I consider myself truly blessed to have been raised in a Christian home with great parents.
With that being said, during my college years, I remember coming home for a short visit and noticing something different about my dad.
I asked my mom about it. She informed me that my dad had begun studying the Bible. He was no stranger to the things of God. In fact, his father was an evangelist, and my dad had also spent a few of his first years in the United States attending a Bible School….but something was still different about him. It was a good kind of different.
My mom was right. The difference I was seeing was the transforming power of the Word of God. I watched my dad not just read the Bible, but study it. Verse by verse, reading through multiple versions and two different languages. This was before the internet so he literally had 4 Bibles in front of him as he would sit to study.
The Word of God slowly and subtly changed my great dad to an even greater dad. This study of the Word also birthed a passion in him to work with an Indian Bible Publisher. He and my mom created the first chronological Bible in Malayalam, their native language.
This past week, myself and 30 other women have embarked upon a discipleship journey which involves reading through the entire Bible chronologically in one year.
This weeks reading was from the book of Job. A book which has never been my “go to” if I am in need of quick pick me up.
Quite frankly, I always found the book of Job to be depressing and have a hard time reading through it. I usually start off with good intentions. I read the first chapter where Job loses everything but once his not so encouraging friends show up to the scene, I can’t help but jump to the end of the book.
But the discipleship program requires us to read it all. Verse by verse. So, as I have begun reading through the book of Job, I am pleasantly surprised and encouraged by what I am finding …even in what I always considered the “depressing parts.”
I am learning that in the midst of the chaos, Job is very real with God. And in this very real and honest discourse concerning his misery, Job states something so powerful- “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives.”
I discovered this verse because of something Anu, our leader, has asked us to do at the end of each day’s Bible reading.
We are asked to SIT.
Summarize what we have read.
Implement it into my own life
Treasure- write down a verse which stood out.
Now I understand why God tells us to meditate on His Word day and night. Not just do a quick read through so we can check it off our to do list. But meditate on it.
My pastor likens the word, meditate,
to that of a cow chewing it’s cud. The cow savors the grass in its mouth before filling its stomach. Then regurgitates it, re-working it in its mouth before swallowing it again. I know that sounds gross, but I love the visual it gives to how I should be meditating on scripture.
When we do this, the Word of God has the power to do what It says it will do.
Hebrews 4:12 states,
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
We may not have time to go through 4 different Bible translations like my dad, but I believe if we carve out the time to SIT, our hearts and minds will be transformed. God will tweak what we never even knew needed tweaking.
Summarize, Implement, Treasure.
You can do this by journaling on an electronic device of your choice or if you are old school like me, you can use a good old fashioned paper journal.
Whatever your Bible reading plans are this year, a chapter a day or a verse a day, Lysa TerKeurst says it best. “I want to stop thinking of reading my Bible as an item on my Christian checklist and really EXPERIENCE God instead.”
I want to do the same.
-Binu
