Feel free to read, but be warned, this is a looong post and is more for me to process what I have done/where I am versus where I want to go/what I want to do...in other words, quite boring and a bit rambling for everyone else...
Not only was it brutally hot (over a hundred every.single.day), but everyone's chronic medical conditions blossomed out of control...and the summer quickly became very intense.
And quite miserable.
But...I really, really wanted to do a quick(ish) read through of the New Testament, especially after completing the first third of the Sermon on the Mount (by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and workbook/video study by Kari Denker). That incredible study was amazing and humbling and it made me hunger to draw closer to God and to His Word.
But that's not all...you see, a few years ago I decided I wanted to do a deep dive into the book of Romans, especially after my first read-through of The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee. This book is a commentary of sorts of Romans - actually more of a deep dive into the hardest concepts that Paul teaches in that book of the Bible. But I quickly became overwhelmed and distracted by life and sat it aside...so knowing that study was still sitting on the shelf right next to where my desk is - that was also an impetus for me to do a read-through of the New Testament in 90 days. Because, I believe, Romans is best studied in the backdrop of having just read through the the Gospels and actually the entire New Testament.
I started off well - May 22nd was the day we collectively decided to begin, and I did ok through the beginning of July (through the book of Acts).
Then life exploded.
And I reached Romans chapter one and that pull to dive in and dive deep hit again and I paused the reading. I picked up The Normal Christian Life and re-read it as I studied Romans.
Then COVID hit our house and took all five of us down, and as I lay in bed completely miserable, and the intense exhaustion washed over me and as my thoughts slowly chased each other around my brain (the brain fog is real)...I realized I still really wanted to finish the New Testament. I had a birthday coming up and decided what I wanted most for my birthday was to finish the read-through.
I am a fast reader. I LOVE LOVE LOVE to read. I prefer a book to just about anything (tv, movie, get togethers...) but when I read the Bible, I don't want to just plow through it. I want to taste it, savor it, spend time over it. So in order to do this, I had to make my morning reading a priority.
And I did it.
The morning of my birthday found me in Revelations and I read the whole book that day and it was amazing.
I love God's Word so much, yet, ironically I struggle with making it a priority to study AND read it daily. I have tried various study methods - verse mapping, Scripture writing, a combination of the two with doodles and colors thrown in to help, Bible studies someone else makes, in-person Bible studies, virtual and/or video studies, Bible journals with space to do inductive type study with it...you get the picture. I have also printed off (lots of different kinds of!!!) reading plans to complete (I do SO SO much better when I have a box to check-off) and yet, like exercising or eating healthier - find it SO difficult to be consistent.
Then I thought of my reading challenge goal. I've set the goal to read 104 books every.single.year since I first heard about/printed off Tim Challies' yearly challenge. And I think that was eight or ten years ago? (*actually, I just checked and it was only six years ago...apparently 2016 was the first time he posted this challenge!) A few years ago I did well by pulling off all of the books from my shelves that I wanted to read that year and creating index cards for each book and I did read more books and more consistently that year than any other year...but still fell far, far short of the goal. This year - this year - has been a game changer. I joined a challenge that asks you to post and check-in and that has been enough to spur me on to read more than I have, hands down, in any years past. I may even reach my goal of 104 books. Which got me to thinking, if that worked for books, why can't it work for Bible reading? Because, while books are one of my favorite, favorite things...they are not the very words I live by. As amazing as they are, they do not impart life, they are not alive and active, they are not God-breathed.
So...I am going to post every single Sunday - here on my blog. I am going to lay out what I hope to accomplish in the week to come and what I did (or did not do) in the week that just passed. My hope is that this simple habit will spur me on to consistency - the gateway habit that will finally conquer what has been standing in the way of the growth that God has called me to.
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