The story has been told of a certain young lady –an author’s daughter- who loved to read. So great was her love for books that she read all the books in her father’s vast study – almost all that is, except for one particular book which looked rather cumbersome. To start with, both the author’s name and book title looked boring and rather old fashioned. The book itself had a chunky, hard cover, no pictorial illustrations (which she loved) and very small letterings.
“This would take forever to read!” was what she always told herself. The days went by and one fine Saturday morning, while going into her father’s office, she bumped into a rather handsome young man who had come to see her father on business. After exchanging apologies and pleasantries, a friendship started which due to their mutual attraction, developed very fast. In the weeks that followed, she discovered such superb qualities in him which she knew were hard to come by in most men. In fact, the more time she spent with him, the more convinced she was that this was “He” with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. It was thus her joy to discover that he also shared her love for books and had in fact authored a couple but under a pseudonym.* She however got a shock to discover that he was the author of the very book she had ignored all the while.
She read the book through in two days. (…and she enjoyed it too!)
You see, inspiration had come. She now knew and loved the author so reading his work was more a delight than a duty. In all honesty, she’d read a postage stamp as long as he was the “author”. Why? Love was involved.
Many times, we struggle to read our Bibles and when we do, it’s to ‘fulfil all righteousness’. We often wonder why we get so little from it than we used to when we first gave our hearts to Christ. We wonder why magazines and novels seem far more interesting than “God’s word”. We despair, wondering what others see in the Bible that keeps them so content with life while we feel nothing of the sort…not nowadays anyways.
The Bible tells us in Revelations 2: 4 “...thou hast left thy first love”.
Could it be that we get so little from our bibles nowadays because we have somehow gotten out of fellowship with God? Consider when you first got saved. Everything in the bible (king James’ grammar or not) made sense. We had so much fun and illumination drinking from this “well of life” that we couldn’t think of life without a few chapters each day.
What has changed? We have replaced the Bible with programmes, seminars, love feasts, Christian fiction and movies. We’re so busy ‘working FOR God’ that it’s getting harder and harder to ‘walk WITH God’ through his Word. The truth is, the Bible is God’s ‘manufacturer’s manual’ for you and I to live in victory and contentment. Hardly any issue is not touched upon in the Bible. It is suitable for instruction, encouragement and correction. It is suitable for life. Best of all is that it is Spirit and Life and so has the ABILITY to change your heart, life, disposition and character.
Most times we think we’re so pressed for time that we “CANT AFFORD TO read” our Bibles but the truth is, to live our lives to its full capacity and gain enough direction to make us hear the words “well done” on the last day, we CANT AFFORD NOT TO read the our Bibles.