If you dropped a coin in a bucket every time I misinterpreted a Bible verse, I would be a millionaire today.

See, the other day, as I read Luke 24, it hit me that the people Jesus called “slow and foolish at heart” looked like me. They had spent years with him; some of them had received rabbinic teaching that rehearsed the Old Testament teachings that predicted him.

It’s possible that some might have grown up with God’s word inscribed on doorposts and everywhere in their house, and yet when this moment arrived, a moment Jesus had longed for them to see, a moment the writer of Galatians speaks of as “just at the right time,” they still didn’t connect the events of Jesus’s humiliation and crucifixion to the promise of a Messiah, who had come, not to overthrow their Roman oppressors, but to save the world.

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And so, they strolled along this Emmaus road, wondering to each other about these things (v. 14). We don’t know; perhaps they mused about Pilate excusing himself from the whole thing, or maybe they described the “crown of thorns” scenario as Jesus was led out; maybe they remembered how tall the torn curtain in the temple was. We are not told which details they mulled over, but we are told what they pondered, the “things that had happened in those days” (v18) after Christ was killed.

In fact, they went so far deep in their conversation that when Jesus drew close, they referred to him as a “visitor” who was probably not updated enough (v18).

But their drama and naivety or ignorance weren’t the problem; it wasn’t their lack of intelligence that kept them from revelation, not their education (anyone getting reminded of the whole Torah is not an uneducated novice in the first place). Rather, their failure to read scriptures in light of the predicted Messiah was the problem.

That was me, I tell you.

I had heard the words of Jesus and attended confirmation classes in the Anglican church growing up (or wait, it was my siblings that represented me), but you get the point: I was raised religiously, with mealtime prayers and youth camps and “choose to wait” cards and all.

Of course, Jesus was a nice guy who died for us, but what did that have to do with other Bible stories? Self-improvement, yes; moral behavior, yes. As a result, I sang David and Goliath songs in Sunday school; somewhere along the way, I even heard that about the need to slay the “Goliaths in our lives.”

At some point, I read the prayer of Jabez and climbed up a neighborhood hill to “map my territory.” Just like the Emmaus Road guys, I missed the main point of scripture; it wasn’t for my self-improvement; God’s word wasn’t given as a “charm against my life’s enemies.”

Proverbs weren’t merely for self-help but to point to a greater and wiser Solomon. “Doing all things in Christ, who gives me strength” didn’t guarantee an American visa. Old Testament altars weren’t official invitations for me to “chant things every night in my bedroom.”

I learned (albeit a little too late) that all the scriptures, beginning with the Old Testament, were meant to demonstrate God’s great plans, his holiness, and our sin and therefore point and prepare us for the Messiah who would replace our stony hearts with hearts of flesh. Hearts that exulted in his plan to redeem the world, anticipating his death and resurrection and its implications on the whole world.

But even long before my heart was warmed up to these things, I was already tired of shallow church experiences; Sunday in, Sunday out, I carried the Bible in my hands more than I did in my heart. Perhaps I was experiencing my own Emmaus. I went to church and often quietly wondered what difference it made anyway; nothing went deep.

The pastor told a winding, often funny story, citing something in the week’s news; he then waved to his wife in between (and sometimes asked us to wave back) and slapped some verses on his “message” to inspire us into the new week before he invited a choir back. The same choir then asked us to dance like “David danced,” while they seemed more eager to demonstrate newer dance strokes and fashion than sing the word.

As it usually goes, I kept the Christian label but was often powerless against sin; my appetites for worldliness stayed intact. Bible studies became places for “personal stories,” “vibes,” “catching up,” and “dominating financial breakthrough prayer requests.” “I spoke more about changing the world than Jesus changing my life. I officially became part of the 80 percent Ugandan Christian population.

Then one day, amidst my entertainment binge, I heard a preacher on TV explain the gospel from Romans and Exodus. “Ray Comfort” must have been his name. The curiosity began; something flipped inside me, and it wasn’t merely emotional. I saw myself as a desperate sinner who’d broken God’s law, a law only Jesus perfectly fulfilled.

What flipped in me was theological; many other preachers thereafter stunned me not because of their personality, eloquence and English or storytelling, but because of their ability to stick with the text, to explain it, and to connect it with the Old Testament or New, the way Jesus did.

Fast forward, I could no longer stand teachings about “deliverance sessions” anymore. I couldn’t stomach teachings that bypassed the cross of Christ as if it was a “by the way.”

My quiet time with God got more exciting and supernatural; I became slow to apply verses to myself before I applied them to those who first heard them. I didn’t have to place myself in David’s shoes against Goliath anymore; I only needed to see how David was preserved for the sake of a coming greater David, Jesus, the son of David.

My chains fell off, for real this time. From then on, every time I opened the word, I not only read, I feasted. Of course, of course, I had to use my head a little more, thinking through words and commentaries. But isn’t that what it means to love the Lord with all your mind? Martin Luther, the German Protestant reformer, once said of his 16th-century impact, “The word did all the work; I only drank beer with my friend Philip.” It has felt like that ever since; the word has been doing all the work!

I’m not fully there, of course; sometimes I catch myself reading things into verses, but now my antennas are always up because I have encountered a promised Jesus through his word. I reasonate with the guys at Emmaus: “Weren’t our hearts burning while he talked to us?” Regularly hearing scripture taught right through a healthy church, too, has become a never-ending Jesus fountain to drink from. And because Jesus never ends, nothing else has proved satisfying.

God’s grace rescued me from reading the Bible primarily “for me”; now my heart is strangely warm. Tell me yours is too.