Friends, What do you remember about your first Bible? Mine’s not pretty but it has a story to tell.  See the column below. Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #887

November 14, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Words of Truth

By Bob Walters

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

My first Bible, in all its worn, paperback, black-duct-taped glory – like a retired warship at anchor – rests on my home office bookshelf.  It did its job well.

Later this week I’ll be recording another “Finding Genius” (the title still cracks me up) podcast with its host and my newfound friend and conversational colleague, Rich Jacobs. Among the suggested discussion topics is “How to get started reading the Bible,” and the array of support and collateral materials that are available and helpful.

Whether we get to that topic or not, the question set me to thinking about my first foray into scripture 22 years ago, and the previously mentioned battered blue NIV (1984 edition) that was my constant companion for nearly four years. Here’s how I got started.

I had just begun attending church and “believing” in September 2001, yet thinking back, I wasn’t quite ready for a Bible.  Then in late October I began a four-week “Walking with Christ” Sunday night class for newbies taught by E91’s Senior Minister Dave Faust.  There were free Bibles on the study tables and I was encouraged to take one.  The assigned class homework was a workbook with scripture passages and questions, plus a weekly Bible book to read: Genesis, Isaiah, Matthew, and Revelation.

Between the class teaching, discussion, coaching, encouragement, and challenge, the Bible which I had never before been able to read with either interest or comprehension, came technicolor alive to me.  It was a Holy Spirit cavalcade.

Granted, I didn’t understand most of it, but I read it anyway.  Fascinated by text discoveries – simple stuff, like where the twelve tribes of Israel came from – there was much in those parts of the Bible that I related to other lifelong, secular reading (and I read a lot).  Now there was this additional life/divine/faith context that pulled me in.

But I also knew I wouldn’t get far reading alone.  So, so many questions … help!

On the final night of class – Decision: stand up, get baptized? – Dave announced he would be teaching E91’s weekly Wednesday evening “Through the Bible in a Year” study starting in January, going book by Bible book – Genesis to Revelation – through the course of the year. That gift of a weekly crutch is what convinced me to stand up.

A lot happened over the next year. Dave left E91 to be president of Cincinnati Christianity University.  I also became good friends with former E91 minister Russ Blowers, met my later Bible and theology mentor Dr. George Bebawi, and started attending E91’s Logos Sunday school class taught by Steve Hall.  I read through the Bible by autumn, cheating a bit in the repetitive parts of Deuteronomy and Chronicles. 

What I noticed early on was that God put a lot of smart believers in my life at roughly the same time the Bible – and the truth of Jesus Christ – came alive in me.

When Dave left E91 in June, Jeff Ballard took over the weekly Wednesday night classes.  A couple years later in another Wednesday class series, Jeff noticed my beat-up Bible, asked if he could borrow it, and showed it to the crowd saying, “This is what a Bible is supposed to look like.”  Amen to that.  The truth doesn’t have to be pretty.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) uses a leather-bound 1984 NIV he bought in 2005.