As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

As we reach the end of our exploration of the TEXT Method of studying Scripture, it is our hope and prayer that you feel equipped, empowered and excited to put what you’ve learned into practice. Engaging with God’s Word using this simple but powerful four-step process – Talk to God, Encounter Him in Scripture, Examine your heart, and Talk to others – can utterly transform your spiritual life.

The TEXT Method is biblical, doable, adaptable and profoundly fruitful. The goal of writing this book has been to provide you with a practical and devotional tool to unlock the riches of Scripture in your daily life, something between straight Bible reading and a deep, academic dive into study and to help you experience the Bible coming alive as God’s Spirit illuminates His Word for your life.

But learning a method is only the beginning.

Read more

As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

Think about your favorite restaurant; what is it? What are your favorite menu items there? The problem with restaurants is that sometimes you need reservations, they are rarely open 24 hours, and even go out of business. But what if their chef could teach you how to cook your favorite dishes, do it easily, and do it well? How amazing would that be? What a gift! Now you can eat on your terms and your schedule wherever you are. Except the chef has one condition for teaching you her culinary secrets; you’ve got to feed others as you get better at feeding yourself. That means inviting friends and neighbors into your home for a meal, maybe setting up a cookout in a local park or community center, all to share the love of what the chef shared with you. But the fine print doesn’t stop there. The chef doesn’t want you to become the attraction or the choke point from where everyone must get this special dish; she wants you to teach others how to cook the dish themselves as well. Then one last caveat; encourage those that you teach to cook to teach others how to cook the dish. This is the exponential goal of the chef; that generations will enjoy the dish long after she’s gone not because she is so good but the dish is so good.

Read more

As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

Yes, using eXamine for X instead of X-ray or something else seems like cheating, but using a more accurate term like MRI your heart, just doesn’t have the same ring to it, so we’re staying with eXamine! But we’re not here to study medical textbooks or for an academic exercise and studying the Bible can’t just be an academic exercise if we want to grow closer to God. The Bible is a living and active book that penetrates our hearts and lives, not just our minds. That’s why taking time to examine your heart after reading Scripture is so crucial. This step in the TEXT Method is how we actively join with the Holy Spirit to let the Bible do its convicting, cleansing work within us. He brings to mind challenging but important questions to reflect on after encountering God’s truth, so we don’t just gain head knowledge but experience real heart and life change. For transformation to happen, we’ve have to accept what the Spirit reveals in us through Scripture. Don’t worry, God’s not condemning, just refining us to be more like Jesus! But we need to humbly and honesty admit when God’s Word exposes where we fall short. At the same time, we can’t refuse the grace and encouragement God offers everyone who falls short of His glory. Being hard or yourself or not accepting his forgiveness is refusing to accept the work of Jesus on the cross. The goal is to spark conviction, repentance, reflection, and empowerment into practical steps of obedience. The goal here, rather than defending our pride or wallowing in our shame, is to make space for the Bible to penetrate deep, shine light on hidden motives and intentions, and renew our hearts. When we let Scripture shape our inner life, it leads to greater awe, worship, and love for God! It’s personal and can get uncomfortable, but leaning into this heart work produces real growth and intimacy with Christ. Let’s allow God’s living Word to examine and transform us fully!

Read more

As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

So here’s a question for you. This is a big one, maybe the biggest question you will ever answer. And no worries, but whatever you answer will be the single most influential thing in your emotional, mental and spiritual life. So are you ready? Here it is: “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” However you answer that is, as A.W. Tozer once said, the single most important thing about you. Why is that? Why do your thoughts on God impact the entirety of your emotional, mental and spiritual life? Because what you think about God directly impacts what you think about yourself and everyone around you, which decides how you feel and what you do in relationship to God. It’s probably obvious that your ideas on who God is and what He wants for you will influence your spiritual life, but how does that affect your emotions and the way you think about your life? It’s kind of like taking a trip by plane, how you feel about air travel safety will affect how you feel and act and even pray during your flight. If you need to fly, but doubt that the plan can withstand a lot of turbulence, then you are going to be very anxious when turbulence hits. So, by comparison, in the life of faith if you believe that God is good but not all-powerful you might be plagued with worry, stress or fear, freaked out over the dangers that lurk around you. If you think that He is powerful but not good, then you might be on the search for meaning, protection, provision or self-actualization as you fight to care for yourself. Your thoughts on God directly impact your emotional, relational and even physical life, not to mention your witness to the world around you.

Read more

As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

Now on to Chapter 1!

Some people love snakes. You get what they are saying. You understand the words they use, like “so” and “cute,” “fun,” “hold,” and “favorite” but, even though you understand what they are saying, you really don’t understand what they are saying. Seriously, how can anyone say that snakes are fun to hold? This makes no sense. It’s foolishness! That snake could kill you in a heartbeat and you think it’s cute and fun to hold? It’s definitely hard to understand the mind of the snake lover.

In fact, there are a lot of things that you might say, and you might be heard, but the other person still just won’t get you, and it’s not a problem of your words. It’s a problem of what your words mean to the other person. Like, you can read a book written in your own language, and you can see what the author is trying to say, but if you’re just not buying it, then you just can’t understand. For example, a lot of people have read the Bible, and understood the words, but not everyone can buy it. Some might call it wisdom, and others foolishness. Like the Bible says itself, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) Same words, different message.

The bestselling book of all-time

Is the Bible just a good story and nothing else? Was Jesus just a good teacher but not God? Or do you think you are looking at the very words of God as you look at your Bible? There are lots of professors and historians that study and teach the Bible but don’t worship God. There are a lot of people who read their Bible but don’t understand how it could change their lives, while others read it and go from addiction to freedom, and from fear to hope.

Why the differences? Why does the Bible fall flat for some and change the lives of others?

Read more

As a paid subscriber, you get full access to select books and other exclusive content, starting with this new release for August 2023, Texting God: Introducing The TEXT Method - Reading the Bible as a conversation between God, humanity, and you!

Thanks for subscribing!

And if you want a print copy, you can get it here on Amazon.

Copyright © 2023 by Hungry Planet.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover, content, and interior design by Hungry Planet.

For information visit: www.hungryplanet.net

Scripture quoted by permission. All quotations unless otherwise noted are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Dedication

What If You Could Text God?

1. Talk To God

2. Encounter God & Humanity

3. eXamine Your Heart

4. Talk To Others

5. Unlimited TEXTing

   Practice TEXTing

Dedication

Special thanks to:

The Gideons, for placing Bibles in places that people need them when they are at their lowest, as I was over twenty years ago.

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro, who long ago created the SOAP Method of studying Scripture. Your method inspired me to create this devotional reading method.

Dr. Philip Nation, V.P. of Bible Publishing at Harper Collins/Thomas Nelson, for believing in and publishing The TEXT Bible in the New English Translation.

***

Andy, Lou, and Darren: thanks for the brotherhood at those Thursday lunches at Firehouse Subs and inspiring me to build my own mousetrap. It was an honor to become your pastor, hand the reigns to Andy, and eventually see all of you TEXT from the pulpit on Sundays.

_{~ Michael DiMarco}

What if you could text God?

Do you sometimes struggle with understanding who God is and what in the world He wants from you? Do you feel too unqualified or uneducated to study and discern His Word, and so you look to pastors, commentaries, podcasts, and even Christian music to feed you truth about God? For many of us, Bible study can be a struggle. It might feel like homework or an obligation. Or you may just not know where to start! You might really want to know God, to love Him and obey Him, but still feel like you get more from your worship music than from scripture. If that’s the case you are not alone. Sometimes we might have friends who seem consumed by what they are reading in scripture, and we think, “Why can’t I be consumed? What am I missing?” Maybe that’s even led you to question your salvation or to think that you were missing something. But, the very fact that you are questioning that is a good thing, so don’t panic. It might be that all you are missing is a better way to look at God’s Word.

The truth is that sometimes we just over complicate things. We think, like the first residents of the Garden of Eden, that we have to know everything before we can be truly content. And like Eve, who couldn’t resist trying to know all that God knows, we take the serpent’s advice and say, “I’ve got to know all the details or I’ll feel like I don’t know anything.” In a strange way, this can even permeate into our approach to reading and studying the Bible. We start going down rabbit trails of, “I’ve got to know more about the history of this passage. I need to study the manners and customs of the people. I want to know what a denarii is worth today and how long a cubit is,” and we get sucked into the minutia of looking for things that make us feel like we are in the know meanwhile missing the relationship of knowing God more and who we are with and without Him. That's why more people read devotionals or listen to popular Christian music each day than read their Bibles. But what if there was a way to read the Bible like a devotional, like an actual conversation between you and God?

Those three little dots

Imagine for a moment what it would be like to text back and forth with God. To have His number right there in your contacts so you could send Him a text about anything at any time. And after hitting send, watching those three little dots in the chat bubble telling you He’s right there on the other end, responding to you in real time, but in His time. In a way, we do have this kind of immediate connection to our Creator; we send Him a message through heartfelt prayer, watch expectantly for His reply in the words of Scripture, and allow time for our hearts to react in turn. The thrill is that those three ellipses keep appearing; God is always listening, responding and guiding us into deeper relationship with Him through this beautiful “texting” connection.

You can do it, we can help.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know enough to truly figure out scripture. If you think you need some kind of a degree or a large library of commentaries, concordances and podcasts, to truly experience God, then do we have good news for you! Because while all those biblical references are good and have value in context, all you need in order to know and love God more is an open Bible and an open heart to receive what God wants you to know through the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re here to help remind you, with a simple yet profound devotional method, that you don’t need a theological contractor to be the go-between for you and the God of the universe. This is a DIY way of connecting with God and you can do it. So get excited! In a matter of minutes, you can know more about God, humanity, and yourself than you ever thought possible.

Read more