Podcast Transcript: To Listen to the full episode click HERE or scroll down to the bottom of the page.
I don’t know about you, but even though I grew up going to church as a kid, I never read the Bible from cover to cover until I was 23 years old. I am not sure that is uncommon as you would think even among professing Christians. Why read the Bible when we already know all the stories, or do we?
I can remember so many times as I read through it for the first time thinking, wow this is the context around that memory verse I learned as a kid. But more than the big picture, reading through the Bible with an open-heart lead me to a deep conviction that this was no ordinary book. Each day that I opened it was like opening a window into my heart. My motives, fears, and longings were all laid bare before my eyes and It was like I was becoming naked and unashamed for the first time in my life.
You remember the story, don’t you? Adam and Eve had just sinned in the garden of Eden and the next morning God came looking for them but instead of running out to see him like they always had before – this time they were hiding and trying to hide the shame of their nakedness before God. Before sin they had been naked – but without shame. Now their shame was compelling them to hide from God and even from themselves.
This has been our condition ever since, and yet I found reading the Bible with an open heart to God had the power to reverse this effect of sin in my life. I could come before God and realize that he loved me even in the shame of my nakedness and had instead taken the shame of my nakedness to the cross and died the death I deserved. This freed me to walk boldly and without shame not because I was now sinless, but because the sinless one had set me free. And I as I continued to read the Bible more and more- likes springs in a desert and I became an oasis of life in a world full of dry bones.
It is for this reason that I was excited to be able to connect with Justin Kim who is now currently serving as the Assistant Director of Sabbath School/Personal Ministries and Editor of the young adult Bible study guide at the General Conference World Headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and is the host of InVerse – a Television program produced by the Hope Channel.
Justin and I go way back to our Seminary days at Andrews University and I have had the privilege to watch how God has used his many gifts and talents to bless the church. In this episode we talk among other things about the importance of the Bible and tackle the huge challenge of Bible illiteracy that exists today even in the church. I hope you are inspired by my conversation with him as much as I was.
I started the interview by asking him what he is up to these days…