Oxygen To My SoulSample

Oxygen to my Soul

Great peace. We want that, don’t we? In the storms and confusions of life, we desperately want God’s peace to flood our soul. We also need protection from stumbling. We don’t want to stumble in marriage, in parenting, in finances, in friendships, in work, in temptations, or in anything. We need God’s hand of protection.

God grants peace and protection to those who love His Word. If you love God’s Word, you will treasure it and read it and learn it and live it. It will be an endless delight to you.

In my freshman year at Rice University, I had been a Christian for six months. During the Christmas holidays, I attended a conference for college students sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. The speaker, Howard Hendricks, challenged us to read the Bible every day. He exhorted us to make this an unrivaled priority in our lives if we wanted to know God and live for him. I decided to accept his challenge. I thirsted to know God and be all that God wanted me to be, so in January 1973, I began to read the Bible every day. Every morning after breakfast, I would retreat to a lonely place in the basement of my dormitory and spend time alone with God, reading the Bible and praying. That was more than forty years ago. I have continued to meet with God each day, praying and reading His Word. It has been the privilege and the foundation of my life. It has been oxygen to my soul. It has been a solid rock to stand upon when everything about me crumbled. It has been light in a dark world, life in a dead world, and glory in a dull world. I cannot express what the Bible has meant to me. I cannot imagine it not being in my life. It has not been a book of theology or a list of religious duties to me. It has been the living Word of God. It has been a draught of living water. It has been a time for God to meet with me, speak to me, and reveal His heart to me.

In The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton wrote, “By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.” That’s it exactly. Fire and music and the glory of God. All through God’s holy Word.