The Word of God

The past few weeks have been very beneficial for my soul. I highly recommend that you download and listen to the messages from the New Attitude 2008 conference. I didn't attend the conference, but I have listened to the messages and they are fantastic. The topic this year was the Word of God and as such all the messages are geared toward making much of God's word. These messages really encouraged me to get off my (spiritually) lazy butt and read diligently. I have a summer reading goal of 3 books, which are listed below. However, I've not gotten very far in the second book; I've been too busy reading the Bible.

As some of you may know, I work in the library at SEBTS. This allows me a bit of time to read during work (especially now that we're in summer sessions). Instead of bringing several books to browse and/or study while I'm at work, I've started only bringing my Bible. In the past couple of days I've read through Hebrews, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians. On top of that I'm reading through Bible using M'Cheyne's schedule; right now I'm going through Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, and Revelation. I'm not writing any of this to boast in my holiness or ability or anything of the sort. On the contrary, just a few weeks ago I was struggling to get through the reading for M'Cheyne and had little desire to do so. I'm writing this to encourage you to overcome whatever it is that's causing you to neglect your daily Bible reading. Nothing really comes close to sitting down and reading through an epistle in one sitting. By reading these entire books in the past few days I've been immensely encouraged to love Jesus more and to love others more, especially my wife and my brothers and sisters in Christ.

One other thing that pertains to this subject of Bible reading. I was encouraged by Dave Black's blog, especially his post from Thursday, May 22, @ 6:32 am (unfortunately you can't link to specific posts, so you'll just have to do some scrolling), to begin marking in my Bible. This might sound strange to some of you, but I was a Bible page purist. I loved the look of the untainted page. My hand isn't steady enough to make a good underlining, and I abhor a thick black snake of ink running through the text. So, with PENCIL in hand, I've begun to carefully mark and make notes in my Bible. I know that some of you are probably thinking "wow, big deal." But, it is a big deal for me, and if there's anyone else out there who secretly, or openly, is too cautious to mar the pages of his beloved Bible, let me just say that there can be some benefits from doing so. Though a part of me still likes the look of the clean page. Hopefully the benefits of recalling and finding specific verses and/or thoughts will outweigh the OCD impulses I feel.