{New Series: Knowing God in His Own Words}

It’s 5:52 a.m. when I finally drag myself out of bed. Without turning on any lights I shuffle to the kitchen and push the brew button on the coffee pot, then curl up on the couch under a quilt while the scent of coffee permeates the air. I doze for a minute or two while I wait. No more, though, because I know the kids will wake when their radar detects that I am sitting down to do something important. I’d like to actually finish reading a chapter in my Bible, would love to pray more than one desperate “help me” sentence, unbroken by the persistent yelling of the baby who thinks 5 a.m. is an acceptable wake time. I’d like to have some quiet time alone with the Lord before hearing the frantic pleas for breakfast from the seven year old who might perish dramatically if he doesn’t have something to eat before the sun has fully risen.

 
So, I quietly pad up the stairs, carefully holding a coffee cup while trying to miss the squeakiest spots on the steps. I sit down at my desk where my Bible and notebook wait for me every morning. I flip open to the Psalms, which I hope to finish by August; I sigh heavily and sink into the pattern of stillness that is the one golden hour of my day when I can be quiet and listen.
I read through a Psalm, jot down notes and parts of the passage in my notebook (spiral bound, college ruled, $.19 at Walmart during the back to school sale when I stock up each year). I get stuck on Psalm 88, and my thoughts feel fuzzy around the edges since the baby kept me up some last night and I turned out the light much later than I meant to anyway because I was lost in a story about the 19th century French painter Edgar Degas. I vow to go to bed earlier tonight, and then open my laptop to find C.H. Spurgeon’s expositions on Psalm 88. The psalmist says, “But I call to You for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer meets You.”  Spurgeon comments that “a true born child of God may be known by his continuing cry; a hypocrite is great at a spurt, but the genuine believer holds on till he wins his suit.”

 
I think back over my disastrous day yesterday, recycling the moment when I yelled at my kid for a continued act of disobedience, how I knew every word was a demolition of carefully built trust, and how I puddled into tears as soon as it was over. And how I called him back to me and sank down to his level when I apologized, the words getting stuck in my throat because pride is the hardest morsel to swallow. I thought about his whispered words when he asked me to pray for him to stop his disobedience while I curled around him in his narrow bed as we said our good-nights, and with tears washing away the ugliness of the day, I thank God that grace runs far deeper than I imagined it could, that mercy is new with the rising of the sun, that forgiveness paves the way for reconciliation.
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Some mornings I come to my open Bible and hungrily gobble up every word. Some mornings, I struggle to focus and have to lean on others for support. But, every morning the Lord meets me in my pale blue guest room, at the rummage sale desk with the wobbly legs and the formica surface with a coffee ring from my mug that apparently is cracked and leaking.
The words on the pages of my Bible are relevant to my current circumstances, though it might take digging to understand how.  But the digging is important. The more I dig, and the more I grasp that God has given us Himself in His own words, the more deeply I want you to love the digging, too.
The other night my husband and I were talking about what we’d been studying, and I couldn’t stop gushing over how relatable the ancient words of the Bible were to my life circumstances. The faithful, patient love of God that I’d read about in Psalm 78 that morning smashes through all the misconceptions about God’s character that we hold to when we don’t believe in God in the way that He has revealed to us in His Word.

We’ve created God in our own image, and He’s small.

 
But in His Word, He’s big and good and endlessly patient. He always kept His part of His covenant, even when His people broke it with committed regularity. Their persistent unfaithfulness to Him only highlights His constant, loyal love for them.
I want people to know the Lord as I’m learning to know Him. The more I study, the more He scratches out the small, neatly lined portrait I’ve made of Him. And I feel compelled for believers to know Him like this, to understand that the Scripture transcends the passing of time and is both useful and necessary for our growth as the people of God. Over the past decade of my life, it has become a lifeline like no other for me. Nothing in my life can stand up to the crushing disappointments and the fear-driven anxieties of life like the Word of God.

If you struggle to read your Bible with any regularity, please come back for the rest of this series as I share with you:
*what Bible study looks like practically for me and why I think we all need it
*how to balance a personal quiet time (and why I hate that terminology) when you have small children or babies that don’t sleep
*the Bible’s context vs. yours
*overcoming common obstacles
*how to persevere through dry seasons
*recommended resources

Coming next week: Do I need the Bible every day?

This is post 1 in the series “Knowing God in His Own Words”