Words

I lay in bed last night, flipping through my Bible, my big black King James Study Bible, in search of Scripture references about “creation”.  I’ve found that I “study” my Bible better if I have a topic to pursue, rather than just reading.  (There’s a lot to be said for just “reading”, too, but I LEARN less when I just “read”.) 

As I did this, I thought to myself, “I enjoy this.” 

Somewhere in the midst of that thought and that pleasure, a glimpse of Perry Noble entered my mind. 

If I just study the Bible like this because I enjoy it, I’m likely to consider myself a real Christian, while never doing anything Christlike at all. 

If I just lay around and consume the Bible, I’m going to be spiritually fat but be absolutely useless in the kingdom.

I bet that raises the hackles of some of you.  I understand.  It raises my hackles, too. 

It’s a lot easier to get in a corner and study the Word of God than it is to get out on the streets amongst people that desperately need to know Jesus loves them.  It’s a lot easier to cruise into church on Sunday morning and critique the preacher for T.C. (that’s “Theological Correctness”, to you PC types…) than it is to sit down at McDonald’s with a homeless guy and say “Tell me about your life, bro…”  It’s easy to raise a big leather book in the air and say “THIS IS THE WORD OF GOD!”, but is it so easy to say “I love you, and I want to be Jesus to you” to a pregnant teenager with tears running down her face because her mom and dad have kicked her out of the house. 

I enjoy getting into the Bible.  I think it’s incredibly important that Christians study the Word.  That we KNOW the Word.  And I think KNOW that it’s okay – even mandantory – to ENJOY our relationship with God and getting to know Him through the Word. 

But if we only do the parts that we “enjoy”, then we terribly miss the point. 

Ya think?

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