God has put a passion inside my heart for the written word. Books are as much a part of me as my limbs are. When I was little, I sat in my room for hours organizing my books – labeling them and making my own personal card catalogue even before I knew what a card catalogue was. I love the beginning middle and end of each book I read, and I devour every word like a starved animal.
They are soothing ointment to my soul.
Books have comforted me throughout many seasons of sorrow, and they have held my hand through many seasons of joy. They have provided for me both an escape and a shelter. As far back as I can remember they have been the one thing that has just always been.
But I never knew how much I could fall hopelessly in love with just one book – God’s sixty-six love letters to me.
He loves me so much, that He spoke His Word into the hearts of some very human men, and breathed eternal life upon it so that it would stand through every test and trial, every fire, every heartache, every crisis, every disease, every natural disaster, every event in history and in the future, not just in my life, but in the lives of every human being alive.
His Word is alive.
His Word is quick and powerful.
His Word cuts away the things in our thinking that should not be there and replaces those circumcised things with right thoughts.
His Word teaches my hands to war.
His Word fills my mouth with blessings that I can use against Satan when he with an army of demonic forces to destroy me.
Jesus gave us His Word to defend ourselves with.
In it is the plan of salvation, the plan for our redemption, the plan for our deliverance, the instructions we need for battle. There are truths to defeat the enemy’s lies. There is life, victory, and power. The secret to abundant life is in the pages of Holy writ.
How I love Jesus, and how I love His Word.
His Word is for me.
His Word is for you.
Satan knows the power that lies in God’s word. He will do anything to keep us from it. I experienced this battle many years ago when I first gave my life to Christ. No matter how many attempts I made to implement consistent reading of God’s Word into my life, some of the worst falls of my life came after I had gained ground in reading the Word. I would experience victory for two or three weeks – having read daily – and out of nowhere, I would revert back to my old ways. Of course, I was a new Christian and ashamed of myself for being so un-churchy and un-Christ-like, so I never told anyone – especially my pastor.
Years passed in this manner, until finally, I quit going to church altogether and quit trying to read the Bible. Like Jonah, I went down, down, down until I had hit rock bottom again. Drug addiction wrapped its chains around me so tightly that I thought surely I’d die this way.
But praise God who had me in His hand and no man – not even myself – could pluck me out of it.
Those years I spent in jail were among the best years of my life.
I devoured every Word in His Word and learned how to use what I read and apply it to my life. My abundant life began in a cell, as the Words of God breathed life into my world-weary soul.
If you are a Christian and have a hard time implementing Bible reading into your life, you are not alone. But as a sister in Christ, allow me the privilege of exposing the enemy in your life.
You are being seduced by the enemy.
Satan wants to steal from you, kill you, and destroy you.
God wants to give you abundant life and good gifts. He wants to restore you. He longs to extend mercy toward you. He wants to build you, refine you, and nourish you.
The nourishment is His Word.
God puts in every born again believer a desire to know Him more. Reading His Word is the key that will open up the secret places in the Kingdom and enrich your walk with the Lord.
Satan knows this and wants to hinder you.
The Bible says that the “kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent taketh it by force” (Matthew 11:12). We have to be forceful and deliberate with our lives. We have to snatch our too-busy schedules from the rush of life and intentionally set aside time with the Father – time in His Word.
How I love the reading of God’s Word!
May it be written upon the table of my heart – a heart that was hard as stone but has melted beneath the breath of His infallible Word.
And may it be written upon yours too.
In His Grip,
Amy
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