So last night I had one of those light bulb going on in your head God moments and I felt like I should share it so here goes…
I’ve had this piece of paper in my Bible literally for the last six years. When I was 16 I decided it would be a good idea to write out a list of all the books in the Bible and tick them off once I had read them, I think I thought at the time it would take a year, maybe two. It started out saying 2004 at the top of the page and each year I’ve added another year – feeling guilty every time that I still hadn’t read it all. What sort of Christian was I if I couldn’t even say that I’d read the whole Bible?
Now I’ve read 43 out of 66 books…but I feel like a lot of that really was just so I could tick off another book. I’m not saying that all the times I’ve read my Bible in the last six years have been meaningless reading, because they really haven’t. God has spoken to me, comforted me, challenged me through his word but somehow I got caught up in achieving this thing of reading the whole Bible, I was doing it for the wrong reasons. One of the years I started one of those ‘read the Bible in a year’ things but I got so behind and felt so guilty that I just stopped reading it altogether for a really long time.
I think that the Bible is hard, it’s confusing, it contradicts itself… but it also gives me joy and strength and tells me about Jesus and what he was like. I used to read the Bible and just skip over any bits I didn’t understand but I’ve realised that it’s ok not to understand and to ask questions…
The past nine or ten months I have been processing a lot of stuff to so with my faith, my family, my self-confidence, my future. I feel as if God has stripped me down so far that I wasn’t even sure if I believed in him anymore. He brought me to a place where I had to choose him despite all my doubts and fears and he has been building me back up bit by bit in what I believe is a more honest and more true faith and relationship with him.
The fact that I might not have read my Bible in a few weeks does not define my relationship with Jesus. When I read it I want it to be for the right reasons, I want to engage with it, to ask questions of it, to see what God is saying to me, today and to our world, now!
I threw that piece of paper in the bin last night – to start over – to be guided by the Holy Spirit and not by a list!
Rozy 