Growing in Faith through God’s Word By Priscilla Bettis
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Someone was coming. I was ten years old and supposed to be in bed, but I was on the floor, crouched over the Bible my parents didn’t know I had, flashlight in hand. My mom didn’t trust “those evangelists,” and here I was, newly saved after attending an evangelistic summer camp for elementary school kids. (My mom thought it was an outdoor-skills camp.) When a camp counselor found out I didn’t have a Bible, she gave me a used King James translation. It was chambray blue and hardcover.
Before whoever was coming up the stairs walked past my room, I quietly closed the Bible and slipped it through the space between the wood skirt of my dresser and the carpet. Switching off my flashlight, I jumped into bed and faked sleeping. My mom or dad opened my door a crack, apparently to check that I was in bed, then closed it again.
It’s not that my parents were atheists or anything. In fact, the previous winter, my dad had slipped me a pocket New Testament. LOL, it wasn’t until I went to summer camp that I found out the Bible has thirty-nine more books. But my mom had been thwarted, robbed (literally), and denigrated by Bible-thumping Christians, and legalistic Christians had denied her sister birth control pills, so our family was not religious.
The first year after being saved, I read through my new-old King James Bible, cover to cover. I still shake my head that as a ten- (and then eleven-) year-old, I got through all those thees and thous and begats. But that Bible was my lifeline to God, and I was determined.
At the time, I thought reading the Bible was a one-and-done kind of thing. Little did my young self-know that reading the Bible is a lifelong journey that continues to feed your faith. It took me a couple of decades to figure that out.
Of course, sometimes we’re dog tired and don’t feel like opening our Bibles. Or the Enemy—who does NOT want us to read God’s Word—attempts to distract us. But we must persevere because Scripture makes us wise so we can understand salvation, and it teaches us how to live righteously (2 Timothy 3:15-16).
A new year is upon us. I plan to keep reading my Bible. Maybe 2026 is the year you dig deeper into God’s Word, or even buy your first Bible, or take the next step (whatever that is) on your Bible-reading journey. I no longer have to hide my Bible under my dresser (and I’m genuinely thankful that I live in a country where it’s still legal to own one), and I praise God that He continues to nourish my faith through His Word. He will nourish your faith, too, every time you open your Bible.
As I write this, we are at the end of 2025. I have enjoyed a year of Bible reading that revealed even more to me about God’s love, sovereignty, and glory.