The joy of the Bible

Yesterday, I met with Rachel. We meet every Friday to read the Bible together. It stemmed from a challenge at the beginning of the school year to get closer to God, and so we decided to make a habit out of meeting together and reading. So far, we've read Ruth, most of John, Daniel, Romans, Galatians, and currently we are reading through Isaiah. In addition, we have looked at other pieces of Scripture that are concurrent in history/ideas of the other passages we read.

And yesterday, was glorious. You see, the goal was to realize how flat out irresistible the Bible is because it is God's word. This reading time, that is also encouraged daily, is not something that is rule-driven. It is not a matter of being condemned if you forget to read, or if you choose not to. And it's so hard to explain because reading the Bible consistently (which I'm still working on, to be honest), is not something you HAVE to do, but it's something you have to do. To analogize, a husband doesn't kiss his wife because that is what a husband HAS to do. There are no ten commandments of how a husband must love his wife, and thus show his affection in order to not break the rules. Instead, he is so overwhelmed by his love for her that he has to kiss her.

We get such a wonderful look into how much God is in love with us when we read, when we study, the Bible. This is my hope for students to understand. I have been so encouraged by Rachel in this way, because just the other week I had asked her if she got to read some more of Isaiah. She said that she didn't, because she didn't understand it, so she read Philippians, Ephesians and 1 & 2 Peter instead!!!! How awesome is that?

And it's been cool studying Isaiah together; looking at the prophesies about Jesus, or even understanding the history of the Israelites at the time of Isaiah's life. We've gone all over the Bible (1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, etc.) in order to better see how God continues to care for his people, even though they must go into exile under Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus the Great.

"I love reading the Bible!! It's so interesting!" Rachel had exclaimed near the end of yesterday's meeting.

I was overjoyed!! And I continue to pray that this remains true for her as well as other students in years to come!!