The Word in its Entirety

I have been learning and growing so much, and the majority of what I've learned, what has really "come home" to my heart, is stuff that would make most believers say, "DUH!" Yet I think I am not alone in having times in my walk where the Lord must teach me his simple yet very profound truths.

Most recently, I've been relearning what it means to really love the Word of God. I had fallen into the trap that is often found in our pews of reading only the parts of Scripture that I like. You know, the Psalms are always good, and you gotta love Romans and Ephesians. Proverb-a-day mentality runs rampant, and I had definitely jumped on the bandwagon. So I've gone back to the beginning--literally. I've started in Genesis not with the intent of reading the Bible in a year, or even in three. I've started at the beginning with the intent of reading a really good book, diving into an awesome story. I'm not reading things delineated by chapter and verse. I'm holding in my hands a beautiful narrative, outlined by Creation, the Fall, and the Redemption of the world.

At Summit, one of the speakers commented thus, and I paraphrase: "If you were to pick up one of 'the Greats', say Pride and Prejudice, would you read chapters 1, 8, bits of 14, and the second half of 20? Of course not! The parts cannot make sense outside of the whole narrative! If we read, in this way, certain parts of the Bible without the greater story, how can we ever understand how God is working in us and through us? Instead, we read the Bible as we would Aesop's Fables, a tale with a moral. Is it possible that the Bible, ALL of the Bible, is bigger than the simple applications we can glean for our day to day lives? It is epic! Read it as such!"

This really hit home for me. So it's back to the beginning, with the goal of fleshing out my bare-bones understanding of much of the Word. I'm getting to know the characters, learning their humanity, their faults, their triumphs. This is one story I never want to put down!