Let Go, My Soul

Well, we are a little over a week into the new year, and it’s safe to say most of us have already blown at least one of our New Year’s resolutions.  I definitely hit my snooze button yesterday morning (Hello!! It was 16 degrees outside and my bed was SOOOOO warm.), but I guess the 8 days I didn’t hit it before that was the longest I’ve ever gone in my adult life, so I’d still call that resolution a win.

One thing I see a lot of Christians resolve to do each January is read through the Bible in a year.  It’s an admirable goal, to be sure, and there are no shortage of plans to keep you on track.  Almost every single year since I’ve been a Christian, I’ve embarked on some sort of lofty “read the Bible in a year” plan.  Do you know how many times I’ve succeeded?

ZERO.

Sorry, did you think this was going to be some step-by-step plan on how to succeed in reading the Bible? I’m definitely not your girl.  Because even on the “good years,” when I would stick to my plan through April or May-ish, I would inevitably get so behind and become so discouraged that I’d just abandon it altogether.  And thus ensued this really legalistic and shame-filled cycle of beating myself up for not doing something I knew I should be doing, but never actually experiencing a desire to do the thing.  This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I don’t think I actually loved scripture at all for most of my life.  Don’t get me wrong, God would still speak to me through the verses I already knew or when I would read through passages in church or Bible study, and it’s not like I would never read my Bible.  But sadly, most of the scripture I was reading was to prepare to lead others in the study of it.  There was no real desire to read it daily or have the Lord speak to me through it.

Something changed about a year ago though.  Funny, it started with another spiritual discipline.  I’ve always loved to pray, and because I genuinely love it, I spend a pretty good amount of time each day in prayer, asking the Lord to move in my life and the lives of those I love.  In fact, if you are reading this and you are a part of my life in any way, it’s a safe bet that I’m praying for you regularly. But that’s a blog for another day…

One day last spring, I remember praying and asking the Lord if there was anything or anyone I should be praying for that I wasn’t.  And the answer was so clear and simple that it shocked me:

“You should pray to love my Word.”

“But I DO love your Word, Lord!  Of course I do.  What kind of Christian doesn’t love the Bible?”

“You don’t.  You may claim to love it but you don’t.”

He was right.  So I started praying.  I’m ashamed to admit that I prayed that prayer for many days before I even picked up a Bible.  I know, right?  Ridiculous.  I had started reading Tim Keller’s “Prayer” a few weeks earlier, which talks a lot about the psalms, so I started there.  Every day I would read a few psalms and pray for God to speak to me through them and help me to love it more.  It didn’t happen overnight, but I found myself reading more and more and every day brought a fresh word from him.

And then, like I tend to, I started to get restless.  I started to feel like I needed a plan.  I scoured through different Bible reading plans until I found one that looked good and I set to it.  I was going to prove that I could do this.  But it wasn’t long until that drudgery of obligation crept in again and eventually, I would find myself going days or weeks without sticking to “the plan.”  Somewhere along the way I had also stopped praying that prayer to love his scripture.

By his grace, instead of just giving up, this time I went back to my knees and asked him again to give me a desire to spend consistent time in the Word.  And instead of looking for another reading plan, I asked him what I should do.  Here’s what he helped me come up with:

• The Psalms – Did you know Tim Keller reads through the entire book of Psalms every month?  Did you know that it only takes about 5-10 mins (5 chapters) a day to do so?  I didn’t, but reading his book on prayer inspired me to do the same.  Not just because I want to be like TK (I totally do), but because what he had to say about it really resonated with my heart:

There are other prayers in the Bible but no other place where you have an entire course of theology in prayer form, and no other place where you have every possible heart condition represented, along with the way to process that situation before God. Even the Lord’s Prayer is more a summary of what we must pray—while the Psalms are a comprehensive program in how to pray it.

• The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) – The Lord really impressed upon me that if I wanted to live a life like Jesus, I should be constantly and consistently studying his life.  Seems obvious, but until then, I had mostly stuck to these books around Christmas and Easter or when I was specifically sharing the Gospel with someone.

So in light of that, here’s how I structure my daily reading now:

• 5 psalms
• 1 chapter from the gospels
• At least 2 chapters of some other book (vague, I know, haha, but I’ve never been much of a rule follower).  Some days I read 2, some days I read 5 or 6, and some days I read 20.  There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to which books I am reading through, but I do pray about it and often align it to my pastor’s current sermon series, a Bible study I may be going through, or a particular sin/issue that’s been on my heart (i.e. there was a season last year God was teaching me a lot about biblical womanhood, so I decided to read through Ruth and Esther).

Because I LOVE journaling (seriously, I have a problem), I also use a pocket notebook from the Rifle Paper Co (by far my biggest obsession/vice) to keep track of what I’ve read. Each day I write a few sentences about something that stood out to me or some insight the Lord gave me in that day’s scripture.  Here’s an example:

 

It’s a little unconventional, but I told you I’m not really a rule follower.  I realized that the enemy had been using that rebellious spirit to keep me from finding joy in the scriptures for far too long.  If he could convince me that I had to follow some structured reading plan, and then keep me in a shame spiral when I couldn’t stick to it, then he knew I would never grow to love it.

For the first time in my life, I do love it.  I crave it.  I ache for it.  I don’t beat myself up for missing a day, but I rarely do because I see how it is changing me.  On my first trek through the psalms last year, I remember reading through Psalm 119 and being a little overwhelmed with how many times the psalmist talks about their love for the Word.  This verse in particular really convicted and challenged me, mostly because I knew it was not true of me:

How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!

~Psalm 119:103

I underlined it then and prayed that the next time I read it, I would be able to identify a little more.  And every time I’ve come across it since, those words have rung truer and truer with me, and it makes me so incredibly happy to see how he’s growing me in this area.

Also, if you needed any more proof that I’m a huge nerd, I also keep a Google doc of what I’ve read so that I can keep track and make sure that I am reading through everything and not just the books I like.  I won’t get through it all in a year (or maybe I will, who knows?), and that’s fine.  Because it’s not about that.  Bible reading plans are great.  If that’s something that works for you, you should find one that you love and use it.  My pastor, Derek, actually just wrote a great post recommending some of his favorites.  But they aren’t for me, at least not in the conventional sense.  And if they aren’t for you either I want you to know that’s okay.  What’s important is that you are spending consistent time in the Word.  What’s important is that you are finding joy in the hope of the gospel, which every single word in scripture points toward.

If you don’t know where to start, start like me.  Pray for him to grow a love for his Word in your heart.  He will answer that prayer.  He LOVES to answer that prayer, believe me.