Forest or Trees

In an online devotional I read from The Message:

“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”

And then because I love to compare scripture I read from the Amplified Bible:

³⁹ You search and investigate and pore over the Scriptures diligently, because you suppose and trust that you have eternal life through them. And these [very Scriptures] testify about Me!

⁴⁰ And still you are not willing [but refuse] to come to Me, so that you might have life.

And I had a thought: are we missing the forest for the trees?  

Do we get so wrapped up in reading our Bibles…attending Bible studies…underlining verses…memorizing scriptures that we miss the forest for the trees?

Please do not misread me…reading the Word on a daily basis…attending and participating in a study of scripture, even memorizing scripture all are straight from my soapbox!  They are necessary bread for the journey but…do we tiptoe away from really believing and living what the words we have ingested tell us?  Are we the “Good Bible Study Girls” that Lysa Terkeurst wrote the book about?  The ones that go through the motions of a Christian life: Go to church. Pray. Be nice.

 

Do we resemble the picture Jennie Allen paints of herself in Anything: I was a good girl, from a good family and a good church and a good school, who made good grades and had a good friends and made good decisions and even had a good dog.  I was a good Christian.  I mean, I should have been – I had heard the stories, songs, and lessons 7,338 times.  It was what I knew.

I can relate…I was a good girl too, and sometimes even now I fall into easy ways out…

Sometimes we focus on the “bad” girls…you know the ones…the ones doing stuff that we would like to try to do or we even do, but don’t get caught like the “bad” girls do.  We go all out to save their souls and yes…we should go all out to save their souls…but who is going all out to save our souls?

I sometimes wear a dirty penny…a penny so filthy you have to really look and sometimes feel for the familiar profile to know it is a penny.  I wear it to remind myself that I am not that bright and shiny good girl…I can put on the clothes and shine my Bible and look the part, but inside…well…I can shine that dirty penny and it will be bright and shiny as the day it was minted, but almost overnight it becomes dull and dingy again.

Jesus asks: ⁴⁰ And still you are not willing [but refuse] to come to Me, so that you might have life.

Are we taking the easy way out?  We will read and study and polish and shine but refuse to take that step towards Christ?

Ann Voskamp writes: I said my “yes” to God but what I was really living was “no”.

What is your view? The forest or the trees?

Lovingyougood…sd