The other day I asked my Bible students – What keeps you from turning to God’s Word? Here are some of their responses:
- I don’t understand it.
- It convicts me, and I don’t like that.
- I’m busy doing other things.
- I don’t know where to go in his Word.
- I doubt God can fix my problems.
- I can’t find what he’s trying to say. I can’t hear him.
- Getting back into it after being out of it for a season is hard.
- The Bible is too complicated.
- I think I can fix things myself.
I asked them to turn to 1 Samuel 1. Before the great prophet Samuel was born, his mother, Hannah, was barren. Her husband tells us of her disposition when he asks in verse 8, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad?” Then, verse 18 tells us that Hannah “went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.” What changed? How did Hannah go from not eating and being downcast to eating and happy? The answer comes in verse 10. In her distress, she
“prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.”
Hannah practiced the discipline of being in the presence of the Lord. As Hannah was in the temple praying, her circumstances did not change. She did not walk out of the temple happy because she was pregnant. She walked out of the temple happy from practicing one of the fundamentals of a walk with God.
My husband loves sports. He is a great basketball player (he played competitively for most of his life), and he is a great coach. He understands sports, especially football, basketball, and baseball. As he coaches a game, he is constantly aware of what changes need to be made, and he has his players implement those changes. If one of his teams is doing something wrong, he looks to see if they are doing the fundamentals of the game correctly. He says,
“If you don’t do the fundamentals right, you beat yourself in the game.”
The fundamentals of basketball are good defense and rebounding. The fundamentals of football are good tackling and blocking. The fundamentals of baseball are good fielding and base running, and I would suggest that the fundamentals of a walk with Jesus are reading his Word and prayer, and if you do not do the fundamentals in your walk with Jesus, you beat yourself in the game of life.
Hannah was not beat by her heartbreaking circumstances of being barren or by Peninnah, her competition, taunting her about it. Instead, she practiced the fundamentals of her walk with God.
Knowing that my students all practice something whether that be a sport, an instrument, or a craft, I asked them if they ever practiced something but did not know why they practiced it. They all responded – yes. Then I asked them if they practiced it anyway. They again said – yes.
The fundamentals of a walk with Jesus are like the fundamentals of anything you practice. You do it when you don’t know why you are doing it, you make time for it because you know it helps you in the long run, and you do it even when you do not want to.
The Lord is waiting to speak to you. Talk to him. Open his Word. Listen to him. Allow him to change your perspective.
(And if you do not know where to start, turn to a psalm. Read Psalm 5 on the 5th of the month, Psalm 16 on the 16th, and so on. Once you get familiar with the first thirty-one psalms, read Psalm 50 or 150 on the 5th of the month, Psalm 116 on the 16th, and so on.)