Longing to be fed . . .

My sister met Jesus Christ in a country where Christianity was forbidden. She was taught how to read the Bible devotionally and when she returned to our home country, she discovered that I also had met Christ and needed the same instruction.

First, she told me to read John’s gospel five times, then the book of Romans twice. She said to read until God stopped me, then write in a notebook the verses and the thoughts that He gave me. I loved reading anyway, and yet felt ignorant about how to live having spent prolonged periods of time in the hospital and at home studying by distance learning. It was like handing me food for my soul, including the sweetness of dessert!

I have boxes of those notebooks from the early 60s to 1975 and then began putting those devotional thoughts from God in computer files. For me, this was an easy habit. I’d watched my mother read the Bible every day as a child and started doing the same thing when I was about 13 years old. I didn’t understand it until Christ came in, but the habit was there. The harder challenge was getting rid of the sin revealed by this daily reading:

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. (1 Peter 2:1–2)

Those sins in that verse sound like a mean-spirited person but they did not totally warp and twist my life. They were just there at times, along with other things like pride, selfishness, and insisting on my own way. I soon realized that continual Bible reading is something like peeling an onion. Layer upon layer comes off before the core of each problem is finally exposed. And onion-peeling often makes tears flow. The good part is that the more sin is revealed and confessed, the more the grace of God is experienced. The enigma is that by now I should be more like Jesus, yet realize that the onion is still being peeled. How deep is God’s love to persist with uncovering and cleansing my sin.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:9–10)

Yet I sometimes resist, not in the reading but in applying what I read, even in really listening to what God says. He reminds me — like my PC pings to let me know I have new email. I’m tempted to drop whatever I’m doing and go read it. Isn’t God saying I should have that same eagerness to hear from Him and drop everything to do what He says? I can be ‘hard of hearing’ at times just as a baby resists food at times. Too full? Never. It is more like being stubborn or distracted. This day and these verses are good reminders to be thankful for God giving me space, time, and desire to long for His Word and to outgrow my childish ways.

PRAY: Jesus, if my old notebooks were better sorted, it would be interesting, even helpful, to find what You revealed to me each day from the time I began seeking Your thoughts from Your Word. That would be more than fifty daily entries, first from those notebooks, then from my PC. The latter would be easier to find. Yet I know that You want me to live for today, to pay attention to what You say to me today. The amazing thing is that Your Word is like spiritual milk, like the Bread of life, and sweeter than honey. And in all these years, each day You gave me something new to think about or a reminder of what I knew that was needed at the time — more than 18,000 loving messages. You are amazing!

PONDER: Think that billions do not have the Bible, that many believers hunger for a copy, that many are dying because they do read and believe it and are hated for their faith. Think of those whose lives are lost before they know the wonder of being able to hear God speak to them, the wonder of prayer and of being blessed in ways they never imagined. I’m joyful that God has given me the desire to feed on His truth every day and the time and ability to do so, but at the same time look around me and feel some “survivor’s guilt” and angst for those that are missing out on the simple pleasure and privilege of hearing God speak.