by Evan Mackey, Family Minister

God’s word has impacted my life from a young age and continues to do so, especially now. I have been trying to read the Word of God daily from a young age. I was given an easy-to-read version as a child and that blessed me with the opportunity to read for myself and try to understand for myself. I believe that a child is never too young to have the spiritual discipline of reading the word instilled in them. I found this to be true in my childhood, and I find this to be true in my kids as well. What is also true is that the world and our flesh are hungry to distract us and to keep us from studying his word and reflecting on its words. The Spiritual discipline of scripture reading, and memorization must be something that we continue disciplining ourselves in, until the day we no longer read his words but instead, see his face.

In much of the world scripture is more readily available than it ever has been before, but along with that there are also more distractions now than ever. That’s why I believe is it so important to put scripture reading into as many of our daily rhythms as we can. That includes reading with your spouse sometime before bed. Reading with your children sometime during the day. Reading during the day for yourself. Listening to the scriptures whether through The Bible App or through streetlightsbible.com. I believe it is also important to try to follow the examples that are given to us in Deuteronomy 6, where the Israelites are told to tie laws to their foreheads and put them on their doorposts. We later see in the Gospels, through Jesus’ strong words for the Pharisees, that what God was trying to get them to do was put the scripture in visible places (doorways) so that it would eventually come into invisible places (minds and hearts). We need to make sure that we don’t miss this emphasis when we are striving to have scripture permeate every area of our lives. It is not about legalistically reading the Bible every day. It is about lovingly wanting to get to know our Father every day. That is what Hilary and I pray for, for our family and for yours.

Grace and Peace,

Evan Mackey