Is Reading the Bible Sufficient?

 This post is from the chapter “Misconceptions and Myths”, where I answer the most common objections people have about hearing God’s voice.

“God speaks to us through the Bible. We don’t need anything more.”

God does without question speak to us through the Bible. The scriptures have been given to us for correction, for doctrine, for instruction in righteousness, and for encouragement. The Bible is indispensable as a guide that points us to God. But a person who reads the Bible can fall into error if their study is not guided by the voice of God.

I once listened to a group of pastors who were part of a popular non-denominational assembly of churches. They were solid Bible teachers, but they had allowed what I would consider a few false doctrines into their theology, one of them was the idea that healing and miracles had ceased thousands of years ago. I once believed what they taught. Being good Bible teachers, they had their handful of Bible verses to back up their teaching. Although they meant no harm, they had nonetheless embraced some false teachings along the way and they were teaching them to their congregations.

The truth of the matter came to me one day, not as I studied the Bible, but in a dream where God Himself told me He wanted me to pray for my patients to be healed. I didn’t believe in healing at the time but flatly rejected it. I didn’t accept healing mostly because these Bible teachers had persuaded me not to. They believed healing was not happening today, and I believed what they taught. I had to change my thinking and begin reading the Bible with a new set of eyes. When I did, I saw the many accounts of healing and the clear instructions Jesus gave to His disciples to heal the sick. I realized that supernatural healing is one of the most irrefutable doctrines of the New Testament, despite the fact that many good Bible teachers refuse to see it as such. Here’s a case where personal revelation from God was needed to straighten out a lie I had learned from some of the best Bible teachers in the world.

There is no guarantee that a strict diet of scripture reading will lead us along the complete path of truth. If you read without having the Holy Spirit teach your spirit and interpret the scriptures for you, the exercise may very well lead you to a warped understanding of God. All the major pseudo-Christian cults teach from the Bible. Their error is in not having the Spirit of God interpret and apply what they read.

This is an excerpt from my book Hearing God’s Voice Made Simple.