The Story

Have you ever just tried to read your bible chapter by chapter? I have and it is so hard to fully understand it. Plus it gets really overwhelming. I have been doing a bible study called Seamless, and it has changed the way I understand the bible. She presents it as a story and once you go through week by week you gain so much more understanding and are able to read the bible so differently. I was able to start putting people together that I haven’t been able to do before. It was amazing to sit here and realize that I have such a overall greater understanding than I did before I started.  Click the picture below for more of this bible study.

 I recently read in one of my books, and I cannot remember which one, but it said to stop reading your bible. If you are just reading it to read it, you aren’t fully understanding it. I realized just sitting here constantly reading the bible but not really grasping or understanding it makes it almost impossible to truly understand what He is actually trying to tell us. For me the first time I really began to fully grasp what I am reading did not come until my late 20s or about the time I turned 30. I feel like being able to understand the bible the way He intended takes a lot of trial and error. There have been times I have been in the midst of a bible study and I realize that I am not really reading it as I should so I take a break and read devotionals for a little while and come back ready to REALLY read it. The important part is that you don’t ever fully disconnect with God’s word because you need it every single day! You need to look at His words and pray for those words to guide you through your day. Pray for God to open your eyes and soul to what He is trying to tell you and to stop letting YOUR wants, YOUR needs,YOUR desires get in the way of what He is trying to tell you.

Another really good bible study that I just fell in love with is Finding I Am by Lysa TerKeurst. One of my favorite quotes from this study and it comes at the very beginning;

“Our souls were made for the perfection of the garden;

therefore, they can’t ever be satisfied by the imperfect grit and grind of this sin-soaked world.“

This study makes you reach in your heart and your insecurities and present them to God. This study goes over the I Am statements in the Gospel of John. It helps you realize how much you need His word in your life to have this satisfaction that you have never had. It teaches you how to apply these scriptures and how they fit into your everyday life. No matter how hard you try nothing on this earth can fulfill your heart and soul on this earth like He can. It is so easy to get distracted in this world; there is always something going on and something more you feel you should be doing. If you let this run your life, you push God out. It is so hard to make that intentional time with God. But what if instead of spending that 30 minutes you were on Instagram playing that comparison game with your life, you spent with God? I can promise you, you would leave those 3o minutes feeling loved and your heart full knowing you are blessed with more than you ever knew. It is hard to just sit in the quiet and be still. I still struggle with it at times. I am constantly on the struggle bus of needing to rush through things with my day. Giving God 30 minutes of our day when He gave His life isn’t a lot to ask.

If we are always striving for ourselves and focused only on what we want, we are missing the bigger picture. God wants more for us than that. If you continue on the hamster wheel of proving yourself just for you or others, or keep focusing only on what you want or need. you will end up being run down and exhausted and not feeling fulfilled because it is only about you. God wants to use you to help this world and to use your talents to bring the glory to Him not yourself. These are just two bible studies of many that have helped me in my journey of getting to know God more intimately and being more connected to him in a way that I never have before. I hope these help you and ignite that fire inside of that has just been waiting for you to connect to Him to make it burn! 

XOXO