Turning 40: Notes to My Younger Self. #6 Having a Relationship with Scripture is not Having a Relationship with God

#6. Having a Relationship with Scripture is not Having a Relationship with God

For a long time I believed that to have a good relationship with God, you had to have a good relationship with the Bible, with scripture.

I have long prided myself on being a daily Bible reader, having read my Bible every day since some time in 1992.

Truthfully, I have been legalistic and dogmatic about this behavior.

But, I know my stuff.  I know the scriptures.

There is nothing wrong with this in itself, it is very good to read the Bible. But it was about the reading and the learning and somewhere in there I did not commune with God.

So, as my Bible knowledge grew and grew, my relationship with God did not.

I did not understand God.

I did not understand what it meant to have a relationship with an omnipotent being.  

So, I read my Bible.

I did not stop reading.

But around the time I began to understand the difference between discipline and legalism, I began to feel different about my reading. In time it transitioned from a legalistic behavior to a discipline. I began to  meditate. I began to carry the words in my heart.

But what I truly learned was that having a relationship with God wasn’t about reading at all. It was about communing with an omnipotent being: through trust, through faith, through grace, through obedience, through discipline, through discipleship, through self-compassion, through love, through feeling in the heart and not just thinking in the head, through surrender.

I tend to intellectualize, so reading my Bible was easy. It can be hard for me to be emotive and feel. But learning to have a relationship with God was so profoundly impactful. It has made me a better, more loving, less judgmental, more tolerant, more understanding, more grace-filled person.

Knowing the person you were and knowing the person you have become is a beautiful thing to reflect on.