Soon I will, by God's grace, reach a very important and significant milestone in my life. No, I don't mean the passing of another decade in my lifespan or other such obvious things. Those events are more-or-less inevitable and unavoidable. I am talking about another kind of thing - something which takes a lifetime to develop, where every event leading up to this milestone is as important and as meaningful as the milestone itself.
It all started at the end of the year that I turned thirteen years of age. We had just come back from a very happy and memorable furlough in the US. During that year I had been often challenged to follow the Lord more closely and to live all-out for Him. I attended eighth grade in a Christian school; and near the beginning of the school year attended, as many thousands did, an evangelistic meeting which was part of a crusade lasting many weeks beyond its original plan, and which captured headlines as such events seldom do. The evangelist was a young, little-known man named Billy Graham -- and you know the rest of that story!
Another event of that year was listening to the preaching of the new pastor of our church, and the way he could challenge and inspire people in his inimitable way to know the Lord. Some years ahead of him lay a tremendous radio ministry that would take many listeners around the world on a journey through the Bible. His name, of course, was Dr. J. Vernon McGee. He and others in our church had a lot of influence on me while I was there around them.
I had already accepted Christ as my Savior before this, so I did not respond to the call to go forward at the Billy Graham meeting, but was thrilled to see all that did and became part of God's family as I was. I did become a member of the Church of the Open Door just before beginning the journey back to our part of Africa - a membership which I have not changed since then.
Probably because of all these events and influences on my life, by year's end I felt more determined than ever to commit myself to living for the Lord, and keeping strong in my faith. As I thought about how I could, or should, do this, it was obvious that I must make God's Word, the Bible, a major priority in my life. So, as the new year approached, I made a personal commitment to begin reading the Bible through, and to keep up, if possible, a lifelong "chain" beginning again every time I read it through, and reading it again, and again, and again.......
This struck me at the time as a natural thing to do, and I really believed that most "good" Christians had such a practice. After all, since we believe it is truly and completely God's Word, and therefore of greatest importance to learning about God and His character and commands for us to obey; given these facts, is it not vital to us to keep reading it, and read every part of it and become well-acquainted with it? It was only years later that I learned the shocking truth that most Christians have never even read the Bible through once, and even much fewer have read it more than once.
Meanwhile, I kept on with it, and kept on, through my teenage years, into adulthood, through my years as a missionary in Kenya, then in England, and then back here in the USA. There have, of course, been the "lean" times as well as the rich times, but I have felt the need to persevere in this and have plowed on through all the circumstances of life until the present, and it still goes on and I am not about to quit now!