It’s a Workbook, Not a Novel

May 20, 2018

For many years, I looked at the Bible as a historical novel. Read it to get the general idea about Christianity. Who reads a novel more than once? Power through it and check it off the list so you can say, “Yeah, I read it.”

So when a friend invited me to a bible study, I approached it like a book club. But as we met week by week, my perception of the Bible changed. I started looking at it as a kind of self-help book. Reading the stories helped me build perspective on my own problems and had the potential to help me avoid making the same silly mistakes the bible people made. That didn’t happen; I still made them, but it did have the potential…

The day my ex-husband moved out of the family home, this same friend gave me a daily devotion book. I started using it, mostly to help me calm my fears about the future as a single parent. It became a lifeline for me in those early weeks. That is when I started realizing that the Bible was full of truths that were applicable to my current life. The more I looked into the Word, the more I learned about God and His GOOD plan for my life. I clung to Romans 8:28 (KJV): 

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.

When I moved into an apartment a few days after the divorce was final, I wrote out Romans 8:28 on an index card and taped it to the back of my front door, so I would see it every morning on the way to take the kids to school. It told me that God could make something good out of the mess I had made of my marriage. It gave me hope. 

There were many revelations that came from my concentrated efforts to read the Bible every day. I joined a church that was very bible-centric and learned so much more about the applicability of the Bible to my life today. In those years, the Bible stopped being a self-help book. It became a workbook. I wanted to learn, to study, and to let the things in the Bible influence my life. I began to see it as a letter from God to me and to anyone who would look deeply and allow it to benefit their life.

Reading the Bible is not easy. It will convict you of things you are doing that are not right. But the purpose of conviction is not to condemn, but to bring you out of darkness and to show you how to walk on a well-lit path that is meant to do you good all the days of your life. It took 10 years of tiny shifts to change my perception of the Bible from that of a historical novel to be read once, to a workbook to be studied. The Bible has the ability to change your life if you release its capability. Do it!