Precious Bible, What a Treasure!

I can't think of a better way to begin a blog than with the words of this hymn by John Newton!  Just take a few minutes to meditate on these words...

Precious Bible!  What a treasure

Does the Word of God afford!

All I want for life or pleasure,

Food and tonic, shield and sword;

Let the world account me poor-

Having this I need no more.

Food to which the world's a stranger,

Here my hungry soul is filled;

For excess there is no danger,

I am gorged, yet never ill;

On a dying Christ I feel,

He is meat and drink indeed!

When my faith is faint and sickly

Or when satan wounds my mind-

Tonics to revive me quickly,

Healing medicines I find;

To the promises I flee,

Each affords a remedy.

In the hour of dark temptation

Satan cannot make me yield

For the word of consolation

Is to me a mighty shield;

While the Scripture truths are sure,

From his malice I'm secure.

Vain his threats to overcome me

When I take the Spirit's sword;

Then with ease I drive him from me,

Satan trembles at the Word;

'Tis a sword for conquest made-

Keen the edge and strong the blade.

For about a year I have been contemplating the idea of getting a blog, but have been hesitant to do so.  This hesitancy was based on two things.  

First of all, I didn't want to fall into the trap of using a blog to vent feelings and "blow off steam".  That's silly, rather juvenile and, most importantly, not biblical.  It is not "imparting grace to the hearers" and can be used to stir up dissension.

Secondly, I didn't ever want to pretend that I was any closer or farther from God than where I really was.  With some groups of people I find the temptation to always have some great, fabulous insight to share...or to have some incredibly deep thing that God is teaching me.  With other groups of people, I feel like I can't share honestly where I am because God has so completely and radically changed my life and I have such an incredibly close relationship with Him and I feel like I will intimidate them.  I recognize that both extremes are wrong and so I begin this blog committed to honesty.

So why DID I begin a blog?  There have been times when I wanted to share what God was teaching me or share a passage of Scripture.  I have done this a few times on Facebook, but it just doesn't seem like the right place to do that.  So I'm trying out blogspot!