The Message.

When I was counselling at Bible camp a few weeks ago, one of the activities for the campers would be a "discovery time" session. This is where the boys and girls would be split up; girls with the female speaker, and boys with the male speaker. It wasn't mandatory for counsellors to join in on this activity but I felt I needed some discovery time for myself, so why not?

It was during these sessions where we were all given a copy of The Message Bible (New Testament). The cover of this Bible was suuuuuper cheesy, let me tell you. It was plastered with pictures of families all havin' a good time playing in the park with their loyal, friendly golden retrievers; just LOVING LIFE. So all of us girls then duct-taped brown paper over and around these covers, creating a clean slate, now able to personalize it and make it our own. I'm rather fond of love, so I stuck a heart on the centre, and then I wrote a few of my favorite Bible verses on the front. It turned out something like this:

This Bible is absolutely incredible. I'm not trying to idolize this book in my hands or anything, but I wish I would've had this when I was their age, 14, 15, and 16. I don't know about you, but throughout high school I found the Bible to be so boring, outdated, and old fashioned; I felt like it was completely irrelevant to everything I was going through at the time. I mean, what did the Bible know about how to impress guys, how to fit in at school, how to make more friends, or how to live a flashy life in the 1990's to 2000's? Was it because I was only reading Numbers and Leviticus? Ha! No. It was simply because the Bible was so hard for me to understand; Therefore, with no understanding, there is no applying! I'm not going to lie, even now at 20 years of age I still feel its sometimes hard to understand everything the Bible tells me.

This Message Bible is simply the Bible written in a contemporary english language. In other words, its everyday language that we hear and speak! It makes me actually look forward to reading the Bible and it inspires me to no end!
Here's a passage taken from the Message Bible which is ridiculously messily underlined and doodled over in my Bible:

"No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always 'me first',
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies...
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as He knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: TRUST steadily in God, HOPE unswervingly, LOVE extravagantly. And the best of the three is LOVE." -1 Corinthians 13:3-13

I absolutely love that passage! So I just encourage anyone who is struggling to even open their Bible, to just give this one a shot. And like we did at camp, make this Bible your own. Scribble in it with different coloured pens and markers (I recommend Stabilo pens found in Germany, haha), write along the spine, write along the margins, draw pictures, beside verses write down cross-references to other bible verses; highlight and underline! Study it and then live it! Because this book is God's personal letter written to YOU. <3