Sitting down for a daily devotional time has always been a struggle of mine. And before you click the "X" in the top corner because you're not trying to read another boring blog post about church and Bibles, just hang with me for a minute. It's never been that I didn't believe, or that I sought to discover truths elsewhere. In fact, there have been brief periods in life where my personal study time was thriving and my Jesus thumping heart was popping out of my chest. But like most people, that excitement fades in and out over time when life picks up and more or less, gets in the way. However, I think there were multiple factors involved in my lack of Bible reading.
You see, I grew up with Bible teaching Christians all around me. I grew up in a Baptist church [until 8th grade] and went to a highly conservative Christian school starting in 5th grade. It wasn't until my freshman year in high school that I ventured into a world quite unfamiliar to me, that of public school where political correctness and talking about Jesus didn't really coincide. That year of my life is another blog post in and of itself, so I won't get into that right now. Needless to say, I found my way back to the conservative Christian school and into my comfort zone of Bible teaching Christians.
There were a LOT of things I didn't agree with in my private school and even more things I didn't agree with from the Baptist church I grew up in. But the constant presence of "good people," and the Bible really put me into a comfort zone of sorts. It was so easy to keep up on everything because it was fed to me everywhere I looked.
This isn't a post to say that I lost it once I stepped into the real world because I had been so sheltered all of my life. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth because I had an amazing support system of friends and wonderful parents that didn't "hide" the real world from me during my youth. But it is a post to say that I lost my groove for a period of time.
There were months, if not years where I didn't open my Bible outside of church. I would leave my Bible in the car just to avoid the guilt I faced each time I saw it sitting on my nightstand collecting dust. Rest assured, I'd remove the dust each Sunday morning so it didn't stare me straight in the face while I sat in church. During this so to speak dry spell, it wasn't that I stopped believing. But the thought of opening my Bible and digging into it just seemed daunting. I mean, I had to do this on my own now. I had to figure out what stuff meant and how genealogies connected, which translation was correct and decide where to start.
The all to familiar stories like Noah's Ark, Jesus feeding the five thousand, and The good Samaritan became fuzzy to me and facing the facts that I had actually forgotten details surrounding some of the most "famous" stories in the Bible embarrassed me. So instead of trying to remember these stories I just shut down and decided it was just "too confusing," to seek out answers. Instead, I read a lot of really good Christian books. I let other authors do the hard part. Instead of opening the Bible for myself, I relied on some of the best Christian authors to interpret who Jesus was to me. Woops.
God has been working on my heart for the last few months though. He's been working on it in so many ways that I had no idea even needed "working." He's really shown me the importance of opening the Bible and reading it. Not opening a book from your favorite Christian author and reading it, not listening to sermons from your Pastor on podcast, but the Bible. Don't allow another person to interpret who God is to you. Find out who God is on your own! It's great that Max Lucado and Beth Moore have created such a wonderful line of helpful books to read. But that's really all they are, just books with slanted opinions. The things mentioned above are all wonderful tools that help us grow, but they should never replace the good old fashioned concept of actually opening your Bible.
So if you're like me and looking at your Bible scares you and seems daunting, just know that it's normal. It's a huge book full of history, stories, love, grace, and so many other things. But the secret I've discovered in the last few weeks is just doing it. Something changed in my heart and I decided that I was tired of saying no so I just said yes!
I found an amazing online community of other women studying the Bible called
She Reads Truth. The studies from SRT have been really encouraging and I'm so glad that God dropped that gem into my lap. I also picked up a
Daily Reading Bible from the bookstore which will take me through the entire Bible in one year. I don't remember the last time I was this excited to read the Bible every day, but something clicked and God really stirred up a desire in my heart to see this goal through.
So, if you don't know where to start, just start at the beginning. I encourage you to make it easier on yourself and grab a daily reading Bible or a
One Year Bible as a tool to help you dive in! I've found that in just the few weeks that I've started doing these things I've seen huge changes in my spirit, and I know you will too :)
