Reading the red words

Did you know that the Bible contains roughly 750,000 words? I said roughly because the word count depends on which version one reads. That is a whole lot of words. I recently finished authoring my second book which is in the 33,000-word range, and that was a lot of writing.

Many never read the whole Bible. Many folks have never read it at all. Others simply regularly gravitate toward those parts of the bible that speak to them the most. Some just read randomly in terms of what they read and when they read. To each, though, one thing is the constant—it’s a big book, it has a lot of words, and some of it is simply tough to read.

I got curious the other day because a friend of mine share with me that out of all his bible reading, he loves reading the red words—the words Jesus spoke. He shared that while all the story lines in the Bible speak about Jesus’ time on earth speak volumes about Jesus the man, the red words, he feels, are those words which Jesus is saying directly to him in a personal way.

I found that the word count for what Jesus directly said in the Bible, those red words, ranges between 1,026 and 2,024. The higher end number is derived from including duplication of His words in the first four books of the New Testament. Of all those words of His, the most often used by Him are the “I aim’s”, the “come to me’s”, the “follow me’s”, and the word “love”.  That speaks to me.

Perhaps if you are unaccustomed to reading the Bible in any regular fashion, you might consider finding and reading those red words to see how they may relate to you and your relationship with Him. Then perhaps you may feel a bit more confident in your ability to read those other 749,000.