Because Scripture is uniquely God's self-disclosure, and Scripture is uniquely God's verbal, but very real presence.

It's God's presence in a unique kind of way. And if it's God's presence in a unique kind of way,

that's grace to us. So it's God giving himself to us. It's grace in the sense that it's the grandest

of gifts because it's God himself. Hucci Anasor serves as professor of theology at Talbot School

of Theology at Biola and is the author of a number of books, including The Goodness of God in the Gift of Scripture, 20 meditations from Crossway.

Uche, thanks so much for joining me again on the Crossway podcast.

Thanks for having me.

So we've just started a new year, and that means that many of us are

probably taking stock of our spiritual lives, and maybe we're noticing things about our lives

that we want to grow in about our spiritual lives, that we want to see some progress in. And

one of those is probably, for many of us, something related to our Bible reading habits.

We often view it in these ways, almost like eating our vegetables, you know, because it's good

for us, but doesn't necessarily taste good. I'm just wondering, have you experienced that?

You're a professor. You teach the Bible all the time. But do you ever have days where it feels like that for you as well?

Yeah, I definitely have days where I think I am performing something that I know I should do.

It is good for me. And because it's good for me, yeah, I'll stay faithful in it. And the reality is, like, there are lots of things like that in life, right? So there are so many things we do in the course of our lives that we do out of a desire to be faithful, out of a desire to be healthy and not just sort of live on our whims and on our emotions. And so as we do that, we grow into healthy, disciplined, you know, kinds of people.

I guess my concern when it comes to scripture is that if that's always our posture towards

scripture or that's a predominant way that we engage with the Bible, then I don't see that as being

long-term viable for the Christian. There are, of course, going to be lots

of seasons where we're just kind of sort of grinding it out, and we're trying to be faithful

because things are not always going to feel super awesome, but it can't always be that.

Yeah. I'm fairly convinced. And I think one of your, one of your emphases in this new book that

...