Humility and Rejoicing

So yesterday I did something I've never done before. I gave away my Bible. (okay, one of them. Now I don't feel so bad for having several :-) ). I'm envious of those of you who have had this experience many times before. I felt so inadequate, like handing over my Bible was the only thing I could do.

See, I was meeting with a girl at a coffee shop. It was the first time we'd gotten to hang out one-on-one, and so I just barely knew her, and didn't really know which direction the conversation was going to take. I quickly came to find out that this girl is a brand new Christian, which is so incredibly awesome! However, she knows almost nothing about the Bible. So she and a friend were talking about how they wanted to start reading the Bible to learn more about their new faith, but they're overwhelmed and don't know where to begin. Also, her Bible is a little hard to dive into because, yea, verily, it is an Olde King James version. (Yeah, that's hard for me to read too!) I'm fearful writing this, because I'm scared to let you know how sheltered I have been. At this point in our conversation, I felt so lost. I've had some experience talking about the Gospel with people who are familiar with the Old and New Testaments, whether or not they take them as truth. But I feel convicted that my speech is so in tune to "Christian lingo" that I seriously fail in explaining the Bible to someone who really knows nothing about it. I pulled my ESV out of my bag and opened it to John. People always say that John is a good book to start with, and so I showed her where to find it, but I'm afraid I failed in properly explaining it. I also showed her the Psalms, and started to say they were written mainly by David, and then stopped, because I realized that she had no clue who David was. So I had to blunder through giving a very vague picture of the Psalms without using any pre-supposed Christian terminology.

I walked away from our coffee date amazed at the opportunity of seeing Christ at work in this girl's life, and convicted of my own inadequacy. I realized that I really don't know how to talk about the Bible apart from Christian platitudes.

Please pray for me, that I would begin to learn how to see the Gospel through the eyes of a new believer, and that God would grant me the grace and wisdom to humbly learn.
And please pray and praise God for this girl who angels are rejoicing over! Pray that God's word would be living and active in her life, even as He promises it is. And pray that she would take great joy in the opportunity to learn about the immeasurable riches of her Savior!