Well, I think I'm doing pretty good to manage a blog a week...Eventually, I will find more time. Until then, bear with me dear bloggers...College starts soon.
I think that this week I want to focus on the importance of reading your Bible. I know that Sunday School teachers harp on it all the time, but actually, it's really useful. To me, the Bible isn't just a place to go read a few verses and then get a check mark on my "duties as a Christian" list for the day. It's a source of inspiration. A wealth of knowledge. A list of guidelines to follow and boundaries to set. A practical way to find conversation topics for when you talk to God.
Every Monday and Wednesday, I go to PEP. For those of you who don't know, that stands for the "Providence Extension Program". It's at Eastside Community Church by the Pablo Creek Library. Anyway, they started a dry erase board in the church for questions that people want to ask God. This is a good idea, but when I started reading through the different questions...I realized that I could answer a good majority of them just because I've taken the time to read my Bible.
The questions range from "Why did You give me the strength for marriage and not my wife who left me?" to "Is God related to aliens?". O_O. I don't know. Just reading the questions made me think about how so many people are asking obvious questions about life and about God that could be answered by just READING THE BIBLE. I can't even begin to stress how important that is.
A few weeks ago, I started reading and annotating my Bible...Up until a few months ago (go figure. :P), I was against writing and highlighting in my Bible just because I thought it was wrong to desecrate something so sacred. Then, I realized that God gave it to me so that I could learn about Him. So that He could encourage me. So that I would grow. How was I going to remember all of the different verses that helped me? How was I going to remember the meanings of different words in Greek or Hebrew? So, I started reading. And annotating. And praying. I've read Psalms-Lamentations, all of the minor prophets, Matthew, Galatians-Revelations, and I started Acts this week. I've learned SO MUCH.
I once talked to a good friend of mine (Caleb Blackstone) about how Satan can't stop you from doing something you've already set your mind to do in Christ. If you're having a consistent quiet time, and you WANT to do your quiet time, he's not going to attack you in that area. How can he come up with anything bad out of you reading your Bible? He's going to get you in some other area...but if you're reading your Bible, you're armed with the Sword of the Spirit and can face anything that he throws at you.
If you can get encouraged, learn about history, talk to God, and combat Satan all by reading one book, why wouldn't you?
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