You are my secret hideout! You protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of rescue! I will instruct you and teach you about the direction you should go. I’ll advise you and keep my eye on you. ~Psalm 32:7-8 (CEB)
I have a pretty Bible that I carry with me to church. It has a nice compact size that fits well in my purse making it easy to carry with me.
My study Bible isn’t compact. It’s big, bulky, heavy and looks like it has seen some better days. When my son was 6 he knocked over a water bottle and now some of the pages are wrinkled. It is marked and written throughout with thoughts I have had and even some questions that I asked. It now holds a lot of memories. It has memories because I started reading it.
I began really reading my Bible several years ago because I started having questions like, “What does God expect of me?” I got this bright idea that maybe somewhere in my Bible I might find out what God wanted of me. As I read I underlined scriptures that I felt answered this question. Eventually I even found a verse in Micah 6 that actually says “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
As I read the Bible looking for what God wanted me to do and how he wanted me to act, I discovered scriptures that talked about his love for me. Psalm 139 is my favorite of all the psalms. It tells me that He knew me even before I was born. Before my mother even knew me, God loved me. I marked verses that talked of God’s love in pink.
Another thing I noticed when I read the scriptures is that the phrase “Do not fear” repeats over and over throughout the Old and into the New Testament. Whenever I would see the phrase “Fear not” or “Do not Fear” I would put a box around it.
What started out as simple curiosity lead me to discover answers to questions I didn’t know I yet had. “Does God really love me” “where is God when I am scared?” “Can I be angry at God?” “Is it okay to be sad?”
Reading my Bible has taught me when the world seems bigger than me and my problems are too many that God is not just with me but fighting for me. During times like this, I am reminded of my very favorite verse from Exodus 14:13 “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today. . . The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
Dear God, Thank You for Your Word that lives and breathes in me. Thank you for being bigger than my questions. Thank You for steadying my steps and fighting my battles. Amen.
Pieces of the Puzzle 