If you have been reading some of my more recent posts you have read that I have been trying really hard to impart this to my college students. I have been trying to encourage them to just read a little everyday. Not to analyze or study, but rather to read as a story and narrative. I believe that most of us stop short of reading the Bible in its entirety because we are overwhelmed with the prospect of it.
But I have realized just how much more I learn, and just how much more I am tranformed by the daily reading of God’s word. There is something mysterious in the process of reading…something I cannot really explain. But what I do know is that it transforms lives.
As I have been preaching through the book of Colossians I have been thinking about this passage: “For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.” Colossians 1:29
This seems to be what happens when we spend time reading God’s word daily. I have noticed that the times that I get up early in the morning and begin my day in God’s Word…that it is those days that I feel God’s peace and presence the most. I feel His energy within me, rather than my own. And on the days that I don’t begin my day in God’s Word…well, then I find myself grasping and clinging and trying to do things on my own power, only becoming more and more frustrated and exhausted.
Reading God’s Word, especially at the start of one’s day, is just one of the ways in which we place ourselves in a position to allow God to give us energy and to inspire us throughout the day. Jesus seemed to think it was important to begin his day early in the morning, in relationship with His Father (Mark 1:35).
So it seems fitting that it should be important to us.
