Don't Waste Your Summer # 1

With summer usually comes the temptation to become spiritually lax or lazy. If your schedule is anything like mine, it eases up some in June, July and August. Currently, I'm on a break from my regular Thrive and Women's Bible Study (WBS) commitments and it would be really easy for me to read the Bible less and stop working on spiritual disciplines like prayer and Scripture memory. The part of me that was a student for eighteen years still seems to associate warm weather with carefree fun. But, alas, if I were to indulge my desire for three months of pure relaxation I would find, come September, that I have wasted my summer. And someday, when I stand before the judgement seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10) I would really hate to have to account for a completely wasted summer. Imagine me standing before Christ and saying, "Yes, I know I didn't grow spiritually or build your kingdom in any way that summer, but I sure did have fun hitting up the water park and the beach with my friends." Yeah, not gonna fly.

So, this summer it's important that all of us keep our end game in mind. We will all stand before Christ someday and have to give an account not only for how we lived our lives, but also for how we spent this summer. I'm not sure about you, but that really jolts me to reality quickly. Over the next five days, let me offer you five ways you can invest your time this summer that will help insure that you don't waste it.

1) Study a book of the Bible this summer. During the fall, winter and spring I studied the entire books of 1 Peter and 1 Thessalonians with my WBS and Thrive groups. Each week I had homework assignments that had me pouring through the pages of Scripture, and that left me completely Bible saturated. The spiritual growth that resulted from time spent in the pure, unadulterated Word of God was incredible. Nothing compares to actually being in the Bible itself and studying it verse by verse, in context.

This summer, I've decided to study the book of James. But instead of taking a carefree (or careless) approach to how I was going to accomplish this goal, I decided to create a study guide for myself that is much like the one I used to study 1 Peter this past year. It's not a curriculum, and it's not a Bible study. It's not something that I will ever get published. Instead it's a a series of questions to guide me in my own verse by verse study of James each week. Michael and I happened to own some great commentaries and we recently invested in the Libronix Bible Software, so my study questions will help me to probe pretty deeply into James, and into supporting passages. My mom and her friend Wendy were so encouraged by my enthusiam for James that they asked if I would be willing to share my study guide with them this summer. I happily obliged, and I would be more than willing to share it with you too.

Even if you've never commented on this blog before, don't let that hold you back from studying the book of James with me this summer. If you would like me to send you a study guide each week for the next sixteen weeks simply type your email address (in the following format) in the comments section: shannonATbeingagirlbooks.com. If enough of you sign up, I might even create a weekly discussion post based on each week's passage.

But whether you choose to join me in the book of James this summer or not (I know some of my CBC friends studied James in 2006 before I was around), I would highly encourage you to take the first step toward not wasting your summer by finding your own book of the Bible and breaking it into small sections and diving in to discover the countless treasures burried in God's Word.

Stay tuned for "Don't Waste Your Summer" tips 2-5 later this week!