When I began, Kay Arthur and Precept Ministries crossed my path. I learned her method of studying the bible. It is a rigorous and methodical method of study. In the beginning my quiet time was my life line. I poured hours into reading, studying, meditating on God’s word believing that if I put in enough effort, God would bless me, protect me, make my life meaningful. Many of those early mornings and sometimes for weeks and months at a time it was a dry labor. I read the same scriptures over and over, marking different things, making lists, comparing one passage to another, but some days, on special rare days, the Holy Spirit would open my head and pour Light in. I’ve often described it like a zipped file being unzipped. All the code is there, but inaccessible and then in a moment, it all begins to Run. It moves and activates neurons all over your brain and you see the truth of His Word in action in a hundred different ways.

Over the years I’ve found that many people shy away from the time commitment involved. I confess I’ve expressed no small amount of pride and condescension toward those who would “sow” so little into knowing God’s word. That is my foolish flesh missing the whole point!

It is healthier to look at studying the bible like a field. If I think of my mind as a fallow field and all my study is just plowing. That is most accurate. I will open the dirt up, aerate it, spread it around, and increase the yield of what God could do with it in my mind, but I will never grow Wisdom or Understanding, because I don’t have seed. I only have a plow. I could plow for a hundred years, but it will never be anything but dirt, unless God gives the Seed. (The Word is Seed! The Bible will grow, but I don’t make it grow. See the difference?)

“God gives seed to the sower and bread for food.” (2 Corinthians 9:10) God is Life and life is proof of God. Without Him, all I have is dirt. As I look back, I realize that all the weary dry days chasing the one Illuminated day, was just God’s way of showing me the difference between my works, and Him. It was a way of training my faith, my vision, to see Him, to separate Light from dark, Life from dirt.

“The goal of our instruction is Love from a pure heart, a clear conscience and a sincere faith.” In the last few years I’ve begun to notice that it is not the bible being plowed any more. It is my heart and my life. I’ve had some painful moments, disappointments in key relationships, had many of the assumptions I’ve made challenged. Like everybody else, I’ve asked God “Why?”

The answer is simply, “Because you asked me too.” For thirty years I’ve prayed that my life would be fruitful and meaningful, that it would be alive and woven together with the lives of others. That’s been the cry of my heart for as long as I can remember. It is a desire planted in my heart by The One Who Has Seed. And He is “mindful that I am dust.” It is not a prayer that I can experience through any faculty that I possess. But it is one that He can share with me, and allow me to experience through Him.

“I Am the Vine; you are the branches. Apart from Me, you can do nothing.” God has invited dust to become branches! It’s an inconceivable miracle! Dry, inanimate dirt, once just baking in the sun, now alive, growing, connected to Life itself, being warmed, awakened and animated by Light.

Plowing is painful, being plowed is more painful. If God’s life and my life were separate things. If my work and goals were fruitful, one could reasonably ask, “Is it worth it? Is the cost too high? Does He really care?”

But He is Life. I am dust. In Him, through Him I taste life! And it is Good! Separately? He is Life, and I am dirt.

I came that you might have Life, and have it abundantly! ~Jesus