Reading the Bible for All its Worth

I'm almost finished reading through the Old Testament!

I'm a studier. It takes me for-ev-er to read the Bible (a friend of mine once read through the entire Bible in the time it took me to read the book of Luke). I marinate, I stew, I sit and think and ponder and write. It's a slow process for me. So this whole graduate school -seminary - read through the entire Old Testament in three months was quite a challenge for me. It was really, really hard at first. I couldn't read fast enough, I couldn't grasp it fast enough, it was shaking me down and rocking me.. and then I had to keep going! No sitting and stewing! ahh!

My friend Robbi has always said (and my professor stressed it too) the importance of reading a book of the Bible in one sitting. Reading it as a whole. Big picture. And that's something I've never done. I've always taken chunks, studied pieces, learned people, but never as a part of the big whole of God's redemptive plan.

whoa.

i mean for real.

I'll be honest - this process has completely moved me. I have been going to church my whole entire existence and all of this was strangely new to me. I knew about Adam and Eve and Abraham and Moses and Jacob and Job and Isaiah- but there was something about reading it like a book, chapter to chapter, verse to verse, and allowing the Spirit to marinate for me - it opened up this whole big story of God's redemption and peeled back layers of Christ that I never even dreamed of knowing. Christ is everywhere in the Old Testament.

what a most valuable time this has been.

I think one of my biggest learnings (I learned so much!) was how to read the Bible in a new way. There are times to study and I know I'll go back and be able to look at it under a microscope, piece by piece. But what a gift to be able to read everything in context, to see through big lenses, to read it like a story and to learn what an unbelievably, extraordinarily faithful God we have. What a gift! The stories and people I grew up learning and reading - I see their context, I see their true importance, I see the utmost character of God.

The whole narrative of redemptive history.

Interwoven between Garden disobedience and golden calf construction and cyclical judge and king wickedness and Jerusalem destruction is a God of great faithfulness and love. Amidst human sin, frailty, wickedness, brokenness is God's promise of a new covenant and new hearts and restoration. And I am Israel and I am broken and I am in ever constant need of the Savior.

it really is amazing.

So my plug here - read your Bible! read.your.Bible. Start somewhere and read because it is the beautiful ALIVE, ever breathing, living Word of God. And it's telling the story of redemption and saving grace and our God's great love for what He's created. Read because through it, there is life. Read because it saves. Read because it's good news! The best news!