Gillian Marchenko

A few days ago, bits of wrapping paper and shimmery, sticky red bows were strewn around our living room as our four girls happily played with and examined new toys and gadgets after a pleasant Christmas morning.

Today, I’m looking at all of the twinkle lights and ornaments that need to come down with an audible sigh. The angels will go back into the rubbermaids. The wreathes and other wall decor will be wrapped with brown paper and stowed away in the basement. And just thinking about it all makes me blink fast. Christmas came and went like that. And in a few days it will be a new year. A new decade.

A new year and new resolve

The new year brings new resolve. I’m going to lose ten pounds and we are going to schedule date nights and I will read to our girls every night and dutifully take the dog for walks at least three times a week. I will bake banana bread more often for my husband because he loves it and because we always seem to have a batch of browned, frozen bananas in the refrigerator anyway. Listing these things for you here quickens my heart rate and weakens my muscles. Yeah, not a good start, Gillian.

It’s also the time of year when Bible reading schedules and plans are shared around social media. (I’m excited. I’m heading into my third year of reading through the Bible.) There are new and old ideas, strategies and encouragment. All good things, for sure. But for some people, and for myself in the past, there’s a lot of guilt and fear built around the idea of reading Scripture regularly. We often let our emotions push out our resolve to try to start reading again. Schedules and discipline aren’t the only issues.

“I read Scripture, but it doesn’t make a difference.”

“I don’t get anything out of reading the Bible.”

“It’s like God’s not there.”

Friends murmur such sentiments to me under their breath with spotty eye contact and awkward pauses. I get it. They are painful admissions more prone to whispers. But my friends aren’t alone. I mumble similar sentiments in dry seasons of my spiritual life, too.

Who wants to say that Bible reading can make your eyes blurry with sleep? Who wants to confess that study becomes mundane and tedious when passages like Hebrews 4 tells us that scripture is active and alive and sharper than a two-edged sword? Nobody does. So we struggle, alone, and decide that it will take more than a fresh calendar to revive us.

For a long time, I thought my issues with Bible reading revolved around my lack of discipline. But I’ve come to realize that my dry spells and times of frustration and struggle have to do with something deeper. It’s about the state of my heart. To borrow Ezekiel’s phrase, I come to scripture with a heart of stone.

Here are two ways I harden my heart …

I come with harbored sin.

“If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

Psalm 66:18

What does it mean to cherish something? You think about it, protect it, and do whatever you can to keep it close. We do that with sin, don’t we? And when we cherish our sin over God, our hearts will be hard. Every page of the Bible speaks, but harbored sin is cotton in the inner ears. And then we blame the Lord if we don’t ‘hear’ from him.

Unrepentent sin turns a heart to stone. Think about it, if you sin against your spouse or a friend and don’t fess up, you hold back during your time together. You’re not fully there because it takes an awful lot of focus and energy to keep your distance. It’s similar with God. Instead of coming to him with an attitude of wanting to know him more, we come to him preoccuppied and distant.

I come with a posture of suspicion.

Have you ever done that? A toe-tapping, finger-drumming I’m here, God. I’m waiting. Show my something good, but I doubt you will. In her book, Women of the Word, Jen Wilkin says we often come to scripture with a “what can you do for me?” attitude instead of asking “God, what do these words tell me about you?” The first question isn’t wrong per say, but it is if all we are after is our personal agenda. And if the general party line is God probably won’t respond to us, then we come with suspicion. We treat him like the dad who doesn’t show up when he said he would. But we forget that God doesn’t have to show up. He is the great I AM. He already is.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1: 8

And he has already shown himself to us as creator of the universe, the good shepherd going after his sheep, and ultimately in the life, death, resurrection, and imminent return of his Son Jesus. And we see all of it in the pages of Scripture.

Do you come to God with harbored sin? Do you come on a trial basis with low expectations? Then, I can tell you from experience, your eyes will get bleary. You will be suspicious. Your faith can dry out quick if you aren’t drinking from the deep well of God’s word.

Come with a heart of flesh

Before you plan your schedule, check the state of your inner being. Consider what has stopped you from reading in the past. Pay attention to the posture of your heart. Ask God for a heart of flesh.

Come without demands of God, but with a prayer that he shows himself to you in a fresh way yet again. Come with a prayer of repentence. Ask God to reveal harbored sin. Come with expectancy and thanksgiving instead of suspicion.

We’ve already been given everything that we can ever need for life and godliness in Him (2 Peter 1:3). Read Scripture. Be expectant. Be ready to hear from God.

And if you continue to struggle, don’t stop trying. This world is busy and loud and we are all tired. We all have wounds. People and places and posts vye for our attention. Looking to God doesn’t just happen. If we want to have a close relationship wih him, we have to cultivate it. God speaks to us the loudest in his good, good book and as his people, it is the highest privilege of our lives to hear from him.

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heartof stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

Ezekiel 36:26