The Good Book

I left the house before dark this morning and went to one of my favorite breakfast restaurants to enjoy some time alone with the Lord. Once I was ushered to my table I hurriedly busied myself with Bible study and prayer while waiting on my breakfast. I had my Bible opened to Deuteronomy chapter 31 reading and meditating on what I sensed the Lord was telling me. I was so engrossed in my studies I barely noticed when waitress sat my pancakes before me. I did not want to lose my train of thought.

There was an elderly couple seated to my left. Every once in awhile when I would stop and take a bite I could tell the lady was watching me out of my peripheral vision. I did not think much about it because I often catch people staring at me, which comes with the territory of having our worship services televised.

This lady approached my table as she and her husband were leaving and she asked me, “Is that the good book?” She was pointing to my open Bible and maneuvering herself for a closer look. I replied with a smile that it was. She showed me her little New Testament Bible and said she did not know if I was reading the Bible or the Book of Mormon. She then went on to inform me that she was ready to give a word of witness for Christ if I had not been reading the Bible. I told her I was a pastor and she commented that she and her husband were down from Minnesota visiting friends and on their way back home and they were believers.

The “Good Book” is regularly open in front of me. I have read it in hotel lobbies, airports and airplanes, in restaurants, on buses, in vehicles, in my office and home, as well as outside at local parks, on beaches, lakefronts, and up in the mountains. The “Good Book” is a vital part of life. I go to the Bible for direction, counsel, encouragement, inspiration, strength, hope, wisdom, reproof, and nourishment for my soul by seeking the Lord through its pages. We seek to live by the principles of scripture as a family. If you were to walk in my home whether you were in the kitchen, the dining room, living room, walking down the hall or a bedroom, you would see verses from the “The Good Book” all over our walls.

It just so happened that we went out to buy two new Bibles yesterday for two of our boys who needed new ones. As were driving back home they began commenting on some facts about the Bible. It is the best selling book of all time and the book most often shoplifted. People often see the Bible as mystical, mysterious, almost magical. I see it as truth for life.

The “Good Book” in such an important part of my daily life I cannot imagine life without it. I need scripture for my times of devotion, for my writing, for preaching and teaching, relating to my wife, raising my boys, and daily living. I need the Bible when I make decisions or counsel others about decisions they have to make. It is vital to my successful walk with the Lord and service to Him through His church. This does not mean however that the Bible is a sort of good luck charm. It is God’s mind and heart revealed to man. If you want to know God consult the pages of scripture. If you want to know where God stands on different subjects read and study the Bible.

In my office I have eight bookshelves lined from top to bottom with books. Some of those books I have read over and over again while there are some I still have not gotten around to reading yet. There are thousands of them but if you took the collective value of all of them combined they are not worth more to me than my Bible. It is more than a good book. I have read it from cover to cover well over a dozen times in the past fifteen years.

I well recall the old saying, “Show me a Bible that is falling apart and I will show you a life that is not falling apart.” How true that is. Do you crave the word of God? Do you long to get lost in that book? Are you eager to meet with the Author of Salvation in the pages of the “Good Book?” Do you long to see God fulfill the promises He has made in the Bible? It might be the best selling book in history but it is not the most read or heeded book in history.

The Bible is unlike any other book ever written. It was divinely inspired by God and is truth without any mixture of error. “For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” [Heb 4:12] Some preachers are ashamed to believe it or preach it anymore. Most people are pretty Bible illiterate. Fewer seem willing to live by its principles. That does not make it any less true or less needed than it has ever been. When was the last time you got into the “Good Book” More importantly when was the last time the “Good Book” got into you?