A Walking Bible

Recently my oldest son bought a jar of honey at a local community marketplace. The gentleman who packaged and sold the honey also gave him a business card with the purchase. The card had all the usual pertinent information, but on the backside it had a bible verse. The verse was from the book of Proverbs and referenced eating honey. When my son arrived home he shared with me about the honey and the business card. He asked me if the Bible verse quoted was a real verse or not. I told him I wasn't sure, but rather sarcastically reminded him that he could open his own Bible and check to see. Not to be out done in the sarcasm department, my son responded by saying "Well dad, you're basically a walking Bible. I thought you could just tell me." I've been called many things in life, but a walking Bible has never been one of them, until that particular day. I'm glad my son has such a high regard for my biblical recall, but it is impossible for me, or anyone else, to know every last verse of the Bible from memory.

The underlying truth of the statement my son made wasn't lost on me. He had in his mind the idea that dad knows the Bible very well. One would expect a minister, who studies the scriptures weekly for messages, outside of his own personal Bible study, to be a man with a firm grasp of the scriptures and what they mean. But this idea of being a man or woman with such a firm grasp of the scriptures that we could be called a walking Bible is not just for the clergy. 50, 75, or even 100 years ago men and women had a much stronger grasp of the Bible and what the Scriptures taught. With the invent of the many time-devouring inventions of the last 70 years, mankind has allowed these distractions to devour time they normally would have put towards, among other things, reading and studying their Bibles. With this decrease in attention and time given to Bible study, biblical literacy has decreased. Many men and women who profess to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ have very little understanding of the truths of Scripture outside of what they are taught in a class or hear from the pulpit on Sunday. Don't hear me being critical or cynical about people's lack of participation in the spiritual discipline of Bible study. All I'm doing is stating the facts.

If we as believers want to stand on the truths of God's Word in a world that is falling apart spiritually, then we have to know those truths. The only way we can know those truths in this way is by studying the Bible on a regular basis and outside of participation in church services. If we want to raise children who know how to use their Bibles for more than a coffee table decoration, then we need them to see us studying our Bibles and hear us encouraging them to read it for themselves. Until we get serious about studying the Scriptures, our families and our own spiritual life will suffer. The reason we will suffer is because of the primary effect of reading and studying the Bible. If we know what the Bible says about how we are to live, how we are to treat others, and how we are to interact with God, then we are able to not only know those things, we can put them into practice in our life. Otherwise we are spiritually illiterate Christians groping in the dark for ways to please God and relate to others.

My encouragement to you today would be to make a commitment to take seriously the study of the Bible. Get your hands on a daily reading plan that you like and begin reading. After you start reading daily, then find some Bible study material such as commentaries or books on a particular topic or book of the Bible. If you do you'll find that it will start to change the way you think, change the way you relate to God and others, and change the way you live for Him. Who knows, others might come to you with questions because they think you're a walking Bible too!

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