When I was in second grade, the cool thing to do was read…ok probably not, but nevertheless my school had a competition to see who could read the most books during the year, and I wanted to win.  Now thankfully at a 2nd grade level, any book over 15 pages I think counted as 1 book, and any book over 100 pages counted as 2 books.  I ended up reading 594 books throughout the school year.  At the end of the year when I awaited my prize for this year-long competition, I was awarded…. a book.  Needless to say I wasn’t very enthusiastic about reading for a long time after that.

Some of us don’t like to read.  This carries over to our time reading God’s Word – the Bible.  I’m not going to sit here at try to tell you every day I wake up I’m itching to get into God’s Word – although I do think that grows with time.  What I want you to think about the Word as is like working out.  If you eat right, but you never go to the gym, you can have all sorts of great ideas about how to get into shape, and may see some small amount of change, but not much.  Likewise, as a Christian, if you love God and want to be molded into His image, He may use things like wise Christian counsel, etc to help some, but not much will happen in your life.  My encouragement to myself and to you is to treasure the Word of God, to value and pursue truth from it as the means by which God reveals Himself to us, and will transform us into His image.  This is another one of those where I could throw down about 50 verses, but Psalm 1 is very applicable:

¹Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
²but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
³He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. ⁴The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.  ⁵Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
⁶for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Grace and Peace,
Adam