God doesn't care about you reading the Bible.

After this last semester at school I will have finished with roughly 1,600 hours of study time in God's word, having invested into almost every book in the Bible while memorizing my favorite verses along the way. Yet the question that keeps coming back to me is... so what? Increasingly I am becoming aware of the fact that spending time in God's word is not about spending time in God's word. What I do NOT mean by the title is that we shouldn't be spending time in God's Word. For the Bible it is THE primary means of growth along with prayer and fellowship which God has established. Yet it is just that: a means. I have heard of unbelievers who have memorized enormous sections of scripture, and could perhaps give a more detailed description of Christian doctrine than many Christians themselves.

Doctrinally, I can tell you that no matter how bad I screw up in this life God will still love me, but the point is not that I know this truth, but how this affects my own relationship with God and others. I could tell you that I am saved by grace through faith, but the point is how it impacts the way I treat others on a daily basis, and how it crushes my own pride in approaching God. I could tell you that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life, but the point is that the next time I meet a person beaten and broken from this world, I can point them to that very source of life: Jesus Christ. The point is not that I will have spent 1600's hours in the Bible, but that it will carry over into my relationship with God, others, and affect the decisions I make for the rest of my life.

Some of the most doctrinal talks I have ever had were completely and only for myself.

My point is not that talking about doctrine is unimportant, because doctrine is essential for living out every aspect of the Christian life. But more and more I realize my Christian life is not about cracking my Bible open for 10 minutes once a day, but it is about how that ten minutes in God's word affects the rest of my day. The question is not if you have been reading, but if while you were reading, you believe what you read, and reckoned it true in your life as well. God doesn't care about you opening your Bible every morning, what He cares about is relationship, what He cares about is me being conformed into the image of His son. Me reading the Bible must never become in and of itself the means to the end. What the Bible is, however, is the very base means by which my mind may being to change and conform into the image of Christ, and the tool by which I might come to know the all-knowing Creator God of the universe.

The Bible is not for our information, but our transformation.
-D.L. Moody

I went to youth group last Wednesday. So what? I went to church this Sunday. So what? How will those two hours in confrontation with God's word affect the rest of my life.

God cares about us knowing Him, which is only done through His Word, yet so many times for me, simply reading words on a page became the means to the end instead of engaging with the living God.

hm. I hope this wasn't heretical...