I think we need courage to get up in the morning and face another day of sameness. We need courage to live another season of singleness. We have to fight for joy, face our fears, and wait on the Lord’s timing in every phase of life – and that takes courage! But like me on my mountain run, we get weak and want to give up. We want to collapse in a ditch, wheezing, “Just leave me here! Go on without me!”
Last night I hosted our first EVER Facebook party on the blog Facebook page – what a fantastic time! We had people from all over the United States, quite a few in Australia, and several in Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries across the world. During the party, I asked for feedback about future posts on the blog. One of the hot topics was “ideas for how to study the Bible”. I thought, “What a great thought!” So here we go! (And like the Facebook page to join us for future parties! We have a book giveaway and all sorts of fun!)
It’s easy to get in a rut when reading our Bibles. I know I’ve been there, and I fall back into that pit often enough. In the Religion program at Liberty University I have the opportunity to learn new study habits and acquire new resources, all of which inspire me to continue studying on my own time. But many of these resources are available to YOU as well!
Below are five ideas to aid you in your own study of the Bible, even when you’re in a dry spell.
1. Choose a place to start (and don’t bite off too much).
I have tried to read through the Bible at least five times. I have never been able to read straight through the old and new testaments consecutively – but I’ve managed to read all the books of the Bible individually! Don’t force yourself to do something in which you can’t maintain consistency. If reading through the Bible in a year doesn’t work for you, focus on one book at a time, get some commentaries to understand the context, and do a deeper study.
One of the flaws with the ‘read-through-in-a-year’, at least that I’ve encountered, is the pressing need to rush through the book. I like to sit down, read a little, mark it up, and truly understand what is happening in the passage. When I have to read my allotted chapter for the day, I don’t do as much study.
Like almost everything else I write about on this blog (kissing, dating standards, modesty, submission, men), there are two extreme camps on this issue. One implies women should spend life in their living rooms, skip college, and wait for a man who pursues them. The other vouches for ’empowerment’: citing ‘equality’ as reason enough for women to ask men out on a date the same way a man would ask a woman. Women are encouraged to pursue men and make their availability wantonly clear.
And there we are, God’s women, sitting in between these two camps: one piously citing faith in a very unseen suitor, the other out every evening with a different guy.
What’s a girl to do?
The project was in full, Type-A swing – the project I mentioned in Contentment Is not a State of Being.
‘Embrace Lynchburg’ is an effort on my part to ‘grow where I’ve been planted’… to accept the place God has me in a city that is constantly changing.
That epiphany – that contentment-choice – opened my eyes to notice.
I first realized a shift in my mentality as I stood streetside by our downtown bank. Mr. M was getting cash from the ATM and I was looking at the quiet Sunday intersection, overarched by gray November skies that blended into the fading facades of Greek revival buildings.
A leaf blew by my feet, and I noticed the brilliant red against the cobblestone.
The man who always sits at the corner of Main and 9th – he hums and rolls his eyes at you when you walk past. I noticed him this time, not in the ‘walk as fast as I can because I’m so uncomfortable’ kind of way.
I’d left my phone in the car. I’ve been leaving my phone more often these days. I read in the Wall Street Journal that this habit of taking pictures of every moment actually shortens our memory of those things – those baby pictures, the fall leaves on the mountain, that coffee date with a friend. When you take a picture, you don’t have to notice.
I chose to move to Virginia. I chose to make that change from small town of 5,000 to a bigger city of 75,000. I’d say it’s a good choice – I got a great job, made wonderful friends, and met my husband!
But I never really accepted this place as my home.
In writing The Other Virgin Diaries, I talked a lot about relationships and sexuality. But there’s a variable in all these posts that is only sometimes addressed by my husband’s once-in-a-blue-moon post appearances.
That variable is the men.
Our culture has a great habit of blasting information loud and long enough until we start to believe it. One thing they’ve trumpeted since I was old enough to notice is the ‘necessary evil’ of male humans. It seems men are great for Cosmo covers, bedrooms, parties, and taking out the trash. But they’re terrible at marriage, post-marital sex, and general intelligence.
I’m really sick of this stupidity. That’s right: stupidity. You can’t fight a battle for equality when you marginalize the very people you need on your side – that’s for the extreme feminists.
For the rest of you, I’ll bet some of these ‘myths’ have been ground into your mind without your knowledge or consent, and we’re going to debunk them. When God created people, He created man AND woman in His image (Gen. 1:27). They are equal in God’s eyes, though He has equipped them for different roles, a fact evidenced by the distinction between our anatomies (‘equality’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘interchangeable’). If you have questions about the biblical definition of marriage and roles, read this post.
This post is going to make some people mad. So before you respond, get some back up for your responses. Provide Scripture. Get the facts.
These ‘myths’ are beliefs that may be unspoken, but have been generally accepted by many Christian women. Some of them are half-truths that have been unfairly applied to very diverse portion of our society. There are always exceptions. But exceptions are not the rule for a whole gender, and that’s what we are going to debunk.
Co-written by my husband, ‘Mr. M’.
I should have known he would be a problem. I really should have. He was a little too… eager. A little too available, and way too serious after knowing me only a week. But I was 20 and pretty naive about this stuff.
At first I thought he was just an ardent pursuer, but that notion went out the window when he began pairing my name with his on our 10th day of acquaintance.
…As if ‘Phylicia Phillips’ was a good idea in ANY world.
Red flags had been popping up in my mind every day of our acquaintance, but I ignored them because I didn’t want to make a ‘rash judgment’. By the end of that summer, he proved himself exactly what the flags had professed him to be – fortunately, I had stopped talking to him on the 11th day.
My husband (Mr. M, for new readers) and I have often talked about the ‘red flags’ we had in prior relationships. That was a term he used to describe the lack of inner peace he’d had before making a poor decision. Both he and I have ignored those ‘red flags’ in past relationships out of a desire to ‘make it work’ or ‘save’ someone who should have found their salvation PRIOR to a human relationship.
This happens more often than it should among Christian young people, men and women alike.
In my post “You Don’t Want to Lose Him… But Maybe You Should”, I talked briefly about a woman’s desire to ‘be the difference’ in a weak man’s life, or to inspire him to make a salvation decision. In ‘A Few Good Men’, I discussed why we should have faith that there are good men out there – and strive to be women worthy of those men.
If you’ve already married a weak or unsaved man, there is a different path to take. Once married, that person is the one you have committed to love and understand for life, outside of instances of physical abuse (for advice on marriage, I recommend visiting the Time Warp Wife, Women Living Well, and The Unveiled Wife). This is why it is imperative that young people use God’s wisdom in choosing who they date and marry. This isn’t a big joke, and there are consequences to every relationship we enter – both romantic and platonic.
I have this routine for putting on pants.
To be honest, I don’t like pants that much. I don’t like jeans that much, actually. Six out of the seven days of the week find me in a skirt or dress, and I never put on jeans of my own volition after work.
This is partially due to my hatred for the whole pants-putting-on process.
Jeans straight out of the dryer are a force to be reckoned with – can I get an ‘amen’? I spend a good two hours doing squats, donkey kicks and high knees to loosen them up to a form worthy of the public eye. Trolls would love to see me transgress my own posts about modesty, so fear not: I’m not wearing jeggings. It’s just really hard to get slim leg jeans on drumsticks.
I’m quick to put a shirt on during the pants-dance routine, because the whole cupcake-look doesn’t appeal to me. I’m also quick to put on makeup, style my hair, and wear my signature pink lipstick. I’m quick because it is urgent: this covering-over, making-up, be-presentable womanhood I’ve embraced. I have scars to cover. I have curls to tame. And I have no upper lip, so I have to draw that on.
We pinch, poke, and prod; diffuse, scrub, exfoliate, and pluck; run, lift, and crunch. Even then, we thousands of women peer into mirrors, hoping to hear we are the fairest – not to them all, but at least to ourselves.
We aren’t all discontent with our bodies, lives and homes. But I do think, like me, many women have trained themselves to meet expectations. When we fail, we feel we have no excuse for that failure.
Faith in God is not evidence of a great person, but of a person trusting the greatness of her Savior.
It’s in those stressful moments I cease to remember that greatness. I cease to trust. In that moment, I cease to have faith.
Josh had his apartment when we were dating. It’s the same apartment we live in at the writing of this post. Living in a college town means most complexes are noisy: populated by 20-somethings whose late-night priorities always tend toward the loud and obnoxious. But our little place is housed off a country road, in a subdivision, populated mostly by residents over the age of 50. The most noise we endure originates from Canadian geese.