In the beginning of my bible I have written:
“The bible is a promise book and a prayer book. Reading is reactive. Prayer is proactive. Reading is the way you get through the bible; prayer is the way the bible gets through you. As I pray, the Holy Spirit will quicken certain promises to my spirit. The promise of God will become MY promises.”
You can read the bible time and time again and not understand a single sentence let alone the words strung together to make it. You can be fully invested in a type of faith, but if you’re not soaking up what God says in that tiny, promise-filled book are you actually accomplishing as much as you ought to be? Are we so busy in our lives that we cannot dedicate half an hour to thanking the Lord for how far He’s brought us?
The bible was not meant to be read through lifelessly in hopes for blessings to pour into your life just because. It’s an invitation to know God deeper. To seek Him in the mundane and owing to the fact that God is a mysterious God, He DOES NOT make it easy to just submit. He wants your patience. He wants your dedication. He wants your loyalty. He wants headspace in order to teach you and give you epiphanies and NEW. He wants your first minutes of the day and the very last thoughts of your mind before you drift off to sleep. Don’t we owe Him that?
Can we really say that what has happened in our lives or what we have been given is ALL because of us? Nothing is because of WHO you are, my friend, it is all a matter of WHAT you are. And what you are is loved. You are loved and therefore you are blessed and therefore God keeps the promises He’s ALWAYS had for your life that are spelled out clearly, in grand detail, in the bible.
When’s the last time you’ve picked up the bible?
When’s the last time you’ve asked God to show up in reading before doing so?
When’s the last time you understood the depth of what you were reading? Or teaching your Sunday school kids? Or explaining to your friend over coffee?
When’s the last time you could pull a verse of scripture from the back of that cluttered cabinet in your brain that perfectly addresses the situation you find yourself in?
When’s the last time you believed God for who He is, what’s He’s done before AND what He can do still today?
When’s the last time you opened your promise book?
Where your bible is currently located tells a lot about the current state of your life and heart.
Is it on your bedside table? There to act as a friend when you find yourself in bed early, or really needing to read some truth or just sitting there because you recently pulled it out of the drawer you had placed it in.
Is it collecting dust on the shelf? You forgetting that you even own a bible as it’s daintily tucked beside a bunch of your other “favorite” books.
Is it near your keys by the door enabling you to grab it quick on your rush to church? A Christian who emphasizes the bible on Sunday when the pastor has your open it for the first time that week each service.
Is your bible packed away in a box from childhood, something of the past just like the collection of brown-stained photographs in there too? You assume that the faith you had as a child, or before you were a parent, or when you had time is long gone. It’s probably better and safer to keep it there then to remember His heart for you after ALL THESE YEARS, right?
Is it a travel companion? Is it beat up and worn down from the amount of times you’ve thrown it in a purse, a backpack, in a coat pocket, the passenger seat, etc because you know you will ALWAYS need it. You believing that there’s always time for God in your life including the bible.
This is not meant to be a blog provoking conviction, but praise the Lord if it is. READ YOUR BIBLE. I think it’s a selfish mindset to have if YOU think that God isn’t worth your time. The bible is where we are to relate to God’s people. We are the Ruths, Pauls, Samuels, Jephthahs, Peters, Marys, and Davids of OUR GENERATION. Just because the bible has been written does not mean that God’s stories have stopped, that the story we are outright living is not WORTHY enough to have made it into the bible. God doesn’t disappoint. He doesn’t challenge us to be better, He just wants us to find Him and seek Him and love Him like He loves us-without condition.
There is a profound nature to what I am about to say.
Nothing in this world will fill you but what is detailed out in the bible.
His sacrifice.
The cross. The relationship between Father, Spirit, and Son. The very character of Christ. His heart for all people and causes. Why He’s given you the opportunity He has.
Jesus Christ gave everything for us. God made everything for it to glorify Him. The bible was a pure gift for each of us to be fashioned to look like the better version of ourselves.
Don’t underestimate the bible. It tells of messed up families finding redemption. It tells of women becoming sisters and fighting each other’s battles. It tells of true pain and loss and where God was amidst it all along. It tells of a grand life to be lived if you hand over the reigns of your life to your Maker in awe. There’s never sacrifice in God’s kingdom, only gain through the lessons and the teaching. Lord, I pray for you to let what’s below hit their very hearts.
Romans 15:4
“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
How about that truth? He wrote it all then for the now.
Get out your promise book; give it more than a second thought. Let yourself be vulnerable and let the words, the stories and the mercies unravel the very heart in you. Let it flood the pain out of your soul and bring something you can only begin to imagine. Everything you are wishing to happen in YOU will if you just ask God to speak and open up the pages.
