Holding the Word: Five Ways to Encounter God through the Scriptures
Ebook
Overview
Watch the Bible come alive in your life like never before.
Many Christians long for a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God’s Word—but engaging on our own with the Scriptures can be intimidating. We rely on the writings of others to help us understand what it says, or we read simply to gain information without allowing it to personally touch our lives. But the Bible is a living, breathing, life-changing book, and God wants you to have a first-hand encounter with Him through its pages.
In Holding the Word, Bill Mowry offers good news: you don’t need a theological education to engage with Scripture. Mowry unpacks five spiritual practices—hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating—that will help you personally encounter God every time you open your Bible. This multi-sensory, relationally-rich Bible reading and discipleship tool will transform your relationship with the Author of Scripture.
- Discover a whole-body experience of the Bible using your senses,
- Learn from contemporary teaching and brain theory on why relational connection is so important for your walk with God,
- Develop a lifestyle of integrating the Bible into every aspect of your daily life, leading to personal transformation and spiritual growth and maturity.
Let God’s Word saturate every aspect of your being. Immerse yourself in the timeless truths of the Bible and discover the abundant life that comes from living and loving God’s Word.
Bill brings new eyes for old scenery to those who are just encountering the Bible for the first time or to those who want a fresh start to develop new habits. A seasoned Bible reader, he here introduces wise, often countercultural choices maximizing our reading and comprehension—the next best thing to having Bill in the room with you. His invitation to become an artist in lost arts informs with the aid of poets and philosophers, butchers and professionals; aiming for simplicity, Bill casts a wide net with his own personal experiences, metaphors, and examples.
This is a book about love. It is a love story about loving God so much that you want to hold his Word. Bill takes an old Navigator illustration, the Word Hand, and presents it in a fresh way with personal stories and helpful tools. This is the kind of book you can use with your church life group or your ministry leadership team or for your own personal development. May God use it to set you and others on this journey of love. I always wanted to help people have this kind of heart for the Word, but I didn’t have the words to express it until I read Bill’s book.
Bill takes the simplest directives of Scripture and makes them seem like the wisest and healthiest practices a person could pursue. Bill draws on science, popular culture, psychology, theology, Greek, and personal experience to show that the directives of Scripture are not cold commands to be dutifully followed but life-giving invitations to community and joy. Bill reminds me of the scribe who “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52, esv). His words are equally at home in my college psychology classes and in my adult Sunday school class.
As a respected authority on disciplemaking, Bill has already led us wisely regarding the relational aspects of making disciples. His studies and books have coaxed us away from a simply intellectual approach to discipling and toward an emphasis on relationship in ministry. Now, in Holding the Word, Bill advocates for a relational approach to the Scriptures, uniting The Navigators’ hand illustration with the ideas of attachment, connection, and love for the author of the Scriptures. Bill is intuitive, uncovering something that has been missing as many people study God’s Word: attachment to its author. Bill gathers meaningful questions, tells stories, and evokes the imagination as the reader responds to God. I highly recommend this book to readers who would like to be challenged in a more personal dimension as they study the Scriptures.
Bill Mowry discipled me one-on-one for years and taught me how to read, study, and memorize Scripture. He mentored me for years as I built a disciplemaking pathway in my church. What I learned from Bill over years you can now learn from reading this book. Bill’s biblical insights, practical wisdom, and actionable steps will help you get a handle on Scripture so that the Bible can get a hold on you.
Bill Mowry’s book Holding the Word brings new life to the Word Hand illustration, created over sixty years ago by Dawson Trotman to instruct new believers on how to handle the Word of God. The book has helpful analogies that appeal to all five senses and show how hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on God’s Word help us have a closer relationship with the Lord. While this easy-to-read book can be inspiring for all believers, I recommend it especially for new believers, those with little experience reading the Bible on their own, and those desiring to disciple and encourage new believers.
- Title: Holding the Word: Five Ways to Encounter God through the Scriptures
- Author: Bill Mowry
- Publisher: NavPress
- Print Publication Date: 2025
- Logos Release Date: 2025
- Pages: 176
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781641589581, 9781641589567, 1641589566, 1641589582
- Resource ID: LLS:9781641589581
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-05-28T07:18:59Z