I was speaking to a colleague this morning about how one comes to a know the Bible as more than just words on a page.  There is a difference between reading out of commitment and reading because the words seem to take on the breath of life.

When I was young, my mother gave me a God's Word for Students Bible which broke the entire Bible up into 365 readings.  I knew in my heart that the Bible was an important book, but having only a King James from my Grandma, it wasn't accessible for a Gen X growing up in the 90s.

But the God's Word version was better.  It had daily readings, that quite frankly somedays were too long.  But I forced myself to read it, day after day, if only to say that 'I did it, I read the whole thing'.  That was the motivating factor, reading the entire thing.

While I know God was working in me and teaching me about the habit of Bible reading, the words were more or less just words.  I learnt stuff, and I am sure there were times when God did speak to me through it.  But it's my motivation that I'm talking about.  It was simply to get to the end.

But now it's changed.  My motivation is very different.  Getting to the end doesn't matter anymore.  What does matter is encountering God.  What matters is change within. And that's my motivation.

So how did I get to that point, and what was the point of the daily reading when I was young?  I have no doubt in my mind that the daily reading time was the seed that he used later when the time came to test me.  By putting me under pressure, he wanted me to seek him through his word.  And I did.  I looked for him there and found him.  Then, all of a sudden, the words became life to cling to.  It was like peeling the skin off the banana and finding the good stuff.  That got me through difficult times and I learnt more about God, myself and his plans for me than ever before.

The older I get the more I know through experience that God's ways are mysterious.  He chooses times and places to make himself known, to take us to the next level.  Everything comes in steps.  For me, love for the Bible came from a daily commitment to read it through, then ultimately through God testing me and pointing me to his words.  Now they're much more than ink on a page.