Me and My Bible

            I need to read the Bible more. The Bible is important. The Bible is meant to be read. The Bible. The Bible. The Bible. I really should be reading the Bible more.

            Why aren’t I reading the Bible more?

            I’ll be honest. I’m struggling. As much as I used to enjoy reading the Bible, lately I haven’t even been trying. I don’t even know why. I just haven’t for the past few weeks for some reason.

            Back in middle school, when I was starting to find my identity in Christ, I sat down one day and decided I was going to read the Bible in just one year. I was so motivated that my mom ended up joining me too. In just that first sitting on the first day, I got through the entire Book of Genesis, maybe even Exodus too. I can’t remember exactly, but it was more than just a verse or chapter.

            I remember running up to my mom in complete awe. “I didn’t know this!” “Did you know that?” “Why did this happen?” “I want to know more about this!” “I forgot about that!” Etc.

            That first year of reading the Bible, from cover to cover, was one of the few times in my life when I’ve felt closest to God. Truthfully, I felt I understood so much more than I had ever understood before about Him.

            For a while after, I didn’t want to lose the feeling and I kept up the Bible reading. Once I got a smartphone, I used a Bible app that reminded me to read every day and I did. It was great!

            Eventually, daily turned to every other day, which turned to weekly, which turned to every other week, etc. Sometimes, I couldn’t remember the last time I even sat down to read the Bible and that’s pretty sad.

            That’s where I am now.

            I’ve been sitting here, trying to figure out why I’ve been slowly inching myself away from this beautiful book always sitting at my desk, asking me to gently pick it up, place it in my lap, and flip through its wondrous pages.

            Why aren’t I reading the Bible more?

            There are two answers I’ve come up with. The first one is that since I have read the entire Bible, maybe I think there’s nothing new to learn from it. This isn’t true, though. Every time I read the Bible I’ve learned something new from it.

            Just because I’ve read the whole Bible, doesn’t mean I understand every single lesson from it. Sometimes I read late at night and didn’t fully comprehend the point of what I was reading, but when I read it later, more awake, I understood it perfectly. Sometimes I couldn’t understand because I hadn’t gone through what the verse was talking about, but when I read it after going through the situation, I understood completely.

There’s always something new to learn from the Bible.

            The second reason is that if there is always something new to learn from the Bible, maybe I’m afraid to learn what that is. I admit it, sometimes I feel like I do understand everything from the Bible. I’ve just learned and understood so much from the Bible already that I don’t want to learn and understand anything else. I don’t want to learn that I haven’t understood something completely. I don’t want to learn anything new.

            It’s important to keep learning, though. The more I learn, the more I understand, and the better a Christian I can be. I need to stop thinking that the Bible is only for those that have to learn from it because I haven’t finished learning from it myself. I never will.

            There’s always something new for me to learn from the Bible.

            As a writer, I really should have some more respect for the Bible. I mean, I want to write a book someday and here I have the most famous book in the world right in front of me!

I definitely want to read the Bible more.

So, here’s what I’m going to do after this. I’m going to take this beautiful book, sit in my comfy chair and just read. I’m going to flip the pages and let God’s word fill my eyes, ears and mind. For just a few minutes, I’m going to forget any reasons that have taken me away lately and off will go my computer, TV, radio, etc.

It’s going to be just me and my Bible.

Apologizing to Myself

            How come it’s so difficult to forgive ourselves sometimes? Of course, it can be difficult to forgive other people, but sometimes it seems like its easier to accept someone else’s apology then our own.

            At least, that’s the way it is with me.

            I won’t lie. Just like everyone else in this world, I have my share of things I’m not proud of. Some of them I can forgive and forget, some I even just forget, but some I just can’t find it in me to forgive at all, let alone forget.

            I don’t think God agrees with me, though.

            The whole point behind Christianity is that Jesus took our sins upon Him and died for us. Because of this, God can forgive us our sins. That’s how much He loves us. Literally, just like that He forgives us at any moments notice. All that we have to do is ask for forgiveness and we get it instantly.

            What I’ve found, at least in my case, is that I ask God for forgiveness, but don’t bother to forgive myself. That can’t be right. I mean, if God thinks I’m worth being forgiven, why can’t I agree?

            One of my problems is that I hold grudges. Long ones. I’m talking about grudges as long as the Grinch had against the town of Whoville and Christmas (I like Dr. Seuss, okay?). I know that’s not right, though, since God never holds grudges against anyone, and I’ve been working on that. Thanks to the Lord, I’ve been able to grow and get better at not holding grudges against other people. I’ve been happy about that.

            It seems like there’s one other person I’m still holding a grudge against, though: Myself.

            I really don’t know why this is. I think it might be easier to forgive other people because they’re the ones who’ve made the mistake. It also might be easier to ask for forgiveness since I know God will always forgive me unconditionally. But what about when I’m the one whose made the mistake? Can I forgive myself unconditionally?

            Thinking about it, I think I can forgive myself by asking two questions. First, what I have to think is if I were someone else, would I forgive me? The answer could be yes a lot of the time. I mean, looking back, I can see that sometimes I honestly didn’t know better. In that case, it makes perfect sense to forgive myself.

            And when the answer is no, that’s when I have to ask myself the second question. If I were God, would I forgive me?

The answer will always be yes.

The truth is that if I’ve gotten to the point where I can ask God for forgiveness, I should be able to ask myself for forgiveness too. If I can let go of my anger at someone else, that means I’m capable of doing that for myself too. And if I can accept God’s forgiveness, I should be able to accept my own as well. I just need to remember that I deserve my own forgiveness just as much as any other person does.

Next time I make a mistake I just need to remember that if I can accept apologies, apologize to others, apologize to God, then I can apologize to myself. 

Sleep Deprived Christian

            I’ve just had to pull an all-nighter for a test I’ve been studying for and decided to write about what happens to me as a sleep deprived Christian. (My apologies if at any time I don’t make sense. Just bear with me.)

            First, if I even attempt to pray while sleep deprived, I’ll be dreaming long before I can even think about saying, “Amen.” It doesn’t matter if I’m standing, sitting, propped against the wall, standing on my head (okay, I can’t really do that, but you get my point), I’ll fall asleep while praying. It’s not surprising, considering I have my eyes closed already.

            I remember I was told once that if I fell asleep while praying, I’d be closer to God and therefore have no nightmares. I wonder if that’s true. Honestly, I can’t recall 100% if I’ve ever fallen asleep while praying and then had no nightmares, let alone if every time I’ve fallen asleep I’ve had no nightmares.

Maybe I should try an experiment…

            Anyways, second, if I try to read the Bible while sleep deprived, I hardly understand a thing I’m reading, if anything at all. It’s like my eyes are moving over the words, but they enter through my vision and get lost somewhere in my brain. They probably dissipate like smoke because they never reach my brain long enough, if at all, for real comprehension to occur.

Am I even making sense?

All right, third, once I start my day while I’m sleep deprived, it’s more difficult than ever to be a good Christian. I don’t mean necessarily sinning with something super big, but at least with being a nice, friendly, loving, non-judgmental Christian.

As a Christian, I’m supposed to be friendly and loving towards others, right? Well, when I’m sleep deprived, it’s a lot easier to tick me off, though I try not to be. The truth is, though, I turn into a monster. I don’t want to be anyone’s friend or love anyone. All I want to do is get through the day and get back to my bed. Then, if anyone bothers me, I get mad and think they’re doing it on purpose. Talk about judging…

I wonder if Jesus ever got sleep deprived. Even if He did, I’m sure He dealt with it a boatload better than I do.

Fourth…I can’t think of a fourth, so I guess this is where my list ends. I should probably have some profound way to end this. I guess I’ll just say that maybe if I must be a sleep deprived Christian, to go with the good old question, “What would Jesus do?” and try to act like I think Jesus would if He was sleep deprived.

Sure, let’s go with that.

Zzzzzzz…

Texting for God

Note: Some spoiler alerts on the new God’s Not Dead movie.

            I felt this need to write about what just happened to me after I watched the movie, God’s Not Dead, at the movie theatre last Friday. For those who haven’t seen the movie, I’ll try not to go too much into detail and just mention what’s important for this post.

At the end of the movie, there’s a scene at a concert where everyone’s encouraged to text every person on his or her contacts list, “God’s not dead.” The logic behind it was that if there were 1,000 people there and each person texted 100 people, than it’d be like telling Jesus we love Him 100,000 times. After the movie ends, the audience is prompted to join.

How could I say no?

Here’s the thing, though. It’s easier said than done. The moment I took out my phone and wrote those three words, it was difficult to picture myself sending it to everyone on my contacts list.

Sure, I could easily send it to my youth group friends, my Christian camp friends, my family members…but what about everyone else? What about my classmates, my other friends, my colleagues? What about everyone who wasn’t Christian?

The last thing I wanted to do was offend anyone. I pictured myself getting dozens of offended texts, somewhere along the lines of, “How dare you send that to me? You know I’m an atheist!”

I could also get offensive texts too, like, “Screw you and your Christianity!” or worse. I’d be the one offended then and there’d be no one to blame because I asked for it.

Suddenly, pressing send didn’t seem like a good idea.

Then I started thinking. I wasn’t saying anything offensive with my text. If the person didn’t agree, they didn’t agree. And if someone responded offensively to me, I didn’t need to take that personally. Besides, it wasn’t like I was doing this for any of them, or even for me.

I was texting for the one I was texting about: God.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I began to send the text. First, I sent it to all of the contacts under A. By then, the movie was over and everyone was exiting. When I got up, though, I noticed something wonderful.

Practically everyone, especially the teenagers, was texting.

Now, don’t judge me. It wasn’t that I was doing it just because everyone else was, but the fact that I wasn’t the only person, or even teenager, filled me with strength. For a brief moment, there was a room full of teenagers saying, “So what? I’m a Christian teenager and I’m going to text for God.”

So, I kept texting, moving down the alphabetical list. As I kept sending, I kept expecting the worst.

Here are the results:

Total people texted: 170

No responses: 78

Total responses: 92, and of those responses:

            35 responded with some sort of confusion

            26 agreed in some form

            20 asked, “Who is this?”

                        4 of these overlap with agreed

                                    6 referenced the song, “God’s Not Dead” by Newsboys

                                    4 referenced the movie, God’s Not Dead

                                    2 started a philosophical conversation

                                    2 gave completely unrelated responses

                                    1 responded offensively

           

            I’ll just say it. I was flabbergasted. Yes, flabbergasted. Why? Because of all of the responses I received, not one person responded offended and only one gave me an offensive response.

Honestly, it was such a pleasant surprise that it left me thinking why I was so scared to do it in the first place. Why couldn’t I just text for God? I talk, sing, dance, etc. for Him, but I hesitated on texting for Him. Why?

Maybe it was the randomness that threw me off. Maybe I wasn’t prepared for the possible responses. Maybe I just wasn’t as brave to tell the world about Him as I thought. Maybe it’s because of all of those reasons. Maybe not.

The truth is, I don’t have a complete answer for this question, but what I do know is maybe I’m not as afraid to text for Him anymore. This experience taught me that I could do something I’d never thought of, text for God. It’s just another way to reach others about Him, so why not go for it?

Seriously, why not?