I've read the entire Bible. I've read the Old Testament two or three times, but some chapters a lot more than that. I've read the New Testament many more times, and the Gospels over and over since I was in my 20's. After accepting the Lord as my Savior back then, that's about all I read, the Gospels. I got that idea actually from a pretty secular book - Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. It's sort of "new age" and the Jesus in it isn't really the Jesus of the Bible. But that book pointed me in the direction of another, called The Way of a Pilgrim, which is a mystical book in Orthodox Christianity written over a hundred years ago. I'm not sure I would entirely agree with its beliefs now, but there's an Orthodox prayer in there that I said. It's commonly called "the Jesus prayer." It's based on Scripture. "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."

In that Pilgrim book, one person recommends reading the Gospels, so I did that. It took me ten more years to read the whole Bible, and I found out what I was missing. I actually graduated from college with a degree in English, but knew little about the Bible. That was okay, though. There's a common course in college called, "The Bible as Literature," and I'm actually glad I decided not to take it. I'm sure it's not taught with any reverence. I couldn't have lasted through it. From what I saw and experienced even back then it's trouble not to take the perspective of professors.

I was finally led to read the whole Bible by getting on the internet. I was pretty liberal then and an atheist on a liberal political forum mentioned that he loved going to the forums of Christianity.com, which have since been shut down, and basically fighting with Christians. So I checked out his accidental tip and started posting a lot at Christianity.com myself. And when I noticed other Christians repeatedly talking about putting on the whole armor of God and talking about the Fruit of the Spirit, it dawned on me after a few times that those weren't their words but must be Bible verses, and I decided they sounded like good verses and I had to learn about them for myself. And I did. I was so excited to read the whole Bible and actually know what God has had to say to us through His written Word. I was also a little shaken to think I might have lived my whole life and never known. Reading the Bible totally changed my life and my relationship with Him. Even though I was a Christian when I read it, I had still been looking around for answers in all sorts of other places, but once I read the Bible, I knew I'd found all the answers I'd been seeking right there, and so much more. I hope to do more than I'm presently doing to point other people in the direction of God's Word.