Open Your Bible

Have you ever felt stuck? Have you ever felt helpless? Or hopeless? Have you ever felt like you've fallen into a deep pit and cannot begin to climb your way out? Stuck in your marriage. Stuck in your singleness. Stuck in your infertility? Stuck with your poor health, your finances, your prayers, your parenting, your addictions. Stuck feeling helpless and hopeless in your fill in the blank. Have you ever felt far from God?

Open your Bible.

Maybe you don’t know where to begin or what to read. Maybe it is not important to you and you don’t feel like it is true. Maybe you feel unequipped and ill prepared for what you may find. Maybe you are like me and have tried everything in your own power to play the role of God yourself in your own life by trying to control, fix, and work your way through life's adversities. If you have, like I have, we know that just leaves us empty, broken, and weary.

This Summer, I am so thankful to be walking through the bible study called, Open Your Bible by Raechel Myers and Amanda Williams from She Reads Truth.

In times of suffering and difficulty in life, it can sometimes feel like maybe God has drifted from us. Maybe he’s moved and our prayers keep getting stamped “return to sender”. We may feel unheard, unloved or simply uninterested in God. Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the Lord, I do not change. God is unmmutable, unchangeable.” So if we don’t hear from God, has he stopped communicating with us or have we stopped being able to hear his voice? When we don’t open our Bibles, it does not change who God is or where he has gone.  Hebrews 13:5 says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

The trouble when we are no longer seeking Him in His word, is that we forget His truth. We begin to believe lies about our situation and ourselves. We forget that He is unchanging, unmoved, unshaken. That He is righteous, abounding in love and ready to forgive. That is is enthroned in the highest heavens and that His ways are higher. We forget that He is loving, accessible, unsurprised and all knowing. We forget that He is the giver of every perfect gift. He is the light. He is love and that "neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)

So even when we fail to seek Him. Even when we fail to open our Bible. He is unmoved. His love never fails, it never gives up and it never runs out on me. When I cease to seek Him, I move, He doesn't. His love never changes for me.

A few years ago, I joined a Crossfit gym and quickly gained strength I did not know I had. After several months of showing up at the gym and pushing myself, I finally was able to do the monkey bars. In the midst of working my way across the bars, a quote came to mind that is so applicable to my life, "You can't reach what is in front of you until you let go of what's behind you."

Just  as I had to let go of the bar I was holding onto to reach the next bar to move myself forward, we must let go of our former ways in order to move into the life God offers for us. "But God demonstrated his own love for us in this; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 Release the shame and guilt you are holding and reach out your hands to take hold of the one who makes all things new. By His wounds we are healed. 

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone, my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken." -Psalm 62:12

                                            

                                              Keep Going.       

                                 

            

The next time you feel stuck,  let go and reach out. Seek Him. Find Him. Open your Bible. What you are able to see in yourself, in your situation, in your future is not what He sees. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways." This is the Lord's declaration. "For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Next time you fall into the pit, remember this story from John Maxwell:

A man fell into a pit and couldn't get himself out. A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for you down there." An objective person came along and said, "Well, it's logical that someone would fall down there." A Christian Scientist came along and said, "You only think that you're in that pit." A Pharisee said, "Only bad people fall into pits." A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit. A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on his pit.... A realist came along and said, "Now, that's a pit!"  A geologist told him to appreciate the rock strata in the pit. An IRS man asked if he was paying taxes on his pit.  The county inspector asked if he had a permit to dig the pit.  An evasive person came along and avoided the subject altogether. A self-pitying person said, "You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit."  An optimist said, "Things could be worse." A pessimist said, "Things will get worse." 

Jesus, seeing the man, reached down and took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit.