{know Him because we need Him}

Years ago, I sat in a small circle of believers as we shared our life experiences about studying the Bible. We all fidgeted a bit because it seemed we were collectively on the brink of disclosing something very secret and incriminating.  One sweet woman in her 70’s confessed to the group, “I’ve been in church my whole life, but I’ve never really studied the Bible regularly.” The look on her face is burned into my memory: a mixture of regret, embarrassment, and the knowledge that she had missed out on something she couldn’t qualify. Her confession served as a warning, and I believe she would agree that it should have been perceived as such. I took her warning, filed it away for the days when I feel sluggish, tired, or indifferent. This woman was not alone in her confession. As more people in the group opened up about their desire to read the Bible, it became apparent that this woman spoke for all of us when it came to personal experience.

I didn’t judge her for her confession. I knew it too well to throw any stones.

---

There were a lot of years in my young adult life when I missed out on knowing the Lord as well as I could have. I was lazy in my approach to the Bible; I enjoyed hearing it taught by others, and I often rode the coattails of my pastor-husband. Still, I neglected the act of daily opening the Word myself to know the Lord on a personal level. I started and stopped more times than I can count. Undisciplined but somewhat knowledgeable, I could cover for myself pretty well.

But knowledge that is only held in the mind and not owned by the heart isn’t helpful when dreams are crushed and all that seems stable comes crashing down around you.

When the stick refused to turn pink, when the diagnosis took my breath away, when I walked the floors at night in crushing pain, when anxiety about the opinion of others robbed me of peace, when the hurt from people I loved overwhelmed me, when it all piled up in layers of pain I couldn’t tear down–knowing about  God was useless. I needed to know Him. I needed to know Him in every way I could, needed something certain to hold on to, needed to know that He wouldn’t leave me in my pain, needed to know there was purpose in the shambles all around me. I needed to know the Lord close-up. And I needed to know Him now. Or, yesternow, as one writer puts it.

I used to wait until Mondays to start new things. Diets. Exercise plans. Home organization. Lowering my caffeine consumption. But when all around my soul gave way, I needed the hope and stay STAT. There was no waiting for Monday. Often I hear from women who have been in church for many years but struggle to maintain any regularity with reading the Bible, and the underlying attitude is one of defeatism. Because they’ve never been faithful at it, they fear they never will be. I know this well, and my response to them these days is this: Don’t dwell on past failures. Focus on the fact that the Lord has new mercy for you every day that you drag yourself out of bed and fight the urge to fall asleep on your open Bible. Now is when you need Him.  Now is when I need Him.

Circumstances may have been the catalyst for getting me to open my Bible and seek the Lord, but developing the habit is what kept me at it when the catastrophes passed and normalcy returned.  Here are four ways to help you carve out that important time with the Lord. Learn from my mistakes—don’t wait until you’re so desperate that you’re scrambling.  Start now.

1)Pick a time.

In my opinion, this is the best place to start. Think about your daily habits. Of the things you do every single day, it’s likely that most of those things occur at the same time each day. (I’m excluding moms of young children here, because life is pretty unpredictable at that stage of life, and I’ll address that later. Solidarity, sisters. If you’re not sleeping through the night, there’s grace for you. And coffee.)

As a mom, I get up at 5:30 (okay, 5:45) and have my time of Bible study before the rest of my household is awake. Once my kids are up, my time is not my own. By the time my kids are in bed at night, my brain is basically working at its lowest capacity, and I just cannot conjure up enough focus for Bible study at night. When I turn off the light and shut the boys’ bedroom door, my brain immediately starts powering down. So if I want to have undisturbed, focused Bible reading and prayer time, it has to be morning. Which was really hard at first. But here is where I’ll interject that I was desperate for the Lord to teach me about Himself, and desperation will drive you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.  Like, getting up when it’s still dark outside. It took months before it became my new normal, and there are days when it’s still a huge effort. When my clock shatters the stillness of sleep, I have to make a decision to do what’s good for my soul. Years of not doing this when I actually had plenty of time taught me that I will struggle to grow in my faith in Christ if I don’t make a conscientious decision every morning.

The psalmists talk a lot about praising the Lord and meditating on His Word both morning and evening. Am I saying you have to read your Bible twice a day? Yes. Just kidding. No, I’m not saying you have to read your Bible twice a day. It’s something to aspire to, and it happens for me once in a great while, but I think this gives you night owls the freedom to do your Bible study in the evening. I feel like my brain cells are on the brink of implosion once my boys are tucked in at night, so it’s not my ideal time. But it might be yours, and if it is, make good use of it.

Carving out an extra 30 minutes or an hour of your day might seem impossible at first. It might require turning off the TV earlier at night. It might mean that you sleep a little less. But think about what’s good for your heart, what’s good for your relationship with Christ, what will aid you later in the day when you’re parenting, working, investing in others. Think about how to prepare yourself for future suffering.  Discipline seems rote and dry, and it’s never really enjoyable at first. But as setting aside time with the Lord grows into a regular space in your day, it will eventually seem less like discipline and more like breath for your lungs, filling you up without constant, conscious effort.

 

2) Pick a place.

This seems obvious, I know. But, like picking the same time each day, picking the same place may be helpful for you. I’d pick somewhere where you won’t be disturbed or distracted. I used to sit on the couch in our living room, but at the height of my struggle with chronic pain I often slept on that couch which in turn made it less than ideal for my Bible reading and prayer (i.e., I was falling asleep. A lot.). So I moved to another part of the house. I now sit at my writing desk in our guest room, and I shut the door. There are few distractions, and sitting at a desk ensures that I won’t fall asleep. For you, maybe it’s an office, a chair in your bedroom, your kitchen table, your living room couch, out on your deck or porch. Wherever you choose, prepare by making a spot for your Bible, notebook, and a coaster for your coffee mug. Prepare so the spot is always ready. The place isn’t sacred because of where it is. But it can become sacred to you because of Who meets you there each morning with His goodness. His presence is what makes a place meaningful.

 

3)Pick a method.

In my next post, I’ll offer a couple of methods of Bible study I’ve found to be most effective for me. I’ll give you some resources in that post as well, but let me say something here that might make people uncomfortable. It’s easy to read books about the Bible and to call it “Bible study.”  But, reading about the Bible isn’t the same as reading the Bible. I firmly believe what every Christian needs is to open the Bible itself every day. Don’t just read books about the Bible. Let your Bible study time be study of the Bible. There is a place for supplemental material. But extra materials are supplements, helpers at best. Side dishes, not the main course. Commentaries are meant to help you study the Bible, not serve as your Bible. A daily email might deliver a morsel of truth to your inbox every day, but this shouldn’t be the main source of your Biblical diet. We need to do the work of opening the Bible, reading it in context, understanding the authorial intent (what the author meant when it was written), grappling with what it teaches about God, and then drawing applications. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reading a “verse of the day” on your mobile device. But if this is what you’re using as the source of your Bible intake, you’re starving. And I’m saying this because I lived for a long time as a spiritual anorexic.  We need the whole Word. In small bites, yes. Sometimes all we can take in is one verse, but it’s dangerous to take one verse without the context of the surrounding verses. We also need big chunks, long read-throughs; we need close-up, magnified views as well as broad, landscape perspectives.

4)Begin and end with prayer. And pray in the middle, too.

I heard John Piper speak at a conference recently. He opened his talk by sharing that he was three verses into his morning Bible study that morning before realizing he hadn’t first prayed and asked God to help him understand—as if he could understand anything, glean anything without the Spirit first opening his eyes to it. I remember this each morning now when I open my Bible—I can’t really soak in the Scripture unless the Lord helps me. We can study the Bible with our minds but without our hearts engaged. We can also study it emotionally without making the correct contextual connections we need to rightly understand it. Pray before, during, and after that God will help you to rightly divide the Word that you’re studying, knowing that you are dependent upon the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of your heart. A posture of humility is expressed in a heart that knows its own helplessness.

We know we’re all desperate for the Lord. Sometimes we just know it more. I think we know it the most when we expose our hearts to the Word of God on a regular basis. Laid out next to our broken, sinfulness is the beautiful, faithful, loyal, sustaining, holy, just character of God. He has invited us to know Him because we need Him. So let’s know Him.  Because we need Him.

---

This is post 3 in the series “Knowing God in His own Words.”

Post 1: “New Series: Knowing God in His own Words”

Post 2: “Do I Need the Bible Every Day?”