Bible Reading

Reading the Bible can be reading an instruction book; reading a Love Letter from God. I have heard it said that it can be Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth, but I think my favorite is when reading the Bible, you are reading your own story!

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, means "The Beginning" and in this first book, we find so many beginnings. The beginning of life, the first time man sins against God. The first time man is called out by faith. When Abram was called out, God didn't say a word about where He wanted him to go, nothing about the name of a city, no GPS setting, nothing! God simply said "Go to a place I will show you". That is a really tough way to go! He was simply (Gen. 12: 1- 3) told to pack up his personal belongings,his immediate family and go! As Christians, we are called out from what we know and understand, to become part of a great kingdom. Faith is not easy! It requires leaving what we know, what we already understand and use to make our decisions with. Go to a different kind of learning, basically, a new life! In Exodus we find what the Israelites had to do to learn the same lessons.
The Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians and had been for many years. They had been crying out to God in prayer for help. We do the same, maybe in different ways, but we look for something better than what we have, more of a purpose in life. That is referred to as "salvation", a way out of the life you have and into something more. The Israelites were looking for a way out of the oppression they had become slaves to. The only way out was to rely completely on God's direction. They were more than willing to do so until they got out, and the traveling got a little tougher than they thought it should, it was then they began to have second thoughts about leaving their lives. We tend to do the same thing; we don't like the lives we had before Christ, but we are so lost in this new life and what it takes to live it, that we actually start to look back and wonder "why did we leave?". We already know what we left and why we needed to leave it, we know we didn't like, didn't need it, still don't want it, but that we know how to live in. This life is so new and confusing! Faith is a lot of things, but easy is not one of them. Exodus is a story about us in our early Christian lives learning how to live that kind of life.
The next time you read your Bible, try looking at it as though it were a story written about you! It really is a Love letter written by God to us, but I like reading it with the thought that it's about me and for me! I tend to look a little closer, look more for something that actually applies to where I am in my Christian growth. I have seen some amazing things in God's Word, in Isaiah 55 we are told that God's word will not return void, it will complete what It was given! It has a task to complete just as you and I do! That word has the task of helping us to understand who He is and who we are. I guess that makes It the instruction book to beat all!