The Shortest Article

Today’s article is very short; it’s only about one small paragraph. It’s a reminder that your strength comes from God and having a relationship with Him. Always draw close to Him in whatever you do and depend on Him. Well, that’s it for today, until next time!

um…

Wow, you’re still here?

There’s nothing down here.

Honestly, why are you still here???

Incredible, you’re still going strong, scrolling down the page.

Congratulations, you have arrived.

I can’t believe you are still here. No, this is not the shortest article, and no, it is not only one paragraph long. Funny how you’re still reading this article (and this exact sentence!).

You’re probably asking where I’m getting at. But the whole point of this is that you are still reading this because you are curious, and you want to know more about it, not because it is entertaining (well, maybe) but because it just simply caught your attention.

But think about this: Do you have this same sort of curiosity when you read the Bible?

If the title of this article was ‘reading the Bible’, would you have kept going? What if the first sentence of this article was ‘reading the Bible is important’? Would you still be here reading this article? Most likely not, I would probably have lost you in the first sentence or even the first word. Are you losing your attention right now? Why is that? It is a big mystery, isn’t it? It’s just like how we lose focus when reading the Bible. 

I mean, the Bible is the most important book in the world’s history, yet we never feel like reading it. It talks about the purpose of life we search for everywhere our whole lives, yet we are still reluctant to read it. It is right in our hands, in front of us, even on our devices that are right in our grasp, yet we find reasons to avoid reading it. We throw the Bible around as if it’s worthless but out there somewhere in China, Pakistan, or North Korea, people are risking their lives to get ONE Bible verse in their hands. They are risking EVERY SINGLE THING they have in their life, for it’s worth more than anything they have. They consider the words of the Bible as something PRICELESS. But how much do WE value the Bible?

So, back to the question: Why is it so hard for us to read the Bible? Let’s talk about the basics.

Sin 

The first reason is sin. All humans have sinned (Romans 3:23), including you and me. This one seems like an obvious reason why it is so hard for us to read the Bible. But it goes a little deeper than just sin. It looks into one specific sin; pride.

As we have seen from last week’s article, pride is hard to spot — like in this case. So you might be questioning what pride has got anything to do with not wanting to read the Bible. But what if I tell you it is because we are prideful human beings, have too much self-confidence,  feel that reading the Bible is not important, and  think we don’t need God in our life at all?

Wow, shocking, right? Outside we might say and act like we need God, but inside it is the total opposite. When I first heard about this truth, I would not accept it. I said to myself, “of course, I need God in my everyday life.I can’t do anything by myself”. However, after some time of thinking, I realised that I was a prideful person that wouldn’t accept the truth, and even worse, I had excuses to cover up this truth. 

If we do really, truly think that we need God (and of course, we need God!), we wouldn’t skip devotions. We would be like a deer that yearns for water. We would yearn for God’s word. We would yearn to be in His presence, like the song ‘As a deer’ by Martin J. Nystrom taken from Psalm 42.

“As the deer panteth for the water

So my soul longeth after Thee

You are all that my heart desire

And I long to worship You

You alone my strength my shield 

To you alone that my spirit yield

You alone that my heart desire

And I long to worship You”

We need to depend on Him like in this song. We already know that we are limited human beings that cannot achieve anything in our own strength. Whether we have experienced it or not, we know that one day we will break down and burn out. Who then will we turn to? Who do we find strength in? I know changing your habits of not reading the Bible is hard and I’m also experiencing it too. But we need to walk the path of humility just as the article last week describes it “we must fight against our sins, against our pride that (if left undealt with) will lead us to a sickly death… Treasure Him and keep His word deep in your heart.” 

In order to do all this, we must pray and ask God for help. It is not an easy task and there are no ‘shortcuts’ to it. Of course, it will take time and there will be ups and downs but this is a very important matter in your life. It doesn’t only affect you now, but it will be there forever in your life and even after life. We need to grow in a relationship with Him in order to depend on Him and for Him to guide us.

‘There is no time’

I’m sure that many of you guys use this excuse to not read the Bible. ‘Oh there’s no time at all, I go to school in the morning and then blah blah blah…”. One thing we all need to realise is that it’s not that we do not have time but we do not MAKE the time for it. I mean, look at your screen time on your phone.

This is the average media use by tweens (a child who’s between the stages of childhood and adolescence) and teens in 2019. We spend more than a quarter of our day looking at our phones and we say that we don’t have time to read the Bible? 

If you are really busy from morning till night then wake up earlier, train your body to wake up earlier. If this is a really important matter to you and you know how big it will affect your life, you would be willing to wake up earlier, work twice as hard because you know that we do not have the strength to go through the day without God, so reading the Bible in the morning is essential to give us strength throughout the day. 

Reading the Bible everyday, consistently, and having that yearning in our hearts to read it is not easy. Truthfully, this article is me talking to myself. Even from very young we know that reading the Bible and depending on God is very important. But sometimes, it is hard and sometimes laziness settles in our hearts. There are many more reasons  why reading the Bible isn’t our most favourite thing, but these are the points that hits me the most and hopefully you guys can realise that when we are in our daily normal life, we do not have the strength to carry on without God’s help. So pray, and keep His word deep in your hearts. Ask for His help in your daily life and grow a relationship with Him in hard or good times. Take one step at the time, and that first step is to get to know Him; Read the Bible.