God is with us. God is among His people. He wants to have a cup of coffee with you, He wants to drive to work with you even when you don't want to drive to work. He wants to comfort you when you lose your favorite person. Or any person for that matter. He doesn't just want to be involved with your circumstances; He wants to be engaged with your heart. So how does an Invisible Spiritual Being engage with visible material offspring? This would be a very difficult conundrum for anyone, other than an All-Knowing-Being. God has it figured out. Since He is All-Knowing and All-Capable, God engages us through a multimedia, multi-sensory campaign. He had to. Any single method of communicating to us would cause at least two problems.

1. A one-dimensional method is woefully insufficient to communicate the story and nature of an Infinite- Being.
2. Odds are good that if God chose only one method to engage us we might worship the method and not the God it points us toward.

So the Infinite God initiated a multimedia, multi-sensory, multi-thoughtprocess campaign in order to give us every possible chance of:

1. Knowing He is Infinite.
2. Not worshipping any particular aspect of His campaign.

So God began an infinitely detailed campaign. Here are but a few elements of the plan.

1. He wrote a massive parable—the story of the nation of Israel—and then played it out in front of the world.
2. The setting for this living parable is the Earth. Even the physical characteristics of the planet communicate truth about God's nature and His ways.
3. As the parable unfolded, He documented it through the writing of the participants. This is where we go the Bible.
4. Throughout the parable, He revealed himself personally to those who could then communicate to the masses.
5. He demonstrated His nature and power as He interacted with His people.
6. He sent angels and other visible representatives to communicate His unfolding script.
7. He found many direct and indirect ways to communicate that He would send someone to rescue those living out this parable, and the rest of the world as well.
8. He appointed many ceremonies and holidays to visually communicate His plan and His ways.
9. He spoke Himself into human form, becoming the man, Jesus, while retaining His divine nature. God the Son came to Earth while God the Father and God the Spirit remained in Heaven.
10. While on Earth, Jesus verbalized and demonstrated God's plan, His nature and His ways.
11. Jesus fulfilled all of the symbols and messages of the previous parable, simultaneously rescuing the human race from its fallen condition.
12. Jesus,doing what the Father desired, demonstrated how a human being can live by the power of God's Spirit.
13. God inspired witnesses to write down what they heard Jesus say and what they saw Him do, and preserved that written testimony throughout hundreds of years.
14. He sent His Spirit to live in and among human beings.

So the Bible is one very significant piece of a massive campaign. If we approach it as such we might read it in a different way.

Bob Hamp is the Author of Think Differently Live Differently, from which this article is taken, and is the executive pastor of Pastoral Care at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas.