Developing the habit of consistency is one of the most powerful tools one can put in one’s mental arsenal of being successful in any endeavor. Consistent Bible reading is essential in getting to know your Lord and Savior. Let’s look at a few things to help you get started.
The thrill of salvation can be likened to seedlings. In fact Jesus used that very illustration in describing Christian growth in faith. Stop reading here for a moment and grab your King James Bible to read Matthew Chapter 13, the parable of the sower.
To sustain the thrill of salvation requires that the soul be nourished…regularly nourished! Your new thrill is like a seedling in that your soul needs the refreshment of learning about Jesus, your savior. If you don’t read about him in the books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, your thrill will soon wither and die. But how can you sustain and grow in your faith? Surely just reading is not enough. Q: What’s missing? A: Prayer!
You’ve probably heard that Jesus desires a relationship with you. That relationship is established the moment you became saved. And like a seedling, that relationship will grow with the proper nourishment: Prayerful reading of the Bible. Prayer for knowledge and discernment first, careful reading and studying what the Lord has written for you second, and prayerful thanks after the reading.
For a new believer, prayer may feel like talking to a wall. It makes no sense without humbling one’s spirit before a God who cannot be seen. New believers should remember the thrill of salvation in their prayer by fully trusting that God is listening and that he is ever present in all their thoughts and activities. It may be that God will become evident in your life right away. But for some God feeds his new believer for quite some time before he/she sees incontrovertible evidence that God is working in one’s life.
Whether a new seedling or a new believer, growth/faith takes time and effort to develop into a viable and productive life. For the new believer, one may need an attitude check. One’s attitude always effects one’s choices in developing a habit. One of my favorite pieces of advice came from Pastor Chuck Swindoll and is quoted below.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.
It is more important than money; than circumstances; than failures…
than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.
It will make or break a company…a church…a home.
The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.
We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have,
and that is our attitude…
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me,
and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…
We are in charge of our Attitudes”
So the first choice we have each morning is our attitude. May I suggest your first thoughts in making that choice be thoughts of communing with God in prayer and then reading his Holy Word as soon as possible each morning? The choice is yours: To establish a new habit, a new relationship with Jesus or wither in your old habits, not considering or even caring what God will do in your new life.
In my own life, God has worked wonders. When my wife passed away December 26, 2014, a memorial service was planned for early February 2015. While preparing for the memorial, I was doing much prayerful soul searching, considering how I would move on without her. During a meeting with the pastor where the memorial would be held, the Lord suddenly gave me an epiphany of how my life was being guided by him in each one of the choices we had made before and during our marriage. That epiphany was as powerful as when I was first saved and the relief it provided in her passing was very much beyond my understanding. But I believe that the Lord provided that relief because of my consistent prayerful study of his Word.
Let me know if this little blog has been helpful to you. I would love to add you to my prayer list as I listen to or read my Bible each morning.
