For Me!

“...they were intended for us too.” 

Romans 4:24

It did not use to be that I had this compulsion to read the Bible and try to understand it, to get the meat. When I was young I disagreed with a lot of it, and read Theosophy, Carlos Castañeda, and the likes of Krishnamurti instead. But after several altar calls, Life in the Spirit Seminars and baptisms in the Spirit, I put all the books in a box and buried it. 

I realized that the words in the Bible were from God and intended for me, not just for an ancient people, but for me, today. The whole of the passage from Romans reads: “Abraham never questioned or doubted God’s promise; rather ...he was fully persuaded that God could do whatever He promised. Thus his faith was credited to him as justice. The words ‘credited to him’, were not written with him alone in view; they were intended for us too. For our faith will be credited to us also if we believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, the Jesus who was handed over to death for our sins and raised up for our justification.” 

Sometimes it’s hard to understand the passages in the Bible, and that’s why people make up their own belief systems or find something easier to swallow. If I invented a religion, it might be a mishmash of the books I read when I was young. But why do I think anything from God should be easy to understand? His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and His ways much higher than mine (Isaiah 55:8-9). He is after all, God. But He also promised that if we seek, we will find. And that is what we need to do: seek. The more we seek, dig, scrounge around the Bible, the more we will find. The more we read, the more we will understand.