My #BibleInAYear in Tweets: Genesis
In November 2022 I made the commitment to read the Bible in a year for the first time. Something that’s taken me more than 40 years to do! Before going into what I learnt from Genesis I wanted to share more about the background to making this commitment. There may be things you can relate to?
My journey from Sunday School dabbling to resisting the Bible
As a child I went to Sunday School and learnt about some of the stories, but only really dabbled in scripture (it was the boring reading of the old-fashioned text that made no sense). Then aged around 11, I stopped going to church. However, despite not being a Christian I still liked the idea of reading the Bible so I kept the Bible I was christened with.
Decades later it’s taken a lot of questioning and soul-searching to come back to Christianity. I really resisted it!! I first needed to get my head round the reality that God exists and that Jesus Christ was a real human being who was resurrected after being crucified to atone for our sins.
With all I was learning, it would make sense to read the Bible. What I found was fascinating is that I simply couldn’t read scripture. My resistance to the words and the language of this holy book was so great that I was unable to focus, concentrate and understand, let alone absorb what I was reading. Did I even really need to read the Bible?
Increasing my faith and dropping my resistance to the Bible
However, as my faith has grown stronger and my resistance reduced, I have been more able to appreciate the importance of biblical scripture. At a slow pace I managed to complete the New Testament and then also the Psalms. I had started the Old Testament, but only got as far as the end of Exodus.
However it was still going to be a challenge to work my way through the entire Bible and therefore appreciated the opportunity to be able to do this with others through the Christian Response Forum.
Join me in my journey…
I decided to tweet each day about my experiences of reading the Bible as a means to reinforce my learning, hold myself publicly accountable and also to provide encouragement to others. I’ve also decided to produce these ‘tweet blogs’ to document my journey through the course of the Bible.
You are also very welcome to comment on my tweets with your insights, reflections and questions from your own personal experience of going through the Bible. Any predatory trolls looking for attention or significance will be ignored!
Myself and fellow Christians at Lighthouse International Group have been attacked online for the last couple of years by anti-Christian predatory trolls, malignantly toxic family members and bitter ex-clients who have hated us coming to Christ. You can read about this persecution as part of our individual and collective journey into Christ through personal development, new age, spirituality and healing from malignantly toxic families. We’ve had an incredible journey to discover that to optimise our human potential we need to be connected to Christ as the source of that potential!
So without further ado, here’s Genesis (please excuse some of the incorrect day numbering!).
Genesis
The English title, Genesis, comes from the Greek translation (Septuagint, LXX) meaning “origins”; whereas, the Hebrew title is derived from the Bible’s very first word, translated “in the beginning”. (Source: The MacArthur Study Bible)
If you’d like to join me and us in a supportive community that’s encouraging others to read the Bible in a year, then please get in touch with me on Twitter (@jssmills) or email me.
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