Tag Archives: health

why christians aren’t reading the bible

{Disclaimer:  Everything I’ve written below pertains to those who claim to follow Christ.}

After taking a poll, and from my own experience, the top 3 reasons Christians give for not reading the Bible are:

  • I don’t understand what I’m reading.
  • I don’t have time.
  • It’s not relevant to our culture today.

They seem like reasonable excuses reasons, and if they weren’t life-threatening, I would let it go. But they are. They are life-threatening little lies that have been sown by the enemy of your soul. And you are the Church, so I love you and scripture is food that you need to stay alive. I can’t just ignore the fact that you are starving yourself to death, so I really want to try to convince you to eat.

– I don’t understand the Bible. It’s confusing to me. 

To be honest, I would be concerned if the Bible were an easy read. It is a complex book, with layers of meaning on every page, authored by a mysterious and complex God.  So we will read for all of our days and never fully get it. But as mysterious as He is, He does not hide from us in His Word. For the first 4 years after I came to Jesus, I had zero knowledge of God, and a Bible I didn’t understand.  But I wanted to know God. I needed to know His heart for me, and I believed I would find it in that book. So I read and read and read until little by little, understanding started to form. I also asked God to help me comprehend what I was reading, and He did, a little at a time. Twenty-nine year later, I’m still reading, still asking. But I understand a whole lot more than I did twenty-nine years ago.

There is no question that God wants us to know Him, and to know and comprehend His Word. I think the question begging for an answer is this:

How important is it to you that you know and understand the Word of God?

– I don’t have time.

It feels that way for all of us, but those feelings are not true. We can get up earlier, watch less television, put down our phones, get off of our computers, spend less time wasting time, and we’d have a lot of time on our hands. The issue is priorities, not time.  If you felt your body starving, food would be a priority, no matter what you had to give up in order to eat. But you don’t feel your spirit starving. You think the weekly sermon, maybe a podcast during the week or that five-minute devotional you have with your coffee is sufficient. That’s like trying to keep your body alive by eating nothing but biscuits. You’ll get no argument from me that biscuits are a mighty fine piece of food, but you cannot live on them.

Discipline is part of the priorities issue. I have the same problem, only with actual food. It’s easier to grab a quick bite of processed food than to take the effort and time to make a healthy meal (that makes us me lazy, not pressed for time). For years and years, we don’t see what our undisciplined lifestyle is doing to us, and then one day we find ourselves in a battle in which we are on the losing end. So I’ll ask you what I’ve had to ask myself:

How important is it to you to be healthy? 

– It’s not relevant to my life today. 

Yes. The names and the places are foreign to us, as are the cultures in which the word was written. I’ll give you all of that. But honestly, the Bible is so much more than names and places and cultural settings. It’s about people who cannot seem to grasp how deeply they are loved by God, so they wander around looking for love in all the wrong places. It’s about people who struggle to trust a God they can’t see, in spite of everything He’s done for them. It’s the story of fearful, weary, prideful, broken, unfaithful, strong-willed, weak-willed, sinful people trying to figure things out.  It’s about people who want to do good but keep returning to the mud hole again and again.  It’s about love and hate and hurt and truth and lies and fear and bravery. It’s about slavery and freedom, and how we can go from one to the other. It’s about hope. And it’s about the God who is the author of that hope, the giver of life, the healer of the broken, the giver of mercy, and the Savior of all who will believe Him, including you.

How can that not be relevant to you?

In many places, the Church is starving herself, or at best, subsisting on the sugary coated sermons of eager to please pastors and/or feel good devotionals. There are far too many of the people of God who do not know the word of God, which means they are ill-equipped to battle the lies that are ruling in the earth. I’ve encountered so many believers who live in fear, anxiety, and insecurity, and those same believers do not know, or have a very limited knowledge of, scripture. Coincidence, or principle?

But it’s more than just knowing what the bible says. I am convinced, more than ever before, that if we are to be people who know God, trust God, love God, and who are equipped to stand firm in the coming days, we must be a people who have the Word of God in us, and who believe that it’s true!

In my next post, I’m going to talk about what the Word of God has to say about the Word of God, and why it is imperative that we make it a priority in our lives as followers of Christ. Stay tuned!

 

i need Jesus (my prayer for deeper)

“I need 2018 to be different.” That’s what I said to God in the last hours of 2017. I said it to Him because I know it’s pointless to say it to myself. With age comes experience and I have experienced enough broken promises to myself, so I’ve stopped making them. Promises. Resolutions. Whatever. They are paper-thin and fragile as a young girl’s heart. But. Prayer is a dog with different hair. (Is that how that goes? Doesn’t seem right, but I’ll leave it there for the time being.) Prayer is much stronger than promises and resolutions and determination to change.

Prayer only depends on me to speak and believe. It depends on God to be fulfilled, and God is the most trustworthy Being I know.

When I told Him I wanted 2018 to be different, the word “deeper” echoed in my heart. Different isn’t always something new, sometimes it’s just, well, deeper.

So, here are the top 3 deeper things I am praying for God to do in me in 2018:

  • A deeper commitment to my health. I no longer have the luxury of youth or pretending that eating whatever I want isn’t going to hurt me. It already has. The processed food/junk food/fast food/sugary food way of life I lived for so long has caught up to me and now I find myself having to race the clock to try to reverse stupidity. It’s harder than it sounds. But, I need something other than “I can’t eat this or that” to keep me going. I need to apologize to my body for the way I treated it all these years. This has to be about honoring the only body God has given me, not getting into a certain dress size. I will need endurance, patience, and commitment. I’ll need Jesus.
  • Deeper relationships. Deeper, not wider. To know and be known. To go beyond the shallows with people. I don’t want more friends, I just want to go deeper with the ones I have.  As a high introvert, it will be both challenging and refreshing. Challenging, because my preference is to be alone. Refreshing, because surface only relationships with shallow chit-chat are far too draining for me. But because I am who I am, I know it will require that I do some things I’d rather avoid (besides leaving my house, because I could remain indoors, like, forever). I will need to be vulnerable. Honest with how I’m feeling. And I’ll need to be willing to ask and be asked hard questions. If I want deeper relationships, then I will need to be willing to let someone else go deeper into my life. I’ll need humility and openness. I’ll need Jesus.
  • A deeper fasting and prayer life. I know the power of prayer and fasting. I don’t know why it has power, or exactly how it has power, I just know that it does. Mountains have moved in my life, I believe, as a result of prayer and fasting. But then, you know, stuff happens. Like the ever-increasing grip of a food addiction. And complacency. And possibly the lack of desperation. So I need the desperation that comes from needing Jesus, if that makes sense. I need the hunger and thirst that sends me into deeper places in search of His heart and His power to move another mountain.

I want to know God more. I want to know His presence and His power in greater measure than before. I want my heart to expand to hold more of His love, His compassion, and His mercy. I want to love and serve His people with deeper consistency. I want to return to my first Love and let lesser loves fall away this year.

So I can’t make resolutions or promises. Nothing as wispy and fragile as all that.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:11

My resolution is a prayer because I need Jesus. And He promised I would find Him.

looking back then looking ahead

I don’t know how to start. Or maybe it’s that I don’t know how to end. I’m not good at simply waving bye to a whole year of my life and starting a new year just like that. I need closure. Perhaps a few tears. Reminiscing must happen or I won’t be able to close the door.

2017…

You were a good year, especially near the end. Things happened that I’m excited about and that left me overwhelmed with gratitude. But, you know. There are the other things, the stuff that didn’t happen that should have happened. We might as well talk about those first.

I started out well. Good intentions and all. But about mid-year, my commitment to daily exercise started to wane. By the end of the year (which is tomorrow), my commitment had totally skipped town. And while I have made progress on eating better, there is still a whole lotta room for improvement there.  So, 2017, you were not the year of weight loss and health that I had hoped you would be. But I’ll own that one. That was all me.

I didn’t read as many books as I planned. Didn’t fast and pray as often as I thought I would. Didn’t finish the book. I also did not learn to love cooking or get my house completely organized or the grandkids’ room decorated in a fun style. In fact, I really didn’t do most of what I had hoped I would do this year. Based on previous years, I can at least say that I’m consistent. So there’s that.

So what did happen?

I had two cancer checkups that came up clean. That’s kind of noteworthy, praiseworthy huh?

I took a vacation with my husband to the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t tell you the last time we actually went somewhere that was worthy of the title of “vacation”, but I’m pretty sure my kids were in Jr. High at the time. They are now fully grown, married, with kids. So this vacation thing we did this year was a pretty.big.deal. And it was glorious.

I made new friends this year and deepened a few other friendships. I became a Lifegroup leader for a small group of women, which means I get to prepare studies, talk about the Word of God, pray with them, love them and have fun with them. So as far as relationships go, 2017, you were very generous to me. Thank you for that.

I made a deal with my husband, based on my total disdain for cooking. He does the cooking, I do all the cleaning. I didn’t know if he’d go for it but, much to my surprise and delight, he did! You would have to understand just how much I did not enjoy cooking to know just how good this deal is for me. Actually, it’s not the cooking itself that I hated, it was the responsibility of cooking. It was knowing that someone else depended on me to come up with a meal once I got home from work. It was trying to figure out how to not cook pork chops or tacos because they are quick and I know how to make them. It was all too much for me.  I know. It’s silly and I’m dramatic, but it is what it is. I couldn’t handle it. So I struck a deal. It’s not like I sold my soul.  And so far, it’s working out pretty good. He cooks good, healthy meals for me, and all I have to do is clean up! And make sure the rest of the house stays fairly clean. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

I did make progress on the book. Got a cover for it (thank you, Jonathan Wenzel). Sent the first couple of chapters to a professional editor and got some feedback. Not the “it’s perfect, you’re an awesome writer, I wouldn’t change a thing” feedback I had hoped for, but still. What I did get was a reality check and a lot of editing to do. Hopefully, 2018 will be the finishing year for this thing.

The highlight came near the end when we welcomed our first grandson into the family. Shepard William Wasion was born November 3rd, and I was, and still am, a bit giddy about that. And, our whole family came together for Christmas at Shepard’s house in Salt Lake City! There was snow and it was cold, but my heart stayed warm the whole time! My two granddaughters (cousins) formed a frienemy relationship that kept us laughing. Mostly.

So, 2017, your ending more than made up for the things undone this year. And I am choosing to not see the year as a failure, but as a learning process. It takes time to learn to take care of yourself after years of neglect. It takes time to find your footing in a new way of walking (literally) out life.

I am choosing to live as a loved daughter who does not have a disappointed Father, but one who is encouraging me more and more to do this with Him. Choosing not to turn my health or any of my other endeavors into a performance.

2018…

The word for this coming year for me is Deeper.

Deeper in commitment to my health. Deeper in relationships. Deeper in prayer. Deeper into the Word of God. I want to go deep, but more than that, I want God to go deep. I want Him in my bones, in the marrow, in the deep places of my heart. I want Him in places that I have held back for other things. I want a deep invasion of the Spirit of God in my life this year.

What about you? What do you want for this year? What are you hoping for, committing to, believing for?

uncovering our unbelief

“So He was not able to do any miracles there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He was amazed at their unbelief.” – Mark 6:5

And I marvel at the power of unbelief, to be able to hinder the miracles of God. To my knowledge, scripture mentions nothing else that causes God to be “not able”.Continue reading “uncovering our unbelief”