Double Your Time

In times of isolation, I think one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind is what am I supposed to do with all this time? Should I take a walk, clean the house, streaming subscriptions are up, there’s a lot of people watching Netflix right now. It seems like in times like these, even going to the mailbox seems like blessing, right? Finally, something to do!

I want to make a suggestion to you this morning. With all of the time that all of us now have on our hands, there’s something that each and every one of us can do, that I believe, without a doubt, will enable us to be better people of God once all of this is over.

I want to encourage you to double your time with this. I think that if you polled a hundred Christians and you asked them, what is the biggest hinderance to your time with the Bible, they would say what? TIME!

I just don’t have enough time to dig into Scripture like I want. I maybe have just enough time to read a devotional before I go off to work but that’s about it.

What this time of isolation has given us, among a lot of trouble, and difficulty, and hardship, is it has given us a lot of time…

So, with that time, I want to encourage you to double your time. If before, you only had enough room in your schedule to sit down and read this for 10 minutes, do it for twenty. If you only could do 30 min. do an hour!

Double your time.

I love this book, because it’s so much more than just words on a page. We had YA group last night over Zoom and we talked about the Bible. We talked about how this is a living text. That God, by the Holy Spirit, is able to make this word come alive to touch your heart and mine! We could both read the same exact scripture and yet get two very different things out of it. That’s how Scripture works, that’s how the Holy Spirit works.

I often wonder, what if there is something that God wants to tell me, or maybe there’s something that he wants to tell you, and he is just waiting for us to crack open our bibles and dig in!

Maybe there is something he is just waiting to reveal to you until you got into the Word! Double your time!

The Bible is more than a group of stories, but rather it is an opportunity to get to know more about God, more about yourself, more about life, more about hopelessness, sadness, despair. It’s a conversation piece that allows us to connect with God through His Word.

One of my favorite authors, Peter Enns, puts it like this: “The Bible just as it is isn’t a problem to be fixed. It’s an invitation. God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match”

There’s things in here that make us uncomfortable. There’s things in here that we don’t have answers for. But the Bible doesn’t want to be this great code that we must unlock to find it’s secrets, it’s not about the Bible, it’s about coming to God with our questions, our doubts, and our concerns, and having faith and trust that He will help us.

I think one of the biggest reasons people get turned off to the Bible is because it’s hard to read or they feel like there’s inconsistencies, or inaccuracies, there’s contradictions, and maybe there are. They just can’t read it. Or when they do read it they end up disappointed and board. But my fear, is that too often, we put our trust in the Bible rather than put our trust in God.

You cannot read this book without having a conversation with God, I believe that. You can’t read it without prayerful consideration, God what do you want to show me, what do you want me to see.

We sometimes treat the bible as this magical text that has all the answers, but it’s not the Bible, this is just a book, a divinely inspired book, but it’s just a book. You can know every word in here backwards and forwards and still not have all the answers. You can read it completely and come to the end with no more wisdom or certainty then you had when you started, why?

Because you are trusting in the Bible, your trusting in the text to give you everything you need, rather than coming to the Bible in prayer, coming into God’s presence and saying God, use this divinly inspired, holy text, to open my eyes, to speak to my heart, let us walk into your Word together!

It’s there that answers are found, it’s then that you can find wisdom and certainty.

I want to encourage you, during this time of isolation, double your time in the Bible. But don’t trust in the Bible in and of itself to change you and guide you and give you the answers you seek. Instead, allow God to dig into His word with you. Allow Him to open your eyes to what the Bible is saying, and how He is speaking through it to you. Allow God to form you through His Holy Word. It is there that true change and true Christ-likeness is found.