Searing God’s Truths Into My Heart
By Jessica Brodie
“Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4
If you asked “teenager me” what I wanted to be when I grew up, you’d get one answer: Actress. I loved everything about the theater—running lines, blocking, rehearsals, costume fittings, set design, cast parties, you name it.
At home I’d pore over my scripts until I knew every line as if I’d written it, not only my own lines but the other cast members’, too. By opening night, it felt like I’d become my character. I carried myself like she would, walked and talked like she would, even found myself dreaming her dreams at night. When I strode on stage and opened my mouth, her words would roll off my tongue naturally. I didn’t even have to think about it—by then, it was habit.
But it wasn’t always that way with me and my Bible. For many years after I recommitted my life to Christ and owned my identity as a Christian, I never cracked open God’s holy Word. I figured I got what I needed in songs on the radio or sermons at church. Reading the Bible didn’t make me a Christian any more than going to church did, I told myself. Real Christianity was about my faith and my actions. I didn’t “need” to read the Bible.
Then God nudged me to start reading the Bible—here and there at first, and eventually daily. Now I never skip a day. What had once seemed “boring” now feels like oxygen, necessary to life. At times when talking to someone, verses or biblical wisdom will roll off my tongue as naturally as the lines in scripts I used to memorize back in my teen years. It’s as if God’s word has taken over, become part of my identity. It’s rooted in me, and I within it.
Jessica Brodie is an award-winning journalist and a member of the Wholly Loved Ministry team. She’s also an author who currently serves as the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism. She is the author of More Like Jesus: A Devotional Journey (2018) and editor of Stories of Racial Awakening: Narratives on Changed Hearts and Lives of South Carolina United Methodists (2018), both from her newspaper’s Advocate Press. She also writes contemporary women’s fiction, represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency. Her novel The Memory Garden won the American Christian Fiction Writers’ 2018 Genesis Contest. She has a faith blog at JessicaBrodie.com.
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Originally published Thursday, 14 December 2023.
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