During a Q & A period following a live Bible study I listened to over the internet Wednesday morning, a man asked for advice on how to move his "head knowledge" of God's Word into his heart.

The preacher suggested, in part, that he go out and share the Word with other people. This would, in essence, "stir up" what he knew intellectually and give it a deeper, more personal context through the interaction and discourse with people from varied backgrounds who may have very different ideas about God and the Bible.

I thought this was a good answer and I can certainly attest to being helped myself through the years doing the exact same thing.

If this same question had been posed with me, though, I would have answered differently.

For me, I have to say my biggest faith leaps have come from more fully internalizing the fact that in the English language, the King James Bible—and only the King James Bible—is God's masterpiece as both the Book's author and editor.

Absolutely every single line of His unparalleled epic volume of work—down to the last "jot and tittle," as Matt. 5:18 says—reveals His full intention as the supreme Artist behind it.

There's not one word that's not the precise word He meant to use and He's placed every word exactly where he meant it to be. Each of the 66 books is ordered with the same meticulousness.

I'll never forget one sunny day this past summer when the weather was so nice I couldn't resist taking the Q train out to Coney Island to swim in the ocean and lay on the beach with one of my Bible research books.

In the late afternoon, before heading home, I was hungry for some cheap ethnic food from the neighborhood, so I went walking with my Walkman, playing a sermon from my pastor that I had pulled at random that morning from a big pile of cassette tapes stored in my nightstand drawer.

This particular sermon must have been from the late '80s-early '90s, I figure, and it was about Genesis 1 and the seven days of creation and how creation had to do with God pitching a tent for Him to dwell in.

Anyway, what got through to me in an unusually dramatic fashion that afternoon was my pastor's testimony in the sermon about his personal approach to studying the Bible.

Here's what he said, quoted near-verbatim:

"If you take your Bible this literally, and you don't say it's anthropomorphic expressions, and that it's wonderful words but it isn’t really real because it's so far beyond you. . . You’re never going to understand God, be able to explain God and all, but God’s a Spirit.

God has created a universe in which to manifest His glory, and if His glory can't be manifested so that you can comprehend it as best that you can comprehend it, then it isn't real.

So the fact that He has deigned to condescend Himself to manifest Himself to us, and to speak to us in terms that we can understand, means that the things that He's communicated to us are real and you don’t need this Platonic kind of Neoplatonism where, 'It's these words but it's not real, it's just this shadow-on-the-wall kind of stuff.'

That's just a bunch of superstitious stuff.

I don't care if the best brains of the last 1,000-1,500 years says it's true, it's still just nonsense. But I know that when you take your Bible literally it's like you climb out on a limb and pretty soon you're so far out on that limb that people look at you and say, 'You're nuts, man, that thing's going to fall out from under you.'

You know that thing is strong and steady and it holds you up. Years ago, I used to paint and I used to watch guys climb up a 40-ft. ladder. I climbed up a 40-ft ladder to the end of it one time, and painted a little while and came down, and told the guy I was working with, 'You know, now I know why painters are either drunks or crazy. You either got to be drunk or nuts to go up that ladder twice and you wouldn't get me up in one again.'

But you understand, I know what it's like to kind of be out on a limb. I used to watch Mr. Mackey climb up that ladder, fully extended 40-ft ladder, and then he'd bounce that ladder across the building. Literally walk that ladder. I could do that with a 20-footer, but man, I wasn't going to do it with a 40-footer!

Nothing to hang on up there and, man, it's a long way to the ground. But after you do it awhile you gain a confidence and that's sort of what it is when you read these verses.

After you study it 25-30 years you won't find it's quite so nutty."

This is obviously where it's at when you consider God Himself consistently stresses in His Book that we are to fully, wholly take Him at His Word, knowing it's His truth and He's a God who cannot lie.

When Jesus Christ said in Matt. 4:4, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," He was revealing how He Himself conducted His life day by day. It was by TOTAL, 100% reliance on God's Word.

I love a passage from a book I have about the Bible, "The Bible Through the Ages," produced by Reader's Digest in 1996, which covers the Wild West period in American history when the now-famous missionaries, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, made a grueling overland wagon journey from New York to Oregon in the 1830s to establish a mission among the Cayuse Indians.

The passage reads: "The Indians initially welcomed them, but as more immigrant families settled in the area, encroaching on native land, hostility toward the missionary activity grew. In 1847, following several disturbances at their station, the Whitman family and 14 other whites were murdered.

"Nevertheless, missionary work continued, and for some Indians the power of the Bible's message survived the crisis in Indian-white relations. In the words of an elderly chief of the Mohaves: 'When you read out of that Book I know it is God's Book, for it pulls my heart.' "