MY FAVOURITE BOOK PART 1
I am devoting this entry to celebrate my reading of the Bible from cover to cover, front to back. It has taken me three years of ill-disciplined and irregular devotion to finish this Holy Book.
Also, it took me so long because of my misguided Bible reading method. I used to read the New Testament and then the Old Testament, page by page.
While this method is advantageous because we understand and remember every book of the Bible better, it also proves to be a detriment to our motivation levels to read the Bible.
This occurred to me when I had to read the 150 chapters of Psalms and 1000+ verses of Proverbs, going through each and every page at a painstakingly slow rate every day.
The truth is, just as songs and wise quotes cannot be digested and appreciated when we are bombarded with them, the Psalms and Proverbs can be hard books to swallow in one meal, more bitter than the book Apostle John swallowed in Revelations.
We need to go through them one chapter a day or we will become discouraged after the 20th Psalm or so. Before I go any further, I just want to share this Bible Reading Plan that is very effective with people who are ill-disciplined or misguided like me.
http://bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html
This Bible Reading Plan splits the Bible into the categories that Deacon Jer Shih grounded in our heads in Bible study. On Sunday, you'll read the Epistles. Mondays are lessons on the Law. History of Israel is studied on Tuesdays. Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy and Gospels take up one day each.
This gives us the full flavour of the Bible every week. Instead of being served the same food everyday, you get to have a taste of the variety of the books of the Bible through the week.
Every week is Bible Buffet Week. Trust me when I say you will be more motivated and gain more understanding about the Bible if you follow this method.
The truth is, the Bible cannot be understood fully if we only read certain parts per se(alone), for example only the New Testament.
I used to think the Old Testament was boring and did not feel too eager to cross over from the New Testament, in which I was comfortable in understanding in most of what it said.
But now, I love the Bible like never before, especially after I finished the Old Testament. I have also understood the New Testament better as it was written upon Old Testament history, prophecy and advice. They are parallels to each other and have little meaning without each other.
After reading the Old Testament, I still found it boring. It did not have the best storylines, endings and rich descriptions. Nor was it as succint and concise as the New Testament.
But one thing that was impressive was God’s love and glory in the Old Testament. Sometimes we think God was more impressive in the New Testament era than the Old Testament. But I do not fully agree.
Wait till you read about how Moses’s face shone with the manifest brightness of the glory of God, Elijah and Elisha's miracles and Daniel and his friends' deliverance and promotion by God in the conquering, pagan nation of Babylon.
There are no lack of visibly obvious miracles, testimonies and reverence of God by pagan nations and kings in the Old Testament. The King of Kings, Lord of Lords did not get His reputation from the New Testament.
It was in the Old Testament era that the Bible recorded Nebuchadnezzar, Nineveh and consecutive kings of Babylon, Media and Persia fearing the Lord because of His outstretched arms and mighty hand.
The entire Bible is like honey, though it’s not as easily read and understood like other books. But every verse is linked to another in this book and it’s like fitting a jigsaw puzzle together to get the whole picture of what God is saying.
It is encrypted with the seal of wisdom, understanding and knowledge: breaking the mystery requires you to read every page of it, ask questions and get answers. Wisdom and understanding of the Bible has to be searched out from different parts of the Word of God.
Do you shrug verses off that you cannot understand? You could search out its interpretation by comparing the different Bible translations found on Bible.com.
You could also search the verse on Google but you must be careful as the sources may be from Roman Catholics, Satanists or even non-charismatic Protestants. We all know our interpretations of the Bible differs from theirs significantly.
Last of all, you should keep the Word in your heart and the Lord will bring the verse to your remembrance and its meaning to your discovery one day. This has happened to me many times.
The Bible, in what it repeats or omits, speaks loudly to us to be alert. So, remember every weird verse because it will prove helpful one day.
It’s like a slow yet thrilling book that places you as detective to find out the answers. Join this game to uncover the mystery of the Bible with the saints that have gone before us.
I will leave you with what Hosea 4:6 says.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you from being priest for Me;
Because you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.
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