When I moved onto the ship, right after high school, something took place inside me, at the core level, like shifting platelets. I came across a different kind of Christianity than I had seen before. Or maybe I had seen it, but because it seemed so completely other – it shined brighter. It made me want to know God deeper. As if a mask had been revealed and I wanted to uncover it. I didn’t know exactly how to do this, but there was this girl on the ship. A Korean girl, who loved God in the most authentic, radical way I’d really ever seen. And she read her Bible all the time. All the time. She had huge portions memorized. When I heard her pray in Korean, I had no idea what she was saying, but it was obvious she knew exactly what she was saying, and she knew exactly who she was saying it to.
I’m oversimplifying this, but something happened when I watched her pray and talk about God – it sparked a hunger in me. For That. For that real faith that wasn’t put on or contrived because of great worship music or an exciting retreat experience. Her faith came from somewhere deeper. So, I decided to do what she did. She got up every morning and read her Bible and prayed. I would get up every morning, read my Bible and pray.
I learned that when we decide to seek God with our whole hearts: He helps us find Him.
I got up every morning early and read and read and read. Beginning to end. I loved it. I loved the Bible. In the most authentic way imagineable. And I fell irrevocably in love with God. Absolutely and terribly. There was nothing showy about it. No one knew what I was doing. It wasn’t because of some challenge or some sermon I heard. It was a raw desperation to find God. To find something real in my life. And the stories wrapped me up and swept me in. I immersed myself in them. For months.
One of the things that happened by immersing myself in Scripture was that it gave me a structure for hearing God. It gave me a frame of reference. Something to go by.
The magnificent thing about the Bible is that it spans hundreds of years with such an array of authors … you get lots of stories and teachings that are varied. All of them go into your soul and heart and mind when you read them over and over and they set you up for your own search for God.
And after reading enough, I knew it wasn’t crazy for me to want to hear from God because they all wanted to hear from God. And God made these radical promises that made no sense to anyone but the person he made the promise to, and the encounter would be so strong, so life changing that they’d believe God, and would not give up even when it didn’t make sense and they were confused about everything around them. And eventually the person or people would see that He was worth the wait. Women, men, non-religious, religious, bad people, good people … he interacted with them all. And things would change in their lives and they would make changes in their lives … and things would happen.
It also gave me a grid for the nuances and the sorts of things God says and the myriad ways he says them. Like the fact that God is totally into dreams. He talks to people in their dreams ALL the time in the Bible. So, I realized I’d better pay attention to my dreams. He also talks through visions. He talks through other people. Even through a donkey. But mainly, He talks to the spirit and the heart of a person, ready to hear. So, I’d need to learn how to be still and quiet my heart and mind. I learned he talks to the broken, and the lowly, the foreigner, the lost, the found, the rich, the poor, the outcast. Mainly, He talks to anyone paying attention and willing to hear. And the people who heard him always came out different, more solid, more real, more honest – hearing God always changed them.
So you ask…
Where do I start? How much do I read? Where do I begin?
Wherever you want. It’s your faith. It’s your search for God. I read the Biographies of Jesus a lot. But for many years I started in Genesis and kept reading till Revelation and then started again. Reading from beginning to end in big gulps and little sips provides a sort of panorama, a whole picture that is very good for us. And very confusing and frustrating and liberating. We don’t need to understand it all to keep reading. Hearing God and understanding God aren’t the same thing. Besides, we will never completely understand him. He is wildly mysterious.
What do I do when I get bored? Keep reading. Push through it, or change it up. But mainly, I keep reading.
What do you do if you hate to read and/or aren’t very good at it? Millions of people fall into that camp. Be not dismayed. Buy an audio Bible on CD and listen to it. Download this application thing called The Daily Audio Bible and listen to that while you’re in the shower, making bread, folding clothes, driving to work. Find what works for you and do it. With your whole heart. Even when you don’t feel like it. I think that’s key. Even when we don’t feel like it.
Tell me about your journey with reading the Bible … good, bad, frustrating? Stuck? Mad? I’d love to hear.
Much Love,
Tina
