My 10 Favorite Books of the Bible

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Book for Motivation in Life

I feel like most of life's scenarios and questions can be found and answered in the following three books: Job, Jonah, and Proverbs.

Job

Job is basically a tragedy that pulls an ex machina and ends on a happy note. What could possibly happen in my life that would be worse than what happened to Job? He lost all his children. He lost his wealth. He lost his health. The people were convinced he had some major skeletons in his closet for such tragedy to befall him, so he lost his reputation too. Yet, Job was highly favored by God. The book of Job answers the question of why bad things happen to good people and it reminds me to keep my faith through dark times.

Proverbs

Proverbs needs no explanation. The book is full of gems that grace walls, pictures, shirts, etc. There's a proverb for nearly every situation. The short, succinct messages are easy to memorize, poetic, and profound.

Jonah

When I was a child, my grandmother used to always remind me that "a hard head makes a soft tail"—i.e., when you don't listen you get a lot of spankings. Jonah is the spiritual embodiment of that theme for me. Jonah is most famous for ending up in the belly of a sea creature for 3 days. Why was he in the sea creature? Because he didn't listen to God. Jonah took the long, hard road, choosing to ignore God's calling. Imagine how different the story would be if he'd just gone where God told him to and done what God told him to do in the first place! That's the story of all our lives. We often wrestle with God, trying to go our own way, and in doing so we put our lives and the lives of others in danger.

The Relationship Between God and the Church

I know, you're expecting the gospels, or some other books from the New Testament that talk directly about the Bride of Christ or the history of the church, but actually this set of three (and a quarter) is all from the old testament. The themes in these books drive home God's love for us in a way that just touches my soul.

Genesis 1-3

Don't get me wrong, Genesis is a great book as a whole, and probably one of the best books of the Bible when it comes to the ratio between importance, interesting, and ease of understanding, but when it comes to the relationship of God and the Church, Genesis 1-3 melts my heart every time. When you truly dig into God creating us, giving us free will, the parallels between Adam (God's created son) and Jesus (God's only begotten son), and the fact that God spoke salvation into existence before He ever uttered the punishment for mankind's sin, it's powerful.

Exodus

Exodus tell us about the formation of Israel as an independent nation the first time, which was spurred by God delivering them from bondage in Egypt. It doesn't seem that important from a Gentile perspective, but it actually has a ton of spiritual significance. The journey of the Israelites out of bondage into freedom is the same as our journey from sinfulness to righteousness. Exodus introduces us to the holy feasts, which align with their journey, but also foretell of Christ's coming. We see God call Moses directly and using Moses, triumph over the most powerful king of the time. There's a song, "Reckless Love," that says "There's no shadow You won't light up, mountain You won't climb up, coming after me. There's no wall You won't kick down, lie You won't tear down, coming after me." Exodus truly shows us the lengths God is willing to go through to save His people.

Ruth

Most people go to Ruth to talk about waiting for love and basically romanticize the book as a how-to for dating. While that may be a valid interpretation, Ruth really is about the relationship of Jesus, the redeemer, and the Church, who needs redeeming. Ruth travels a great distance and gives up everything she knew to follow her mother-in-law, but the two women can't survive without a male benefactor, just as the church cannot survive without Jesus as our protector. Ruth puts in the effort of gleaning the fields for food (i.e., reading the Word and seeking God for spiritual food). Boaz ensures that there's always enough for her to glean, just as Jesus paved a way for us to get to Him. In the end we see the happy resolution of redemption and protection bestowed upon Ruth (the Church) by Boaz (Jesus).

Esther

How did Esther end up in my list of favorite books concerning God and His relationship with the Church when the book of Esther never mentions God? When I reread Esther last year and realized the whole story could also be interpreted as an allegory for the transferal of God's Word from the Israelites to the Gentiles and the salvation of God's people through Jesus, my mind was blown. If you shortened the history and foretellings of the Bible into their simplest forms, you would get the book of Esther with different names.

Prophecy and the End Times

Seeing prophecy come true is mind boggling. If there's one way to shock yourself into awe of God and the legitimacy of God's Word, it's to read and understand prophecy. That's why my actual favorite book of the Bible is in this set of three wonderful books on prophecy and the end times.

Daniel

Daniel is a history book, except it was written hundreds of years before the history took place. Reading Daniel and a history text book at the same time is life changing; not to mention what you see once you realize that Daniel is a key to Revelation! Not only does the book give us a roadmap of events for what to expect, Daniel and his friends provide an example of how we should react. From refusing to eat unclean foods to refusing to bow to the golden statue and face death, Daniel defines standing firm in the face of persecution. We can be confident that if we stand with God, when we get thrown in the fire, He'll bring us out unscathed because that's exactly what happened in the book of Daniel.

Matthew

A list of favorites isn't complete without a book from the gospels! In Matthew, Jesus addresses His return and the end of the Jewish nation. Sometimes it's hard to figure out which end He's referring to, but Jesus' Word about the end of days resonate for both occasions. Jesus gives us the tools and signs to identify false prophets and false doctrine, reminding us that if something is devoid of love, it's also devoid of God. Unfortunately, so many people do not know how to spot false doctrine and we have so many people turned away from God over false prophets and false doctrine. Matthew is the book that I feel like should be in the forefront of everyone's mind, may be then there'd be less non-believers.

Revelation

My absolute favorite book in the Bible is Revelation. I had an irrational fear of the end of the world as a child because I didn't understand what was supposed to happen or what it meant. Reading Revelation helped me understand that the end of the world is actually a victory for those who surrendered to God. Piecing together the pieces of the puzzle and finally understanding what's really written there was a fun journey, but more importantly, it gave me peace. The church—at least the churches I grew up attending—never really explained the end of the world, so it seemed uncharacteristically evil and harsh. It was only when I truly understood the book of Revelation that I could truly accept God and be at peace with Him.

God Leads, If You Follow

No matter how smart, logical, or well organized we are, things simply don't turn out the way we envision. The outcome is usually better for us, but we don't always see it that way. Every time I find myself looking in the mirror wondering where my plan fell apart, I refer myself to 2 books: Jonah and Job.

Truth be told, the struggle is always real. We—at least I—generally take the path that leads to what we want. However, it usually doesn't work out the way we think it will. No matter how smart, logical, or well organized we are, things simply don't turn out the way we envision. The outcome is usually better for us, but we don't always see it that way. Every time I find myself looking in the mirror wondering where my plan fell apart, I refer myself to 2 books: Jonah and Job.

Not only did I just finish rereading Job (I'm working to get it posted, I promise!), but I've been in need of reminding myself about this exact lesson. This past December, when I was laying out my reading plan for the year, I found it fitting that around the time I would be finishing up my dissertation and defending, I would be in the books of Job and Psalms. It see God alreadyknew I would need these passages at the time.

When this Spring semester rolled around, I started heavily pursuing job opportunities only to find that suddenly, it had become hard. Only a year ago I impressed plenty of people, secured and nailed the interviews, but a monkey wrench in my dissertation saw me postpone graduation and lose these opportunities. My first interview opportunity of the Spring fell apart the moment our newly inducted president signed an executive order placing a hiring freeze on the government. After struggling, I secured a second interview, which has turned into a passive-aggressive disaster.

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When this second opportunity appeared, I was thrilled. It ticked off all of the boxes on my list: in a good location, with a stable company, pays well, in my field/area of interest. I thought I had struck gold and things were finally coming together. However, I'm well aware of the lengths the devil will go through to lure us away from God. Remember, Jonah? God told him to go to Ninevah, but Jonah got on a boat going in the opposite direction! Cue tempest storm and getting swallowed by some sort of sea creature. I'm not trying to get to God's end game the hard way, like Jonah. When God says "go to Ninevah," I want to pack my bags and go to Ninevah. Since, I don't like cold weather and 90% of the jobs in my fields are in places like Oregon, Seattle, and Boston, it seems highly likely that my Ninevah will be an opportunity in a place I'm not gung ho about moving to. And since the devil's goal in life is to get us to do the opposite of what God wants, it seemed highly likely that temptation would come in the form of an opportunity right here in warm, sunny, South Florida. So, before I went in to the interview, I told myself to make sure I looked for God's plan.

The interview itself went fairly well. I thought, "maybe I'm in the place Job was at the beginning or the end of his story; maybe God is about to give me exactly what I asked for." Then suddenly, God pulled the veil from eyes and revealed the devil's scheme. The post-interview follow-up has been enlightening. The company has contacted me three times since the interview. None of these conversations were to collect more information or to inform me if I did or did not get the position. That wouldn't be so bad if the supervisor of the position didn't keep reminding me that the position was meant for someone with more experience, that the deck was stacked against me, and that if he "gave me the position" I'd need to prove myself because he could have hired someone with more experience... *Side eye*

While this experience opened my eyes to see that this wasn't the job opportunity God intended for me, and got me searching for my "Ninevah," It left something heavy on my heart. When I hung up the phone, I felt like Job. Doing the "right" thing, working hard, and putting in the extra effort seemed like a waste of time. Here there I was, after years of putting in hard work, on the brink of a PhD, and the one company that had followed through with an interview, convinced me that I don't want the job before they even told me the outcome of the interview. This is the low that bugged Job; he had done everything right, yet things weren't going the way he wanted. Job makes note to his friends that the wicked people around him prosper while he writhes in agony. I think we can all relate to Job's observation. You have drug dealers, strippers, and mobster making tons of money—of course, we see the risks associated with these lifestyles and know that the stakes are high. Yet, you have celebrities, politicians, and crooked businessmen that we see as successful and don't see any harm come to despite ungodly practices or lack of experience...

Think about it, we elected a man who has no government experience, no military experience, and failed business experiences as president of the United States. Meanwhile, after 3 internships in computer science, a research position for the past 4 years, and a PhD, I "don't have any experience," "need too much training," and "would be better off trying to get an internship first." Despite the fact that I was raised not to compare myself to people—after all, you never know what's going on behind the scenes in someone's life—it's a sobering reality that really does make you relate to Job. You're going to wonder if you did something wrong and why God let others succeed. We have to remember all that glitters isn't gold. God has a wonderful plan for us, but it doesn't always match our plan. It's precisely then that we need to cling to the lessons in Jonah and Job.

I think, God will give you someone
Much better than me, trust me
Your eyes will be okay, it will be alright
You'll be just fine, just fine, just fineChris Brown - Just Fine

I woke up this morning with lyrics from a song off Chris Brown's 2005 album (I'm not even a Chris Brown fan, and it wasn't a single off his album, what are the odds of those lyrics popping into my head?) The lyrics that I woke up singing are shown to the right. That's God pushing through my subconscious. That's Him saying, "I have something better for you."

Job felt like God had abandoned him. He kept wanting to "plead his case" before God. However, God never left. God always knew Job's case. God spoke of Job to the devil like a proud parent. "Have thou considered my servant Job?" (Job 1:8) As things became progressively worse, Job became self-righteous. He was so focused on the fact that he had done nothing wrong that he missed God's voice, as Elihu explains. No one is perfect; I'm blessed to have come even this far. I don't deserve even half the blessings God has given me, so who am I to say what should happen next? As we go through these experiences, we have to humble ourselves before God and wait for His instruction.

As it would happen, before I could finish this post, or get ready to go to work, I received a phone call to set up the next steps for another exciting opportunity. I know that God has not abandoned me; He is just preparing me for the right opportunity. The more I feel I need to reach out and take matters into my own hand, the more likely I need to be praying and listening. If you open your heart, God will open your eyes and ears. That still small voice will come to you, and you will know which path leads to Ninevah versus the eye of the storm. Top