Why Knowing the Bible Isn't Changing You

You can know the Bible and still not be changed by it.

In this first episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier makes the case that the modern church doesn't suffer from a lack of information — it suffers from a lack of spiritual formation. There are people with PhDs in theology who know Scripture inside and out, and whose lives remain untransformed. Knowledge alone cannot make us new.

Colby works through James 1:22 and the warning against being hearers of the word only, then the parable of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7 — where both men heard the same teaching, both built, and both faced the same storm. The only difference was that one applied what he heard.

Along the way: what Dallas Willard meant by the renovation of the heart, why Timothy Keller called the gospel the A to Z rather than the ABCs of the Christian life, and a question worth sitting with: you are already being discipled, so by whom, and by what?

The episode closes on union with Christ, and why the gap between hearing truth and living it is closed by the Holy Spirit rather than by more content.

This podcast is for Christians tired of a faith that feels abstract, shallow, and disconnected from everyday life, and for anyone who wants to apply Scripture to their marriage, parenting, work, money, anxiety, and calling.

Transformation, not information.

Go deeper: https://academyofthebible.org

Colby Maier is a pastor and speaker based in Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Academy of the Bible.