The Importance and Difficulty of Spending Time in the Word
An amazing teacher once told a friend of mine that if he really wanted know what was in the Bible and what it said that then he should read it. He added, “after about the 35th time reading it through it starts to stick.”
That was a rather great challenge to my friend and myself!
Now, I wasn’t actually in on that conversation. I was just listening in, sitting by a nice warm wood stove, all comfortable, and, at the time, thirty-five read throughs didn’t sound all that bad.
I’m just starting my third read through and, to put it simply, that nice warm woodstove is a long ways away.
My last read through of the Bible was spread out over several countries (no less than four to be sure). Before that my first was spent over the course of my teenage years (read as many). This time it will be through busy seasons in multiple states and with the added challenge of knowing I can be a lot more faithful in setting aside time to do so than I have in the past.
Time is funny; it seems like you haso much of it or so little of it or none of it, and yet you have neither more or less of it, ever.
I could use this time for other things, though, I find that when I give some of my time to reading the Bible I find the rest of my time a little more fulfilling. I find it more fulfilling if I actually get to do something with what I’ve read. Applying it to the way I live, sharing it with others, writing about it like this, or journaling about what I think and hear as I read has been very valuable ways to get more out of the time I spend reading.
This time, thus far…
Today I just got into the very first part of Exodus.
I tried something new for Genesis by reading through it generationally; the first part up to Abraham, then Abraham’s story, then Isaac’s, then Jacob/Israel’s, and then on through the end with the sons of Israel.
It is amazing… through so much of this we get to see God interacting with individuals. It’s a story that’s told forward and backward, many stories of family told to the next generations, collected and brought up to together by Moses for the people coming out of Egypt. When we get to Exodus the story jumps from a very large family to a very large nation in just a few verses.
I ask myself, what was it like for all of those people? Families?
There are so many stories told from just the first few generations. Our families work the same way, stories are told, identities are formed, “I was the child of…” I’m sure there are a lot of family stories from the end of Genesis until we see Moses’ family story come into the picture, though, we don’t get to see those in the Bible.
These stories would have shaped the identity of a nation. Stories of how they settled in Goshen, of how the first task masters came, stories of the cities they built.
As all these were being told, God desired to form new stories as well, and so, we pick up the trail with Moses and all that follows.
Getting to Know the Family Story
Do we know our family stories? Do we know the stories that helped form our own families? What has our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers, mothers, and cousins told us about our history?
In the same way, do we know what is there in the Bible? What are its stories? Who does the Bible say that we are?
We have a lot of people in Churches that need to know who God is, what He is like, how to hear His voice, how to obey Him when he speaks. How can we teach these things? Well, I present to you my understanding, I believe we can teach these things through story.
God has given us stories about who He is through the Bible and through the experiences that He has walked us through in life. We need to learn how to share these stories with others so that they will learn about who God is, what He is like, how they can hear His voice, and how they can obey Him too.
This is His story, but it is a story that we are invited into. Each of our stories are unique and each story has similarity.
That is a piece of what makes His story unique! Both the Bible in its stories of God and men, women, families, and nations and in His story among men, women, families, and nations today we something that was written together. The more participants in the story the more clearly we are able to see who He is and and who we are.
So, in the end, the difficulty of spending time in the word is in the spending time. The importance of spending time in the word is the redemption of time, all of it.
In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom
The Abiding Kingdom 