Not a single human being other than God has all of the puzzles of scripture formed up into a coherent picture, where one can be omniscient and omnipotent within it. We are very small and very blind. Becoming good at being a puzzle piece recognizer and assembler is a multifaceted endeavor, requiring salvation in Christ, the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ, and growing discipline in righteousness and training. The capstone for us humans being the growing up to become adult imagers of Christ as loyal loving family members, kings, priests, and ambassadors for our King.
If you think you can understand scripture without any of the components above, then you will be wrong. The gods, goddesses, demigods, demons, satans, and even the Satan of satans might know scripture, but their wickedness, rebellion, unrighteousness, violence, disloyalty, and lack of the help of God makes them not only wrong, but enemies. Therefore, if you as a human think you can know something about the bible while linked in loyalty to the listed beings above, then you're just fooling yourself. You are wise only in your own eyes.
On the other hand, people naming the name of Christ who also follow after the creatures listed above, giving God lip-service are equally self-deluded. If you think that propping up any of the sins of the Watchers and follow-on demigods and demons as "good" will result in you having an eternal-life-view of scripture—again—you are self-deluded, blinded by the very creatures listed above who are doomed to destruction and you along with them.
This leaves Christians who are the sheep and not the goats. What of you? Scripture demonstrates to us and tells us that if we neglect discipline in loyalty in seeking Christ through the Cross and then His indwelling Spirit for the purpose of being honest, righteous, and loving like Jesus, then we are in a place of remaining as spiritual infants and children.
The mark of adulthood is the application of discipline and learning to our lives as we seek to see and know the Christ of God, Jesus, the King and Lord of all. Without applying ourselves in discipline to all that King and Kingdom mean, we stand in a dangerous place of being children who are easily led astray, where we can fall for or back into loyalties to the fallen creatures above. Being a disciplined follower is, therefore, critical to our relationship with Christ and our eternal place and position in the family.
What does all of this have to do with puzzles and puzzle pieces?
Puzzles, pieces, and pictures
35% of American adults report never using the Bible outside of a large church service, while at the other end of the spectrum, 14% use it on a daily basis. Only 14 of 100 American's actually pick up and read a bible each and every day. Most only open and read in a "read-along" with the preacher during a sermon or church bible study (65%). The most reasonable conclusion is that average American's (mostly Christians) are anything but disciplined. Why is this important?
Reading, studying, and getting to know scripture is what fills the well of your being with the necessary parts and pieces of the puzzle. It is the Spirit of Christ in you that pulls and draws from that well to show you the pieces (first) and how they go together (second). Therefore, your picture of what scripture is trying to show you (Jesus as King and His Kingdom) is limited to how many puzzle pieces are loaded in your swimming pool of water for the Spirit to draw from (rhema word). No water (scripture) equals no picture. No picture means you don't know the real Jesus, the real King, and the real Kingdom. You're left with conjecture, guesses, feelings, opinions, and even traditions, creeds, sayings, cliches, speculations, and most of them are probably wrong.
Many people, non-Christians and Christians alike, complain that they cannot hear God. There's a reason: God speaks by the Spirit from the scripture you have within yourself. The reason you don't hear from God is because the Spirit of Christ is either not in you (non-believers) or your well is either bone dry or barely filled, leaving the Spirit nothing to speak from. The more you fill, the more He draws. Discipline is required for filling you with pure water—not traditions, creeds, opinions (yours or others), and so on.
HINT: Just because you hear it over the pulpit doesn't make it true. Moreover, cherry-picking scripture to prove what you hear from others does not make it true either. And another thing—that one version of scripture you hang on to (i.e., my KJV-only friends) will also lead you into error if you're not aware of its pitfalls as a translation. You really need some Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic skills or find someone who has them, honestly. Finally, if someone you know runs away from such skills and holds doing so like a badge-of-honor, then you need to challenge them or run like crazy away from them. You won't get what you're after—unfiltered scripture in your internal well.
Seeing King and Kingdom!
If you're not a Christian, then you need to know Jesus. You need to find a Christian (hopefully a disciple) and become their friend. Your eternity depends on it. Without Christ, you will be destroyed along with those rebellious creatures mentioned at the top of this article.
If you are a Christian, then please know this: Eternity is coming, the King and Kingdom will last forever. Your job, home, car, hobbies, pleasures, entertainment, streaming services, internet access, and everything you hold dear in this life is going to burn and be destroyed. When it is all said and done, the only thing you and I will have in eternity are the treasures we have stored up in eternity by what we did by faith, hope, and love in compassion like Jesus in this life with regard to Christ and other people (saved or unsaved). We all need to wake up. How so?
The very last command Jesus gave to his disciples was to go and make more disciples. Jesus did not tell them to make churches with buildings, halls, programs, fancy music, schools, potlucks, toy drives, and feel-good charity work from the comfort of padded pews, air-conditioning, and heating systems in the cold winters. Jesus (and later apostles) would laud those who were persecuted and even in danger of being killed for their profession of faith and disciplined following of Christ.
My daughter shared a video recently of a man who went to China and met with persecuted Chinese Christians who were being imprisoned for years just for being disciples and leading others into being disciples of Christ Jesus. They would sneak bits of paper into prison where the scriptures hand-written on those scraps would be quickly memorized before guards confiscated the paper, so that they could internalize scripture and thereby meditate on it, mull it, put the puzzle of Christ together in their hearts even in the face of prison, suffering, and even death.
The group of Chinese Christians asked this man to pray that they could meet in safety and have bibles like American Christians. The man responded, "No, I will not pray that you get to be like us!" The annoyed Chinese Christians responded with, "Why not?" The answer was clear: "I will pray that American Christians become like you!" What he meant ought to obviously clear. They valued scripture. They valued fellowship. They traveled hours and days to be at a meeting. They sat in heat and cold on wooden floors for hours and days just for the opportunity to hear a man of God preach, pray, and share. Almost no American Christian will do such things. We are weak and pathetic in comparison.
The only way to growing up from being an infant Christian is the application of discipline. Not only do we need to do it personally, but corporately. If your church doesn't have disciples and discipleship, shame on you. You are robbing your people of their heritage in Christ! Frankly, if you don't "get" what I am writing, perhaps you ought to be removed and someone else allowed to take your place that will institute a "disciple making" core of your body, group, church, or whatever.
It is hard work to build a puzzle where you don't know the picture being formed from pieces scattered over thousands of words and sentences from various materials. It's labor. It is not the act or action of a child. It requires an adult mind and adult attention. As a Christian, Jesus ought to be the most important person in your life and the book you (by the very Grace of God) hold in your hand or electronically on a device has all of the puzzle pieces within it to reveal the Person of the King, Jesus Christ, and His Kingdom and our place in it. It also reveals the enemy, his kingdom, his dark creature-servants, what they do, why they do it, what they did and when and how they did it. You cannot be an effective member of the Kingdom of Christ if you are an undisciplined child or infant.
We don't have all the pieces!
Here is a caution: Even for the highly disciplined, we don't have all of the pieces, nor do we have them assembled into a total picture. We have parts. Paul said that he "knew in part". Only after he had passed would the picture finally come totally clear for him. So it is with us.
He also said that it was doubtless that he would come to greater knowledge—more and more of the puzzles and their pieces would come into view as a result of him being in Christ, having the Spirit, and applying the adult disciplines of a serious Christian disciple to both scripture and loving, giving, serving—doing so in humility.
An honest righteous person will always be keenly aware of how far discipline has brought them and how far they have yet to go. This is where we can help each other in humility. The worst thing we can do is think we have the picture all sown up and can discount what other Christians, especially those who are obviously disciplined in both study and application, bring to the table. Each one of us is given the Spirit of Christ in us to help us work together and not be split apart.
The early church was nearly inseparable. They marked out heretics and error quickly and resolved such matters very fast. This was the cry of many letters that all of the churches keep watch and hold to the core truths they had received and to pass those along—disciple to disciple. This changed in a very large way starting in the 4th century after Constantine and Augustine. We have never recovered. We need to.
For me—the Lord has spent the last 20 years of my life dismantling me and what I believe. I started out like a child—taking everything that pastors' above me preached over the pulpit and elsewhere as defacto truth. I never questioned. Not once—that is—until about 20 years ago, when my own life came crashing down and the Lord used that crash to start my dismantlement.
Since then—the core lesson has been simple: Trust, but verify. Consider what people around me say, but then go to raw scripture for answers. Question teachings. Question traditions. Question creeds, sermons, here-say, cliches, feelings, opinions, and anything not founded and rooted in scripture and the materials that first century and Jews before them took to heart and used—even Jesus!
They used that material in discipline to not only see the puzzle of the Old Testament, but it worked into forming the New. All that "stuff" built the words, doctrines, and dogmas presented. Therefore, don't be afraid of your bible. Learn about it. Know it. Most of all—ASK QUESTIONS and then honestly seek answers even if the answers utterly blow up what you have held as truth your entire life! You will not regret doing so.
Suggestions
Learn some disciplined scholarly tools. You don't have all of the puzzle pieces you need to be the royal family member who is loyal to King and Kingdom if don't have adult disciplined tools by which to see into scripture, pull out the puzzle parts, and assemble them into the picture of Christ as King and His Kingdom. Stop pretending like casual reading of the bible will allow you to skate as you give the majority of your attention to fleshly and earthly pursuits. It doesn't work that way.
For me—it was the books, works, videos, blogs, podcasts, and other materials from Dr. Michael S. Heiser that showed me God can put inside a man if he humbly submits to being a serious disciple of Jesus Christ. And it wasn't about Heiser, either. It was about the results of humility to slough off my pride of "I-believe-this" and using disciplined tools to challenge myself and change, if it worked out that way. Discipline to scripture is a personal pride destroyer.
I could spend pages telling you the story and the testimony in me alone. I won't do that. You can learn for yourself. You take the steps. What the old saying?
JUST DO IT!
AFTERTHOUGHT
If you think anything from above (or anything at all that I write) is coming from my opinions, traditions, creeds, feelings, or other non-scripture-based sources, please point it out. I am not afraid of my bible. Scripture always tells the truth and I will honestly and humbly change from me to it, and not bend it to me. Where I am off-base with scripture, I will own it and repent (change of mind and heart and direction and words and actions).
Just be sure—if you come at me with a correction, I will take what you say to scripture with adult disciplined tools and check it out. Just because you come at me does not make you or me right. That is reserved for God's Word and His Word alone!