tuesday, September 10. It’s part of our series of online events we’re calling Biblical Help for Real Life. This one is on Loving and Living God’s Word. 

Kelly will be there, along with Kay Arthur and Dr. Katie McCoy. Even if you already have plans for that Tuesday evening, you can go ahead and register and watch the whole thing at your convenience later. You’ll find all the details about how you can sign up when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com/word.

Nancy: You know, Dannah, Hebrews chapter 4 tells us that God’s Word is "living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword" (v. 12). Kelly Needham talked about that in what we just heard. We need to let the Lord use His Word to do in us what He wants it to do. Sometimes that means to cut us open like a scalpel in His skilled hands, so that He can take out what needs to be removed, and so he can then heal us with His Word. I hope you’ll take advantage of this wonderful opportunity by participating in Loving and Living God’s Word.

Dannah: Again, all the information is at ReviveOurHearts.com/word. Tomorrow we’ll hear from another of the speakers, Kay Arthur, as she explains how to study the Word. I’ll give you a hint: she just might use the word “inductive” on tomorrow’s edition of Revive Our Hearts. Join us!

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.