As 21st century Christian's, we often find it difficult to read and understand the Old Testament. We're comfortable with some of the stories and characters in the superficial way that they're often taught in Sunday School, but we don't want to dig too much into the whats, the whys and the hows. Particularly at this time of year, and also in the lead up to Easter, we hear some of the prophetic words about the birth and death of Jesus, but do we take the time to read around these prophecies, to read the context, to read what comes before it and after it?
One of the things that I will be eternally grateful for about our time at ngm, will be that I was inspired and challenged to read scripture! That may sound odd to many of you, for someone who's been a Christian for over 40 years, who's been in various leadership roles within a local church setting and who was called to join ngm and live by faith! I'd even spent a number of years running our churches book stall and had sold people bible study notes, but never used them myself! I hang my head in shame and confess that I'd never systematically read through the whole Bible in all the years I'd been a Christian. I was inspired by Nancy Goudie (who founded ngm with her husband Ray), who has read her Bible, cover to cover every year for about the last 40 years - WOW!!! I still am blown away by the discipline that it takes to do that, but it's not just an exercise, it gives you a real knowledge and understanding of scripture. It's through this type of systematic study, that preachers have so many verses of scripture memorised that they can just reel off when preaching or just in ordinary conversation. The other inspirational figure for me was Nancy's husband Ray, prior to us actually joining ngm, we'd been included in a daily text that Ray sent out to the whole of ngm. He'd spent years reading and praying through the 4 Gospels, he took a chapter each day and would text out what God had spoken to him about through it, sometimes it was just a few words, at others it was a mini-sermon. It was only when we'd worked through all 4 that I began to see that Ray wasn't just repeating what he'd written previously, but that it was something new, fresh and relevant.
I was challenged by those around me, so I downloaded the You Version Bible App (I'd highly recommend it) and set about attempting to read the whole Bible in a year using one of their plans. I don't know about you, but when I miss a day or two, the pressure I put on myself begins to build and it soon snowballs to a week or even more. Despite then trying to read 2 days each day in an attempt to catch up, it becomes a chore and seems about as relevant to my life as reading a telephone directory (if you've never seen a telephone directory, ask someone who's over about the age of 40). It was at about this time that I discovered an amazing feature of the app, where you can click a button to 'catch me up'. It basically changes the date you started by the 2 weeks (or whatever number of days you are behind). On my first attempt to read all the way through, I used this function quite a few times and it probably ended up taking me 18 months to complete, but I'd done it. At the same time, inspired by Ray, I began to pray before reading a passage and to ask God to speak to me through what I was reading. I was amazed at the result! I was reading passages that I'd read and heard many times, but it was like reading it for the first time, things just seemed to jump off the pages (actually it jumped out of the screen) and they were things that were relevant to my life. I began journaling what God had revealed and also shared some of it within an ngm Facebook group (which I've mentioned previously).
My challenge to you, is if you're like I was, you've never read the whole bible and can't really see any relevance in a lot of what you have read. Why not give it a try, use an app, it makes it much easier, and just see how it goes. Read it with an open mind and actually think about what you're reading. When we're continually bombarded by our politicians, business leaders and celebrities putting their 'spin' on everything and in the age of 'fake news', we have developed filters where we read/hear something that we don't agree with or understand and we just skip over it and ignore it. We shouldn't be doing this with scripture, because it's OK to have questions. When you read something that sparks a question in your mind, jot it down. Come back to it, reread it, check how it's phrased in another translation, you can even google it! There are so many books, sermons, articles, blogs etc available online, that you'll find a number on the particular passage you don't understand. I often find that when I understand the historical cultural significance of the passage, that I can suddenly see what the passage is saying.
So, as we approach the New Year with all the talk of resolutions, why not take the opportunity we to start reading God's word each day with an open mind and a notebook to jot down your questions and the fresh revelations you find.
Read our blog