***********
Sept 20
Read God's word to
have a purposeful life.
Psalm 57:3
"I cry out to God Most High, to God who will fulfill
His purpose for me."
If your best friend gave you a letter before leaving on a
trip and said, "Read this before I get back," you would read it right
away. God has left you not just a letter but a book and has said, "Read
this before I return, because it tells you exactly what you need to know to
have a purposeful life." Will you read it?
Hmmm….I’m not loving the analogy above
because I believe God’s Word is living. It’s not just something to read once
and then done. It is active and the Holy Spirit works through it regularly to
transform those who open its pages.
It’s impossible to count the number of
ways I have been changed by God’s Word. As a child it was about memorization
and reading stories. All the stories of Moses, David, and Paul. Looking back,
I’m a little surprise that as a 4th grader I read things like the
story of Samson and Delilah for Sunday School. But, you know, I supposed I
learned something about God then too. Or perhaps it was a moral lesson. I just
couldn’t even understand how Samson couldn’t just say no. Sheesh, dude, you
know what God said, right? So don’t do it. Don’t cut your hair!!
Memorization was, of course, part of
AWANA, summer camp, and Christian school. Then, there was also the push to
have daily devotions. We did them every year for summer camp in our little
booklets and mom would take me to The Lord’s Vineyard to buy elementary age
devotionals. (The Lord’s Vineyard was an 80’s Colorado Springs thing, around
long before all the ministries landed in this town. Think Christian bookstore
pre-Mardels. That place was great. It’s where we bought Psalty records and
cassettes of Sandi Patty’s Friendship Company. I even once saw a picture of
Chuck Swindoll dressed up in some sort of leather outfit not
long after the movie The Terminator
came out. The poster said “The Serminator”. Haha!)
Sometimes I loved reading the Bible for
fun. Sometimes it was just the thing to do. It was what you were told was good.
But along the way, whatever the motive, I fell in love with God’s Word. I
wanted to teach it to everyone I could. I even taught my stuffed animals as a
child when I would hold Sunday School in my room and use a flannel blanket for
flannelgraph. God’s Word gripped me early.
The only time I can remember not really
wanting to read it regularly was a couple years after Bible college. I had
dissected the Bible to the point that it became a textbook. I think that kind
of learning was necessary. In fact I know it was but it left me in a bit of a
funk around my senior year of college. I believe there was incredible grace
from God in that time. He understood. He knew I would be back.
One of my most prized possessions is my
Bible that I received on my 17th birthday from my parents. This was
in a time of turmoil in their marriage so the fact that they gave this Bible to
me together means a lot. It’s also the Bible where I marked up Psalms and
Isaiah as I read while my parents were separated for two years, prior to their
divorce. My dad marked Colossians 2:4–12 for me the week before I left for
college. The margin there says “From Dad.”
A couple lines above it I marked
Colossians 1:28–29 with the words “Good for CE” (or Good for Christian
Education):
He
is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so
that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this
end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
I don’t use that copy of the Bible too
much anymore. Can’t carry it to church or anything. When Kyla was a (very
strong-willed) baby she ripped out the maps in the back when I wasn’t looking
and the first page of Jonah while I was prepping a youth group lesson. I don’t
know what she had against Paul’s missionary travels or Jonah and the big fish
but she made her feelings known, I guess. Yes, that Bible has so much character
and holds a lot of God’s work in my life in between its pages.
Most recently I’ve come to enjoy
reading the paraphrase The Message. What’s so great about The Message is
that verses I’m tempted to kind of skim or say, “yeah, yeah, I know what that
says already” become a whole new thing for me. I slow down. I pause. I see
Scripture in a new way. I believe God gifted Eugene Peterson very specifically
to complete this paraphrase. (If you’re curious how Peterson started writing
it, check out Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading where he
shares the story. It was originally meant for the church he was pastoring and
it morphed into something that has changed many, many lives.)
I always, always read The Message
alongside the NIV. I have loved NIV for many years as well since that’s what I
used at my Christian middle school and high school. It is familiar to me. This
last May, Jeff bought me a parallel NIV/The Message. I love it so much. I
wanted to carry it everywhere with me for at least two weeks after I received
it.
There is no way around it, God’s Word
is special to me. I love it. I love it because I love Him and I believe I love
Him more because of His Word. I’m beyond grateful to have access to Scripture,
to read it, and to share it with others. When I open my Bible I almost always
feel a sense of excitement, even when I’m just doing it as part of my job. I sometimes open just to check that a passage is stated correctly but that doesn’t
make a difference. I simply love the possibility of what can happen when God’s Word
is open and how He will work through His inspired Word as it inspires me.
No comments:
Post a Comment