I often joke with Baylor students about what they major in. Take for example:
Speech Communication – What do you do? Just talk to people all day?? There’s a degree for that?
Recreation – Wait, you’re telling me you’re paying $46,902 a year to learn how to kick a ball and play tag?
Great Text – How can you be a Great Texts class and not even read the Bible? BTW, you know what Great Text graduates do… they teach Great Texts.
This conversation is only in jest and motivated out of a deep love for our people and the people who are actually in those majors. But I say all that because I secretly wish I could have been a Great Text major with a double minor in Speech Communication & Recreation. I wish that I could have had the opportunity to study humanities in this way… and to find ways the Bible feeds into and actually is superior Great Text. Then go talk about it over dodgeball.
What I’m trying to get at is I love the Bible. I really do. Sometimes reading it has become a chore, but that’s usually when I’m being confronted on my sin. Sometimes reading it has been a joy, only to again find myself wallowing in the shallows. But listen, if we really believe that the God of the universe who speaks and quasars are created! If that God speaks and has now spoken to us in His word, then why would we neglect such a thing?
So as I was praying last night, God reminded me of some passages that have helped shape me over the past 31 years and I thought I’d share just three of them with you. Now, I’m not giving any commentary on them – I’ll let the Spirit of God handle that.
1. Psalm 16:11 – You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
2. Philippians 3:7-11 – But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
3. Acts 20:24 – But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
Obviously, there are and have been more passages that have challenged and shaped me, but as I lay in bed and before I nodded off to sleep, these three were being seared in my heart once again.
So, what verses have shaped you?
