God is so good it can be hard to explain. And I know some of you are like how can He be good with the things happening in the world today. I get that. I really do. I was there at one point of my life where I couldn’t understand how this God that was supposed to be so good would allow bad things to happen in my life that would tear my life apart. I didn’t understand and for some things I still don’t understand why I had to go through it. But I went through it and now I am here.
God is good despite your circumstances. I will say that again and again. Your circumstances do not dictate whether God is good or not. He is good in the hard and He is good in the great. God does not change so if He is good in one, He has to be good in the other.
I have recently been really reading my bible. And when I say reading the Bible, I don’t mean skim reading and just pulling out the parts that I like or highlighting the verses that everyone knows and are going around on instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc. I mean like getting into the nitty griddy, reading commentaries and studies on chapters and single verse. I am diving deep and getting very far away from surface level.
There is something incredible when you are reading the Bible and go more than surface level deep during it. (side note, commentaries and bible studies are amazing ways to learn more about scripture. Some apps I recommend are Blue Letter Bible and the Enduring Word.)
So obviously with things like the invasion of Ukraine, people are dooms daying. People are probably taking verses and passages out of context and trying to say we are entering the end times. Which I can neither confirm or deny.
One passage that constantly came up was Ezekiel 38. So instead of just taking someone’s word for it, I read Ezekiel 34-40. These are some of the chapters in which Ezekiel is prophising. He is telling of things to come and in words that the people of the time could understand.
This took me to Revelations 20, Joel 3, and Zechariah 14. These all seem to be connected. Some of the people/lands mentioned in Ezekiel 38-39 are mentioned in Revelations 20. Some of what is depicted in Ezekiel 38 seems to also be in those chapters in Zechariah and Joel.
I have been diving deep into these passages with commentaries, bible studies, sermon notes, and more from people to try and get an understanding of what is happening in these passages.
Side note, my church just went through the 7 letters to the 7 churches in the book of Revelations and it was amazing. We dug really deep into it and learned about context with things like what was happening in the cities and more. This is why I decided to read the book of Revelations to try and understand more of what was going to come and also to just get a better understanding of the book and where people are coming from. I do have my own thoughts that I will not post about, but if you want to have a healthy conversation around it, I am more than glad to grab coffee with you and chat!
There is something about actually dissecting the Bible that is incredible. A lot of you know I used to do art journaling in my bible when I first became a christian. I did this for years and this just helped me get a general understanding of verses and context and gave me a way to connect with God.
After the art journaling, I have really taken to writing notes and just highlighting in my bibles rather than doing art. This has helped me grab a better understanding of what I know and how I perceive the Bible with the context I know. I had been using a study Bible to help with that. So I was diving a little deeper into understanding.
Now with having the two apps I shared earlier, I have been able to dive deep. With the blue letter Bible you are able to compare versions which sometimes help me understand what it is saying better. You can click a verse and look up things from a pastors sermon notes on a chapter or verse, the commentary of certain people who have studied the Bible and gone to college and stuff like that, and also find verse by verse Bible studies on certain chapters in the
Bible. With the Enduring Word, you get a commentary from various references about whatever chapter you want to look up and it goes verse by verse pulling key parts out.
For a long time I didn’t dive deep. I didn’t really understand what it meant because I didn’t really know how to ask anyone for help. Also everyone studies the Bible differently and the way that the person I could’ve asked might not have worked for me and could’ve discouraged me from actually reading the Bible if I didn’t connect with the way they did it.
This is where I am going to remind you that everyone studies the Bible differently and it can look different in every season. Like I said, I used to do art in my Bible to connect with God and to study and that just isn’t how I do it now. I can’t connect in the same way I used to. I do still connect with God through art but in a different way and not in the mixed media, Bible journaling type of way I used to do it earlier and that’s okay. Maybe one day I’ll go back to that but right now, that’s just not how I connect.
There’s also sometimes where I just want to read the Bible with no pens or highlights and no commentaries or Bible studies. This is when I am just trying to get an understanding of something I haven’t read before. For example, I read Ezekiel 38 on my phone at work a couple days ago. I came home and read both 38 and 39 to just read through and understand more in context what is happening in these passages. When I thought I had an okay understanding, I went to BLB and read as much as I could about those chapters. That led me to reading 34-40 to see some of the other prophecies that Ezekiel had. I then was like I am already here and spent a half an hourish reading through Revelations. I haven’t really read much outside of the bible on anything in Revelations besides Revelations 20 because of the possibility of it connecting with Ezekiel 38. (Which some think it does and some thinks it doesn’t and that the person mentioned in both of these passages is the specific person in Ezekiel but a general person in Revelations. Gotta do more research to come to a firm belief of my own.)
I have been working on diving deeper into the word for months now. I am not going to lie, sometimes I struggle to get into the Word. I struggle because I get distracted by things like social media and it draws my attention away from reading my Bible. I get distracted by getting text messages and notifications. (Which I have made a focus mode on my phone for this).
All this to say, dive deep. It can be okay for a while to be surface level especially when you first become a christian. But the longer you are a christian the more you need to dive deep. You will not see all the beauty that God has to show you if you stay surface level.
Hold onto hope and stay strong.
Madison Rae <3
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