the anchor

You have exalted above all things
Your name and Your word...
Psalm 138:2

A few months ago, my friend Emily sent me a quote she had heard listening to Ravi Zacharias: "In all my travels all over the world, I have never let the sun rise and set without opening God's word that day.  One day the sun will set on your life and the only thing that will go with you is God's word, and it will be like fire burning in your bones."  Fist pump.  Two of them, actually.

If there is anything I know to be true about growth, about bravery, it is that God's word is the anchor.  There is simply nothing, not.one.thing, we can do to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit more than reading the Bible, engaging intentionally with the scriptures.  God's words actually can make us more like him, and when we are growing to that end, we are better wives, better mamas, better friends.  We start to see the world through a new lens entirely, one that thinks less of our lives and a whole lot more of the other 7 billion on earth.  It changes our wants, our needs, our passions, and it lifts our eyes just enough to see past today and toward eternity.  And when we think a lot about eternity, it changes the way we think about today.

In my life, Bible time has come with a good routine and some gentle accountability.  Quiet time easily gets such a bad rap in Christian circles, and I understand why... I do have a two year old and an eight month old, quiet time is rarely quiet.  And there will always be days that, for any number of reasons, I don't get in the scriptures.  But I don't want to let those days outnumber the days I am with Jesus ever again.  What I have found in the face of the excuses I always made is that God's word is so worth fighting for. 

Imagine a whole generation of believers who are saturated with God's word, who understood it, who trust it.  I get goosebumps just thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit in that kind of atmosphere, and I want to be a part of it.  So let's grab a few girlfriends and hold each other to it- I think it's perfectly ok to see others growing and want what they have- that's been the story of my growth for a long time now. 

Below are some of the tools I'm using to study the Bible right now:

She Reads Truth journals and app
Blue Letter Bible
Alive+Active (I happen to know the author.  She's so legit.)
IF:Equip

And a few studies I cannot recommend highly enough- life changing:

The Book of Daniel study
Gospel Transformation
The Names of God

There are a million resources out there to help us walk through scripture, these handful are just the ones I'm connecting with the most these days.  Jennie Allen once wrote that, "If you know three verses from scripture you know more about God than most of the world.  We are so spoiled with truth and yet so unmoved."  Oh friends, let's be moved.  Let's be world changers.  Let's be women who do what it takes, who anchor ourselves in the one thing we get to take with us at the end of our lives. 

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