This is me…..every morning, feet up on my stool in my art studio…..reading. (I first must remove Tomboy Cat from the stool.) I’ve just completed reading the entire Old Testament and am beginning the New Testament….reading from the “One Year Chronological Bible” in the New Living Translation. Of course, I began on January 1 of this year and it has been quite an adventure….fully nine months reading each and every word.

This is my seventh time to read completely through the Bible, two of which were in chronological order. This is my first time to read from the NLT and it has been a unique blessing.

Many have heard the story I tell about why I began reading through the Bible. I’ve been an avid reader of biographies, historical novels, cozies, auto-biographies, history books, and on and on for years, averaging a book per week. One day I felt a strong sense of guilt that with all this experience and time spent, I had never read straight through God’s Holy Bible. Oh my! I immediately began to change that.

I continued to be inspired by such great Christians as George Mueller who, it is reported, read through the Bible over 200 times. Much the same can be said for  Hudson Taylor, Arthur Pink and I’m sure many others.

I’ve taught the Gospel of John verse by verse a few times to my classes, and have many “favorite” verses, but the one I think of frequently is

“If you remain in Me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you.”

John 15:7

Our Lord Jesus Christ is saying here that it is primary to abide in Him, but we must also see to it that His Words “remain in us.” They remain in us, only if we know them; we know them only if we have read them. Our faith comes from the Word of God and nowhere else.

‘Til He Shouts!