Trailblazin Ministries Blog

Ministry

Reading the Word: Progress

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Friday, 07 December 2007
Filed under: Faith, Ministry

The other day, I spoke about how John MacArthur was teaching on how to get the most out of the Bible, and then how I intended to implement such a plan in my own life. Well, today, I thought I would take a few moments and let you know how things are going after only a week.

To start this off, I decided to pick a small book that I was already somewhat familiar with. The obvious choice was James since that's what we're teaching on in our daily devotion series. I started on December 1 just reading right through James in my MacArthur Study Bible (NASB). Even though I'm a somewhat slow reader, I was able to finish the reading in no time at all. While reading, I did make an effort to not read any of the footnotes, so as to not hinder my reading. I figured that by not reading the footnotes, the text would become clearer the more times I read it, which actually started to happen; although, I did find myself going back to read a few footnotes after I had completed my reading, only because the questions I had were pressing in my mind. After six days (today is the 7th day and is not included), I've read through James 3 times (just simply forgot one day, and 2 other days was so sick with the stomach flu that my head hurt too much to try and read, let alone comprehend anything).

Not that James is a hard letter to understand, but I'm already finding myself remembering the main points of each chapter and where key verses are located. Even with some of the difficult passages that I haven't gotten to yet in the devotion series, I have found myself beginning to understand them much more than I did prior to starting this challenge. An example would be James 5:13-16. For most of us, this is a pretty difficult passage to comprehend, especially without any commentary. Well, as I began to read in context I saw that in the first part of the chapter James is speaking about how rulers and those with money and how they have misused their power/wealth, which has resulted in persecution and suffering for those without (cf. James 2:6). As you move on, we then find James giving encouragement to believers to continue to persevere under such circumstances and not let it lead them to sin, knowing that the Lord is watching and is soon to come. It is with this context in mind that we are then able to understand what James says in the following verses. Are you suffering (under persecution)? Then pray. And then moving on, we would then understand that "sick" isn't referring to necessarily a physical sickness (although it very well could be), but is more or less referring to being made weak by persecution. Therefore, someone who is weak would want to call upon the elders for prayer and encouragement, which would be a means of restoring one's spiritual vitality. Doesn't that make more sense now?! It did to me, and of course the full synopsis is coming in the devotion series when we get to James 5 in 2008.

It's things like that unveiling of truth that is making this undertaking so interesting thus far. I know that I'm only a week in, but I can only imagine how much more I'm going to learn and understand about James over the course of this month of December. I've already learned a great deal in only three readings, and there is only more to come. It makes it all very exciting. So, I just thought I'd share that with you, and I'll check in time to time to let you know how it's coming along, and share any nuggets that I come across that I feel are worth sharing via my blog (I want to keep some for the devotions, of course).

Until then... holla!