Craving Scripture

On October 1st, my church kicked off the Daily Walk – a reading plan to read through the entire New Testament by the end of the year. They had promoted it for weeks & I think I always had just glazed past it as another announcement. Suddenly, a day or two before it was to start, I saw something talking about it again & got this overwhelming sense of conviction that I needed to do it. I grew up in the church. I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord & Savior when I was 10. I’ve been reading and hearing Bible stories as long as I can remember.

But I have never gone through the Bible or either the Old or New Testament, in order, all the way through. I felt something telling me that this was something I needed to do. It was about time.

So on October 1st I started my journey through the New Testament. We read just a couple of chapters per day. I am often finding it challenging to keep up. Luckily for me (& everyone else participating) there is one review day built in to each week that allows us a catch-up day.

Studying Scripture on my own and trying to memorize it are things I have never been good at, or have never put enough effort into being good at. Honestly, I have often found it difficult to keep up the motivation to be good at it.

But as I am staying accountable to this plan, and really reading through the different books, I’m discovering a newfound enjoyment of the Scriptures. I’m finding myself more interested in reading more at a time, into finding out what happens next (even though I already know the answer). I’m discovering all sorts of details and perspectives that I may never have noticed before, as well as getting a new view on how the books fit together (particularly the Gospels – the repetition between them, the passages that are unique to each, the differences in tone, etc). Understatement alert – Jesus really was radical!

I am craving Scripture more. I find myself really looking forward to getting to my daily time in the Word.

In our small group’s current study on Revelation (Beth Moore’s “Hear & Now, There & Then”) she talked about a passage one week from Psalm 81:10 that says, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” She said having your mouth open wide is like being eager to receive the Word from Him. Like a baby bird waiting to get food. In a spiritual sense, when we are excited to receive the Word, God will fill that desire and we want to keep coming back for more.

So speaking of Bible reading, we’re entering Romans today. I better go read Romans 1-3…