And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes . . . Deuteronomy 17:19
I was never explicitly taught this, but growing up in church, I simply knew that those who were addicted to alcohol or drugs weren’t Christians, and that Christians didn’t struggle with alcohol or drugs. When I first struggled with drugs then, I questioned my faith – Who or what am I? I was told by well-meaning Christians that as a Christian, I should be delivered once and for all from my addiction. I liked that idea, but it was not my experience. When I went on to relapse repeatedly, finally losing my job and nearly my family, there were those who questioned my faith. Maybe you’re not even a Christian. Christians don’t act like this. I couldn’t blame them. I was saying the same thing. At that point, my conflict – Who or what am I? – was no longer a simple question, but rather a profound crisis of faith. I desperately needed to understand why I continued to struggle.
Truly believing in God, I turned to my Bible, which I believed held the answers. Up to that point, I’d have said that it was important to read my Bible every day, but I rarely did it. In my crisis though, I set out to seek answers. I read through the Bible with these questions in mind – Why am I still struggling? Who or what am I?
For clarity, I’ll briefly share my answer, but that’s actually not the point of today’s blog. The answer, which took months of reading to understand, was this – When I come to Christ, I am eternally forgiven, gaining a new spiritual life, but while living on this Earth, I retain a flawed flesh along with its unhealthy appetites. Daily, God delivers me from myself as I daily follow him. Daily, the choice to live the new life is mine. In following me, I make a mess and living by faith means daily abandoning me to follow God.
As I said though, that’s not the point of today’s blog. The point of today’s blog is that to find the answers to my greatest life questions, I had to read my Bible. Up to that point, the word of God was not the loudest or most influential voice in my head. If I wanted a new life, I had to change that.
Daily, we’ve all got a thousand voices speaking into our heads. If we want the lives for which God created us, we must daily listen to his voice. As quaint as it sounds, this means that as Christians, we must read our Bible – every day.