God’s word is personal address, inviting, commanding, challenging, rebuking, judging, comforting, directing—but not forcing.

Not coercing. We are given space and freedom to answer, to enter the conversation.

For more than anything else the Bible invites our participation in the work and language of God.

As we read, we find that there is a connection between the Word Read and the Word Lived.

Everything in this book is live-able.

Many of us find that the most important question we ask as we read is not “What does it mean?” but “How can I live it?”

So we read personally, not impersonally.

We read it in order to live our true selves, not just get information that we can use to raise our standard of living.

Bible reading is a means of listening to and obeying God, not gathering religious data by which we can be our own gods.

You are going to hear stories in this Book that will take you out of your preoccupation with yourself and into the spacious freedom in which God is working the world’s salvation.

You are going to come across words and sentences that stab you awake to a beauty and hope that will connect you with your real life. Be sure to answer.

*****

You’ve been reading from the introduction of The Message Deluxe Gift Bible.

The Message is a reading Bible translated from the original Greek and Hebrew Scriptures by scholar, pastor, author, and poet Eugene Peterson.

Thoroughly reviewed and approved by twenty biblical scholars, The Message combines the authority of God’s Word with the cadence and energy of conversational English.

Special editions, sizes, and cover designs available on our Bibles page.