January 21
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105
As we wrap up for now comments on how important being in the Word regularly and diligently is for every Christian who wants to live a fruitful and victorious life, I would like to share some introductory comments from the excellent book I mentioned a few days ago, Living By The Book, by Howard and William Hendricks (Moody Press, 1991), Chapter 1 entitled “Why People Don’t Study the Bible”:
Shortly after I became a Christian, someone wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible these words:
‘This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.’
That was true then, and it is still true today. Dusty Bibles always lead to dirty lives. In fact, you are either in the Word, and the Word is conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ, or you are in the world, and the world is squeezing you into its mold.
And yet the great tragedy among Christians today is that too many of us are under the Word of God, but not in it for ourselves. I met a man once who had driven his family all the way across the country to attend a Bible conference.
Amazed, I asked him, ‘Why did you come so far?’ ‘Because I wanted to get under the Word of God,’ he said. On the face of it, that sounds wonderful. But later it hit me: here was a man willing to drive twelve hundred miles to get under the Word of God; but was he just as willing to walk across the living room floor, pick up a Bible, and get into it for himself?
You see, there’s no question that believers need to sit under the teaching of God’s Word. But that ought to be a stimulus, not a substitute, for getting into it ourselves.
They then went on to give the six main reasons people give for not studying their Bibles, which we will mention tomorrow.
How about you? Are you willing to put the effort into studying the Word of God and drawing near to Him, being transformed into the image of Christ? Or are you content to coast, living life in your own wisdom and strength, muddling along in your problems and sins, deceiving yourself into thinking you aren’t that bad and are doing the best you can?
Make a habit of spending daily time with the Lord in His Word. Don’t delay this crucial quest a day longer, and don’t stop until you have made a habit of it that you can’t live without.