Drawer Full of Bibles

Jul 6, 2011

Last week, I went to the Christian bookstore and God told me to buy a Bible. I was a little surprised, but glad to do it. Let me explain…

I grew up being taught from the Bible in my home, sunday school, church, and even grade school (I was home schooled). I memorized complete chapters of the Bible. I won awards for how many Bible verses I could regurgitate. Actually, I have even been given a Bible or two for winning the Bible memory verse competition!

The Bible I won in that competition was one of many that I’ve accumulated. I got my first Bible from my parents at age 6. I got another at age 9 from my grandparents. At some point, I picked up the small, handy New Testament from church “to carry around.” I got one from my brother. And I think one from my sister too! And of course, the “grown-up Bible (aka the Bible without the pictures!)” when I was 14. And the list goes on…I can’t even remember how I got all of my Bibles, but I literally have a drawer full of them.

Funny thing…for all the Bibles I had at my disposal, I never read any of them. Not seriously. I read the Bible because my mother told me to and to disobey was unthinkable. I read the Bible at church when the preacher told us to read along. Every blue moon, I read the Bible (on my own!) because I knew that saved people were supposed to. I never once read it because I wanted to, or because it gave me life, or spoke to me, or comforted me. It simply didn’t mean that much to me…until recently.

In February of this year, I read through The Pursuit of God by A.W.Tozar. It was reading through the chapter on the Word of God that I realized that I needed to know what was actually in the Bible. It dawned on me that the Bible is alive! It really is the living Word of God! It lives because He lives and nothing about it has become old, lifeless, or irrelevant since it was put on paper! It finally made sense.

While I was growing up, I had this irrational fear that if I sat down to read the Bible, I wouldn’t know what to read. And rather than ask God to open my heart and mind to any and all of His Word, I didn’t do it all (if i didn’t have to). After reading Tozar, I began praying that God would give me a stong hunger to read the Bible and apply it’s truths to my life. And, it’s working! I actually want to read the Bible now, and that has never been the case for me.

The fact that God told me to buy a Bible last week was pretty significant for me. I have a drawer full of them, but that was the first time in my life that I bought my own…and I was thrilled!