Since I attended a girls’ conference when I was little more than a decade old and committed to read my Bible every day, I’ve known it was important for me to read the Bible as a Christian.

While I did not honor my original commitment very well at that stage, it was the beginning of my journey towards making the habit of picking up my Bible every day.  It’s a been a roller coast to say the least, but I stuck with it fairly well.

Then I started reading “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers, and he posed the question: am I worshiping God while I form good habits, or have I started worshiping the habit itself?  And I began to wonder if I was worshiping the habit.  Was I reading my Bible to “be a good Christian” or to learn more about God?  In the circles I move in, reading your Bible every day is “cool”.  Was I persisting just so I could smile and answer affirmative if the topic of daily reading ever came up?

So I started to let myself take breaks.  I took the pressure off.  If I didn’t find time for the Bible, I would assure myself I was doing important things and God didn’t want me to spend all my time reading (like that argument would have carried a fleck of weight if we’d been discussing reading The Lord of the Rings instead *cough*).  And maybe if I remembered I would run through a psalm I had memorized before I fell asleep.

It’s not like you would have found my Bible a month later, in the back of a cupboard, covered in dust; I probably still read it most days.  But it certainly wasn’t a priority.  Even when I came to the conclusion it probably was beneficial to read it every day, it was still not top of the list.

But then I noticed a difference.  When I didn’t read the Bible, I was different–and I didn’t like the different me.  Reading God’s Word changed me.  And THAT was the beginning of another journey, towards prioritizing my Bible reading. . . again.

So I read the Bible every day; not because someone tells me I should, not as a safety net in case I’m asked, not even really because I want to know what’s in it.  I read the Bible every day because it makes me feel closer to God, and that’s where I want to be.

But what I didn’t anticipate was the how darn inspirational this reading plan was going to be–while I knew it was going to affect me spiritually, I didn’t expect it to affect my imagination.  My writer-brain gets on fire when I’ve been consistent in reading God’s Word.  I don’t why it took me seventeen years to understand it’s important to read the Bible as a storyteller.  It’s gotten to the point where I can hardly read my Bible anymore, if I’ve been consistent for days, because the story ideas come so fast while I read.

I mean, tell me this isn’t Middle Earth or Narnia-esque:

“But you, O God, are my king from of old;
you bring salvation upon the earth.
It was you who split open the sea by your power;
you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert.”
-Psalm 74:12-14

And is this not just begging for a novelization?

“I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: There was once a small city with only a few people in it.  And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siegeworks against it.  Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom.  But nobody remembered that poor man.”
-Ecclesiastes 9:13-15

And that’s only two of many I’ve run across (Job, for instance, always just sets my imagination on fire!!).  I’m sure I’ll find more.