Peter 1 says this:
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever...
Our souls are purified as we obey the truth - in order to obey God's truth, we have to know what it says, and develop a working knowledge of the principles of the Scriptures. We have been brought into a personal relationship with God our Heavenly Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, and by personalizing the Scriptures, we can grow in our application of what He says - we follow His instruction through studying the Word, making it part of us, and relying on the Spirit to give us the strength to walk in obedience.
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In Psalm 119, we can read verse after verse regarding how we are to allow the Word of God to shape our lives; you might say we can be challenged to personalize the Scriptures. Here is a three-verse
passage from that Psalm:
164 Seven times a day I praise You, Because of Your righteous judgments.
165 Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble.
166 Lord, I hope for Your salvation, And I do Your commandments.
Garrett is an 18-year-old young man who lives in the Atlanta area. He had given his girlfriend, 16-year-old Reagan, his own personal Bible, which had a few highlighted verses in it, to help her through a tough time in her life, according to a story on the AJC.com website.
And, in an indicative case of sowing and reaping, that simple gesture by Garrett came back to him in a huge way. According to the site, Reagan "spent three months personalizing every single page of a Bible for her boyfriend as a Christmas gift. She highlighted verses, drew in the margins and made notes about what he could learn from select portions." She went to Pinterest to get some ideas.
On Christmas Eve, she took pictures of some pages and posted them on Twitter for her some 150 followers to see. Less than a week later, that post had received more than 87,000 retweets and 288,000 likes. The post was also featured on Buzzfeed and The Blaze.
The story relates:
“I highlighted what I thought would be important for him to know,” the teen said.
As expected, her boyfriend loved the gift.
“He was just smiling a lot and gave me a really big hug,” she said.The article also states, "She said they’ve both almost always been religious." She had "strayed away from her faith" but said her boyfriend had "reintroduced her to it." He had asked for a Bible for Christmas.
She said that her "favorite annotation," according to the article, "is of red and blue characters making a point about judgement 'because I think not judging others simply because they are not like you is very important and something everyone should live by.'"
Reagan's act of creativity can certainly be an inspiration to us. Now, I will say that some of the information posted, material linked to and retweets, that I find on her page, contain some content that I would consider to be offensive - so I would hope that she and her boyfriend are growing in Christ, really applying His truth. Because you have to be so careful what you post on social media and what you share or retweet.
But, put that aside for now - I do think this story can cause us to think about how we personalize the Word of God. We may not be artistically-oriented, although I do appreciate the acts of using drawing and coloring to enhance one's study of the Word of God. But, perhaps you can take notes on what you read, highlighting how God speaks to you when you read.
We see how we personalize the Scriptures by evaluating how the Word governs the way we think, speak, and act. Do we show to the world that we love Christ by how we radiate His love? Do we demonstrate that we love His Word by how we apply those principles? The Bible tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to watch the words we speak, and how we behave. This becomes plausible as we personalize the Scriptures.
But, put that aside for now - I do think this story can cause us to think about how we personalize the Word of God. We may not be artistically-oriented, although I do appreciate the acts of using drawing and coloring to enhance one's study of the Word of God. But, perhaps you can take notes on what you read, highlighting how God speaks to you when you read.
We see how we personalize the Scriptures by evaluating how the Word governs the way we think, speak, and act. Do we show to the world that we love Christ by how we radiate His love? Do we demonstrate that we love His Word by how we apply those principles? The Bible tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to watch the words we speak, and how we behave. This becomes plausible as we personalize the Scriptures.
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