Loving the Word of God, David Hoekema

One of the best experiences in my life was attending a small conference for young people in a little village in the mountains of Poland. The conference was organized by the ones who met with the local churches in Poland and England. There I was inspired to read and love the Bible. Although I grew up in a Christian family with parents who loved the Lord, I had never built up a consistent habit of reading the Bible. This trip became a turning point in my life. It was my first time traveling outside the United States. The conference lasted a week. In the morning we attended a meeting which consisted of a time of singing, an exposition of the Word, and testimonies from the audience. In the afternoon we went for hikes in the Tatra Mountains, played sports (including cricket) and engaged in other outdoor activities. In the evening we attended another meeting.

I had never been in such meetings. The speakers were expounding the book of Exodus. In the meetings were American, English, German, Swiss, Polish, and Romanian young people. Two brothers spoke in each meeting, translating for one another in English and Polish. The Germans and Romanians used headset translation. After the messages, the young people shared their enjoyment and understanding from the meeting for about half an hour. The experience was incredible. Except for translation, it was impossible to tell the nationality of the one speaking. All were speaking about the same thing--enjoying Christ as revealed in Exodus. There was a strong one accord. I felt that those meetings in Poland must have been similar to the meetings of the early church in Jerusalem after the day of Pentecost, when believers of all cultures and backgrounds met together in one accord. In Acts 2, Peter spoke to a crowd of Jews and proselytes that included: Medes, Elemites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Cretans, Arabians, and many others (Acts 2:9-11).

In the middle of the week, the conference reached a climax. In the previous message the speakers had finished expounding Exodus up to the crossing of the Red Sea. The message that morning was to begin a series of messages on the children of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. The whole conference changed course with two questions: “How many of you have read the account in Exodus of the children of Israel's wandering in the wilderness?” and, “How many of you have read the whole Bible?” As I gazed around the room, I was inspired. Half of the eastern European young people raised their hands. Later I found out that several of them had read through the Bible several times. This was the summer of 1996; many of the eastern Europeans had only received Christ as their Savior within the last couple of years. All had grown up under communism, during which time most had never even seen a Bible. Those of us from Christian families in the West made a poor showing. Despite our easy access to a Bible, only half raised their hands.

From this point on the theme of the conference turned from Exodus to the reading of the Word. The ones giving the conference encouraged us to form the habit of rising a little earlier in the morning to read the Bible. One key point they shared with us was the need to spend time with the Lord as we read. They warned that if we read the Bible like a textbook, it might become tiresome and boring. Rather, we should come to the Word by prayer, sometimes even praying over every word and sentence (Ephesians 6:17,18). In this way our reading of the Word would become a time of interacting with the Lord.

Seeing the hunger of the eastern European young people, and hearing the encouraging messages on our need to read the Bible, changed the course of my Christian life. I was so inspired by the conference that I began my quest to read the entire Bible immediately. I finished a large portion of the New Testament on the flight home. Since that time, I have had the practice of reading the Bible every day, usually in the morning. I made a point of trying to read through the Bible at least once every two years during college. I started out with a blend of the Revised Version and NIV, followed by the New Translation by John Nelson Darby, the Recovery Version with notes from Witness Lee, and the Scoffield Study Bible (King James Version). This reading of the Word was a great preservation to me in college, inspiring me each morning to love and give my heart to my Savior, the God who is the Word (John 1:1) and who reveals Himself to man in the pages of the Holy Bible.