I have been convinced since I was a new Christian that THE "secret" or lynchpin or critical thing or whatever you want to call it, is keeping the bible forefront. I will go so far as to say that there is no such thing as a "Christian" as the person who does not hear the voice of God in the Scripture, and thus make it a goal to be in it. Correspondingly, to the extent that I am in it, with it in me, I am happy. I have less shame due to failures. I am nicer to my wife and kids, and others. I have more zeal for God. I am thankful. When the bible is saturating my life, these things are true, and when it is not, I am weak, fearful (lots of things to make me afraid), lazy, living as though God were irrelevant, and having all sorts of activities that don't give me any strength and connection with God. I am prayerless, drawn by all sorts of stuff I KNOW is wrong, selfish, prideful, mean, and obnoxious.
I just can't say enough about having the life of God and the person of Christ live in and thru me IN THE BIBLE. That is just the way it happens, folks. No substitute will work. No religious ritual, including prayer, taking holy communion, hanging out with other Christians, listening to sermons, song.... nothing will substitute. We had a thread going in here (perhaps we still do) on "reading thru the bible"....and that is a good thing... a VERY good thing. I commend it. There are other plans though.
This past year I spent about half the year reading one Proverb (chapter) a day. 31 chapters... you go thru the book once a month. When I stop and pray and ask God to "just show me what You will show me" I found that I saw "patterns" for my life, inter-relationships of attitudes and activities to how life "works," how to quit being so stupid (lots of that!), common sense stuff about life, goals, sex, money, career, relationship to authority, time management, speech and my character in general. It was astounding, like at age 67 God was rebuilding a footer and cap for the foundation of my life.
The second half of the year I read Psalms. 5 psalms a day for 30 days takes you thru once a month. I started to learn how to pray, copying that prayerbook. I learned how to take to God ALL MY FEELZ. There were examples of joy, passion for God, guilt, terror, despair, feelings of abandonment and impending destruction... and the fear that comes with that, anger (at God and at people), celebration and exaltation, happiness and security in knowing God... just every emotion one can have... they are laid out there and the psalmist sort of brings those to God, puts them in front of Him and says "you have to teach me what to do with these." Some of the rxns are quite surprising, or they were to me. I was astounded at how many times CHRIST is foreshadowed, predicted, and told about in advance (if you have a bible with crosslinks, reading thru Psalms is interesting just to glom on to the passages in the New Testament cited in a month. Jesus constantly referred to them, but they are quoted throughout the NT. Again..... Psalms teaches one how to PRAY and Proverbs teaches one how to LIVE.
This year I was a little more ambitious. Still early in the year and we will see how it goes, but I am following THIS plan https://bibleplan.org/plans/new-testament-in-a-month/#esv I am trying to read thru the New Testament once a month (9 chapters a day). It takes 45 mins or so. I am not trying so much to bore down on a verse or a passage (though some definitely kind of "jump out" at you..... this is the mark of a person whose spirit has been made alive to God... and if you don't get that when you read, perhaps you might start in asking God to do that FOR you... I have to pray that way frequently, and sawdust gives way to treasure when we ask Him)... I dont focus as much on one verse or section, but am trying to get a sense of the "flow" or pattern or themes. I discover there are commonalities thru the gospels and then the same things picked up from a different vantage point in Paul, John, Peter, etc.
The biggest thing that stood out to me in reading the gospels (I am now in the epistles) was that JESUS WAS AN OLD TESTAMENT JEW. He was. He was not a gentile "Christian" (he would not know what that word meant). He did not see himself as "correcting" the savagery of a frightening OT God, but the embodiment of the love and purity and goodness of God, melded with a violent hatred for the evil of SELF (actually self being a dupe for other greater wicked powers but too stupid to see it), and a constant urging to live in light of a coming day when that evil will be crushed. He constantly makes the astounding claim that HE will be the final judge on that day and that one's eternal state depends solely on relationship to Him. He talks about the life of God flowing in and thru us like a river, and our natural state being dead and insensate to that life, needing to be born a second time to experience it, and that the whole of life is for one purpose only.... and that purpose is ONLY found thru Him. The biggest thing to me this time thru is the appalling egoism and stark insanity of these type claims at face value, and the conviction that no one who really READS the gospels can assert that there is a "difference" between the OT God of judgment and "Jesus, meek and mild."
I am finding that I have more of an "undercurrent" of awareness of the presence of God in my life.... and this is entirely due to the ...... I dunno the right words.... "magic" is not really right, but it is the same claims as magic, in that there is an awareness of the supernatural world that intrudes into what I once called "my" life. Not that I am no longer a self obsessed, egotistical, bragging and obnoxious jerk. Plenty of that still bubbling up. It is just that I keep shorter accounts, and find that ugly patterns I despise in myself just lose their power when I READ THE BIBLE, and try to take the phase shift I encounter there with me in the day. I find that I have thankfulness and joy at the thought of this phase of life "winding up" and an almost callous disregard for my nasty track record in light of the promise that stuff is completely expunged and wiped away. No fear. Just joy.
This is ENTIRELY due to the bible. It is ENTIRELY due to the power of that book (or rather the presence of the Author of that book who--amazingly enough-- comes to me and "makes it real" when I prayerfully read it.
If there is any one thing I could recommend to the guys in here it is this.... Read that Book. Make time for it. Get a plan. Stick to it and say "NO" to the 8 gazillion distractions that demand your attention and loyalty, so that you wind up dry, defeated, guilt ridden and empty. I promise you, on the basis of 50 years of doing so, you will *NOT* regret it. If you need help staying on target, ask me or one of the other guys in here whom you know to schedule accountability with a chat or zoom session. Just do it. You will have a happy life. I promise.
I just can't say enough about having the life of God and the person of Christ live in and thru me IN THE BIBLE. That is just the way it happens, folks. No substitute will work. No religious ritual, including prayer, taking holy communion, hanging out with other Christians, listening to sermons, song.... nothing will substitute. We had a thread going in here (perhaps we still do) on "reading thru the bible"....and that is a good thing... a VERY good thing. I commend it. There are other plans though.
This past year I spent about half the year reading one Proverb (chapter) a day. 31 chapters... you go thru the book once a month. When I stop and pray and ask God to "just show me what You will show me" I found that I saw "patterns" for my life, inter-relationships of attitudes and activities to how life "works," how to quit being so stupid (lots of that!), common sense stuff about life, goals, sex, money, career, relationship to authority, time management, speech and my character in general. It was astounding, like at age 67 God was rebuilding a footer and cap for the foundation of my life.
The second half of the year I read Psalms. 5 psalms a day for 30 days takes you thru once a month. I started to learn how to pray, copying that prayerbook. I learned how to take to God ALL MY FEELZ. There were examples of joy, passion for God, guilt, terror, despair, feelings of abandonment and impending destruction... and the fear that comes with that, anger (at God and at people), celebration and exaltation, happiness and security in knowing God... just every emotion one can have... they are laid out there and the psalmist sort of brings those to God, puts them in front of Him and says "you have to teach me what to do with these." Some of the rxns are quite surprising, or they were to me. I was astounded at how many times CHRIST is foreshadowed, predicted, and told about in advance (if you have a bible with crosslinks, reading thru Psalms is interesting just to glom on to the passages in the New Testament cited in a month. Jesus constantly referred to them, but they are quoted throughout the NT. Again..... Psalms teaches one how to PRAY and Proverbs teaches one how to LIVE.
This year I was a little more ambitious. Still early in the year and we will see how it goes, but I am following THIS plan https://bibleplan.org/plans/new-testament-in-a-month/#esv I am trying to read thru the New Testament once a month (9 chapters a day). It takes 45 mins or so. I am not trying so much to bore down on a verse or a passage (though some definitely kind of "jump out" at you..... this is the mark of a person whose spirit has been made alive to God... and if you don't get that when you read, perhaps you might start in asking God to do that FOR you... I have to pray that way frequently, and sawdust gives way to treasure when we ask Him)... I dont focus as much on one verse or section, but am trying to get a sense of the "flow" or pattern or themes. I discover there are commonalities thru the gospels and then the same things picked up from a different vantage point in Paul, John, Peter, etc.
The biggest thing that stood out to me in reading the gospels (I am now in the epistles) was that JESUS WAS AN OLD TESTAMENT JEW. He was. He was not a gentile "Christian" (he would not know what that word meant). He did not see himself as "correcting" the savagery of a frightening OT God, but the embodiment of the love and purity and goodness of God, melded with a violent hatred for the evil of SELF (actually self being a dupe for other greater wicked powers but too stupid to see it), and a constant urging to live in light of a coming day when that evil will be crushed. He constantly makes the astounding claim that HE will be the final judge on that day and that one's eternal state depends solely on relationship to Him. He talks about the life of God flowing in and thru us like a river, and our natural state being dead and insensate to that life, needing to be born a second time to experience it, and that the whole of life is for one purpose only.... and that purpose is ONLY found thru Him. The biggest thing to me this time thru is the appalling egoism and stark insanity of these type claims at face value, and the conviction that no one who really READS the gospels can assert that there is a "difference" between the OT God of judgment and "Jesus, meek and mild."
I am finding that I have more of an "undercurrent" of awareness of the presence of God in my life.... and this is entirely due to the ...... I dunno the right words.... "magic" is not really right, but it is the same claims as magic, in that there is an awareness of the supernatural world that intrudes into what I once called "my" life. Not that I am no longer a self obsessed, egotistical, bragging and obnoxious jerk. Plenty of that still bubbling up. It is just that I keep shorter accounts, and find that ugly patterns I despise in myself just lose their power when I READ THE BIBLE, and try to take the phase shift I encounter there with me in the day. I find that I have thankfulness and joy at the thought of this phase of life "winding up" and an almost callous disregard for my nasty track record in light of the promise that stuff is completely expunged and wiped away. No fear. Just joy.
This is ENTIRELY due to the bible. It is ENTIRELY due to the power of that book (or rather the presence of the Author of that book who--amazingly enough-- comes to me and "makes it real" when I prayerfully read it.
If there is any one thing I could recommend to the guys in here it is this.... Read that Book. Make time for it. Get a plan. Stick to it and say "NO" to the 8 gazillion distractions that demand your attention and loyalty, so that you wind up dry, defeated, guilt ridden and empty. I promise you, on the basis of 50 years of doing so, you will *NOT* regret it. If you need help staying on target, ask me or one of the other guys in here whom you know to schedule accountability with a chat or zoom session. Just do it. You will have a happy life. I promise.
