It is not easy to understand God, or I would say to myself, not possible. Why? Because if God is the creator of in this universe and everything in it, nothing can be bigger than Him. Just like if someone created a robot. A robot could never understand its creator. It is only designed to obey the creator's commands. But God created human being in His image. We are created with mind and freewill, to wonder and follow our own hearts, or to obey and go with His way. But nowadays, the saying "Follow Your Heart..." is accepted more than "Trust and Obey". It seems that the word "obey"is only for little children. Moreover, many Christians, including myself, often twists the "trust God" part in our own ways knowingly or unknowingly, such that we just do what we WANT to do, and let God take care the rest, which is somehow against Jesus' teaching, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Matthew 4:7)
Reading the Bible should not merely based on obedience. It is also not just something you want. If it is a mere obedient, it would bring to self righteousness and pride, which then lead to self destruction. If it is just something based on want, it would lead to lack of understanding and appreciation. It is like food we eat everyday. We want and we need food to live, not too much and not too little.
Being obedient of something we don't understand yet is the hardest part. For the world has gone far in the opposite direction of the Bible. We get confused a lot of what we need and what we want. We focus more on physical needs, and neglected our soul. When we realize our souls are in hunger, we blame it on our body, activities kept us away from our spiritual need. It is true that when we are physically worn out, it is almost impossible to sit and pray. All we want to do is just to lay down and rest totally, our body and mind. Prayer sometimes requires me to think more, which I often fail to do when I am exhausted once I am back home from work. When I force myself to pray and read the Bible a little in the midst of my work and house chores, it doesn't give me any peace at all. Instead I am always burst out in anger afterwards. It is like I pour out my heart, read the Word to renew my heart, but does not have the ability to actually "chew" and "digest", and everything is "thrown up". Is it because I do my prayer and Bible reading out of obedience alone? Or my motive's probably just not right. To gain wisdom for my own pride to stand on my own understanding against others is indeed a sin. Reading Bible and prayer should be a way to worship God, not for our own benefits, but HIS. To lift up our happiness in HIM alone, to live according the Creator's purpose, to desire what HE desires. It is overall not about our own gains. Our looses might be HIS gains, and HIS gains are always our true gains. But Satan always tempts us with his lie that we could live happily without given up our own gains, just as how Satan tempted Jesus on the mountain. But Jesus answered him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord, your God, and serve Him only." (Matthew 4:10)
