Grateful to be His

On this journey I am taking to Christ I have noticed something in myself. I remember when reading the Bible was boring. I remember when I did it because that was what I understood a Christian was supposed to do. I remember when I sat day after day reading it to be able to say I have read the entire Bible. And I remember the day all that changed and all of a sudden I couldn’t get enough of reading Scripture. It was like a craving, it fed my soul and the more I read the more I wanted to read. And that’s how it still is today.

I have a daughter that is now where I used to be. She states emphatically that the Bible is boring. This same daughter used to sit for hours and read the Bible with  no prompting from me. She picked out and bought with her own money a Bible because it was what she wanted to do. That same daughter was thrilled when a couple of years after that I took her to the Christian book store and told her she could pick out a new Bible for her birthday because the one she had had such small printing that it gave her headaches to read it.

But now…a few years later…the Bible is boring.

I understand because I’ve been there. Until the Lord opens our eyes Scripture is boring. But once our eyes are opened…oh how it comes alive.

When I read the Bible now I simply can’t get enough of it. The more I read it, the more I want to read it. The more I understand, the more I want to know. That desire for the Word of God was through no desire of my own. I was just like my daughter at one time. Although I claimed to be a ‘Christian’ I couldn’t quite get truly interested in reading the Bible.

There were times I wondered what was wrong with me. Times I thought I was the only one that just couldn’t gain that love of Scripture. And there were years that I didn’t worry about it.

Then the Lord opened my eyes and I saw in the pages of the Bible things I had never seen before. I understood. And I loved it.

When my daughter…or anyone…says the Bible is boring, now I want to tell them it’s as far from being boring as anything can get. That there’s something amazing inside its covers. That just one page, or part of a page, contains so much. But I know they won’t understand. And so I tell my daughter…I understand. I used to think the same way. I pray someday you will see it differently.

Because it’s within the pages of the Bible that the Lord reveals His plan for us. It’s in those pages that I get sucked inside and don’t want to come out.

When I was a child I used to watch a movie about a boy that had a book that he got sucked into the story when he read it. That book was so engrossing to him, it pulled him into the pages of the book and made him such an important character that he couldn’t not finish reading it. He stayed home from school to read. It was fascinating to him.

That isn’t quite my response to Scripture but it comes close. I never become a part of the story in the pages of the Bible and yet…I’m in every page. I never get sucked into the Book to the point that I am one of the characters I’m reading about and yet…I’m there on the pages just the same.

It is a Book that was written for those that are in Christ and once we have that standing the Bible opens up like never before.

I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15"I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. 16"They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.…John 17:14-16

The above verses are just one place where ‘they’ are spoken of. Sometimes the word they is used, sometimes it’s saints, sometimes it’s the elect. Whatever term is used…it’s in those passages that those that are in Christ, that are truly saved, that are born again, that are regenerate, are spoken of.

And because ‘they’ are spoken of…I find myself in the pages of my Lord’s Book. I am written into His story because He has a plan for the world, a plan for all of time, a plan for His people.

I am very grateful to be called His.