The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted! – Matthew 13:23 NLT
A series that aims to inspire, encourage and widen your horizons using the Word of God as the means by which this may occur. ‘Good Soil’ refers to the fact that my ultimate desire is that by writing down what I’ve understood by my favourite parts of the Bible as well as new ones I encounter as I surge forward on my walk with Christ, you will be blessed as you read and not only will you read but it will resonate and be an anchor to your soul – through all the difficult seasons you experience on this crazy ride called ‘life’.
The WORD of God is powerful. I think at times it can be quite daunting to open up the Bible and just decide to read it. I mean it’s a huge book and its language isn’t exactly a walk in the park. But as His Word has said: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8) This simply means that provided I make that effort in getting to know more about Him, wanting to know more about Him and having the desire to really be able to refer to myself as His friend, it gets easier.
Ultimately my relationship with God pretty much follows the same formula as forging relationships with others. If I like someone, I’d more inclined to want to get to know them and develop a true understanding of who they are, what they like, what they don’t like. It’s the same with God however the key difference is that there is a hierarchy in our friendship. He is SOVEREIGN and I need to TRUST that having Him as my friend means that I can let go knowing that:
- He is a loyal friend: Deuteronomy 31:6
- He is a supportive friend: Psalm 91:4
- He is a loving friend: Ephesians 3:18
Ultimately, I need to be aware that embarking on a relationship with Him means that His opinions always have my best interest at heart. Essentially, it’s how I view my relationship with my parents right now – I respect them because they are my parents and they will always have the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom to counsel me through every situation I encounter in life. But they’ve also become my friends as I’ve grown older as I’ve realised that they aren’t invincible and are human beings and so I’ve come to appreciate and relate to them – flaws and all. Again, as much as I am able to gain an understanding of how a relationship with God will and can be compared to my relationship with my parents it can never compare because of one simple fact: God is not a human being.
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” – John 4:24
And so as much as I try to compare my relationship with him with human relationships, it is incomparable and so the ONLY way I can fully understand what it means to be in a relationship with him, what it means for him to not just be my friend but my best friend, my confidante, my everything – is through reading His Word. I mean His Word is a manual that tells me all I am curious about, all I need to know about Him and it is an endless and deep and beautiful body of literature that comes to life when I, as his special creation who was made in His image can read it with the Holy Spirit in me giving me a full sense of discernment about the new characteristic of God I can learn about.
So this has been written with a huge grin on my face because I am so excited to have the opportunity to share what I learn. So if I’ve lost you thus far due to the linguo that may not be familiar to you if you haven’t grown up in a Christian household or haven’t been embarking on a similar sort of journey in terms of forging a relationship with God – then this is the part where I make things as clear as possible:
This series will be an opportunity to share what my understanding of the Bible is and to invite you to also gain some beautiful insight and knowledge as to the wondrous nature of my God, my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and my comforter, the Holy Spirit. There is so much to learn and I’m excited to encourage you with the Word of God and invite you to do the same for me or anyone else in your life! Please don’t hesitate to comment and share your understanding, that’s the beauty of the Word – where one verse can mean so many different things to so many different people.
I would also love to share some tips as to how I read the Word and how I go about tackling this humongous book. So look out for that and I pray that you are blessed as you read and you are encouraged to also engage in the Word yourself because it is beautiful, poignant, powerful, inspiring and so much MORE.
May we all be blessed as we yearn to know more about who God is and are filled with His Word. AMEN.
PS: All posts from this series will appear as: #GS and will be numbered accordingly.
Peace & Love,
Tolz xo
LET'S BE FRANK 