I am going to share a personal story and hope I can do this in a way that makes sense to the reader. From the first days of learning to read, I love it, and I loved reading in the Bible. I had been given a old hard backed copy of the Bible with larger print that I kept with me at the Blind School. I would often sit at my desk in my room, missing home, missing my brothers, missing home cooking, just missing so much of family. So I would pull out that old black book and go to reading. I didn’t understand all the words, and would write the ones down that I didn’t know what they meant and look them up in the big dictionary in our classroom the next day. I would write the meanings down then copy them in the back pages of the Bible that night. As far back as I can remember I wanted to read all of the Bible, you know start at Genesis and work to the end. I often tried to do that but always ended up skipping here and there on stories and passages of interest. Feeling often very lonely and as if an out cast I would read about Joseph and he was tossed in a pit by his brothers. I would read about Jesus going to the garden and praying and crying for us. I would read about Elijah and how he wanted to die and many others. By the time I graduated from high school I still had not read it from cover to cover in the way I really wanted too and I found that very frustrating. I just could not get with it, the law parts would lose me, and the he bigots were boring. For graduation when other parents were buying their kids cars and fancy stuff, my Dad gave me the best gift I have ever been given. We went to the General Baptist Book store in Poplar Bluff, and he told me I could have any Bible I wanted. I picked out a Thompson Chain Reference KJV in soft black leather and fine Indian paper, which was not cheap even in 1973. When I went away to college it was with me of course and my love for reading and studying Gods Word was as strong as ever. One night while laying in my bed feeling that same old loneliness and despair I had so often lived with in my youth, I got up and sitting in a chair with the lamp on, just felt the time was right. I started reading Gen.1:1. Soon I was up and digging out my colored pencils and fine point pen and as I read my mind would flip, and a verse some where else would link with what I was reading. I would go to the references to find the verse, make note of it both place as connecting and it would lead me to something else till a string of connections took place. When the sun was coming up in the morning and my eyes were so tried and hurting. I put it down went to class; came home took a nap and then dug right in again. This became my pattern in life for the next thirty years. I have gone through four Thompson Chain KJV each taking years and years to complete and have one now I am working on. The other night as I was trying to go to sleep I was thinking on this and what changed and why. As the verses took on connections and the bloodlines opened up to show me the history and futures of the Bible an excitement filled me. I realized that though I always loved the Lord, something had changed that night first night. I fell in love with his Word and Him. For he is the Word on paper, he is represented, we learn who he is and what he is and how he can effect our life. I have often frustrated my family with my study as they would want me to watch a TV show, or go some place and I would be engrossed in the pages, always my box of colors and pens beside me, marking verses with my own system, making notes are drawing charts. But why and why then? For I found that in those pages were comfort, Jesus, was a man like me, he suffered in his natural spirit like me, he was not handsome like me, he felt alone often times, like me, he cared about people till he could not hold back the tears, like me. I found so much of me in him and him in me, and then I read I in you and you in me. I also understood that those who will fall in love with him and his word would find themselves as well in him. His strength, his affections, his compassion, his wisdom. I had a instructor tell me one time if I would get as excited about his class as I was that black book I carried from class to class and read and studied during lunch and often breaks I would be the best Mechanical Person known. But I wasn’t in love with mechanical stuff. I wasn’t and am not in love with making money, or building houses, or having hot cars, or hot chicks. I love people and I want to have enough of Jesus in me to overcome my flesh and my weakness’s to love them above myself enough that they see Jesus in me. I want to help them with the loneliness and the suffering. When they are on mountaintops I want to be there with them patting them on the back and saying well done. So yes I defend the Word with my life for it is my life. I demand Absolute Truth for that is the Gospel Jesus told us to preach and teach. I want people to like me, maybe even love me, but I don’t want it so bad that I will forsake my first and true love his Word are his Spirit. It is why when lies were told about me it hurt so much, not because of the World but because of the Church. Then I realized lies were told about my Lord and Master and he just kept preaching the Gospel [absolute truth]. He was hung on a cross and I was tossed out, thank you Jesus for being real in me and letting me share you in my own unworthy body. Thank you for the suffering and even failures for in each you have been there. Thank you for the victories and the mountaintops. Lord thank you for a Dad who gave me the best gift ever and knew someday I would fall in love with it, as he had. Oh I would that you would not just love the Word or the Lord but that you would somehow fall in Love with him. Love is the best and greatest of all things known unto man. Forgive me for such a long and boring write up, but to not put it down would not be me at all.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:19:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015