Summer of the Bible
My grandfather in law used to encourage our church to read through the Bible once every year. He was also known to joke that when you are reading from the Amplified version, it might take a year and a half. Needless to say, I've been reading through the Amplified over the past year!
A good friend Jason Barthelemy (Student Pastor at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, MN) recently tweeted that he is encouraging his church to join him in reading through the entire Bible this summer, in just three months! What a challenge. He encouraged me to join him, and I'm thinking I'm going to try it.
I absolutely love prayer, and have a love/hate relationship with fasting (at least the food fast kind of fasting), but I'm really not sure there could be much better of a way to draw near to God than by intaking large amounts of Scripture in a short period of time.
Makes me think of Isaiah 58, when the prophet cries out the word of the Lord, "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?"
It's like God says to us sometimes, that fasting you do with food or media, it's great and all, but what I really want from you is to get into my Word, and to actually do what it says. What could be more powerful than that. There is power in simple obedience. Many of us may be walking, crawling, striving after God but feeling like we are really missing it - maybe there are a whole lot of little things God has told us to do that we are just plain, not doing. But as we would simply turn and walk in the ways God has called us to walk, our paths would be made straight and clear. Many times God is waiting for us to do what He has already told us to do, before He's ready to give us any of the next steps in our life. Michelle and I have always said - obey God in the little things, before you ever expect Him to direct you in His more grand purposes for your life.
So this is the fast, or rather feast I choose this summer. And it's perfect timing leading up to Ignite - Student Evangelism Conference in September. I'm going to fast, or rather feast on God's very Words.
If you want to join me: click here for the link. This link will open your calendar and automatically enter your daily reading plan to read the entire Bible through in 3 months this summer into your iCal for you.
