“When therefore (Jesus) was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them: And they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus said.”
After Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples believed what He had previously told them about it, and they believed the scriptures – the Bible. They realized afresh and anew that the Bible had a place in their lives. The Bible should have a place in the life of every Christian. It is our source book. There are many good Christian books on the market, but none should take the place of the Bible. Let me illustrate what I mean: The Bible has a place in the hands of a Christian. We need to take the Bible in our hands and read it every day. We should set aside a time each day to read and study the Bible. We should read it systematically. We should begin at chapter one of a book and read through to the end. Of course there are times when we will read a verse here and a verse there, but this should not be all that we do. The Bible has a message, and we can’t get the message by just skipping around in it. We should read it through. It is not too much to ask a Christian to at least read the New Testament through every year. There are 260 chapters in the New Testament; therefore, we can read it through in 260 days if we read just one chapter a day. Ideally, we should read through the whole Bible every year. The Bible has a place in the head of a Christian. We need to know what’s in the Bible and what the real message of the Bible is. It is a book of redemption ultimately through Jesus Christ. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses tell us that most of their converts in the south are Southern Baptists. If those Southern Baptists knew the Bible, they would not believe those doctrines. We need an intellectual grasp of scripture. This does not mean that we have to be intellectual to understand it. It means that the message of the Bible should be part of our thought processes. We really need to think about what we read in the Bible. The Bible has a place in the heart of a Christian. We should internalize what we read in the Bible. Its message should be in our hearts, our emotions, indeed, in our souls. Just as the food that we eat becomes part of us, what we read becomes a part of us. If we never read the Bible, or only read it sporadically, it will not become part of whom and what we are. Life’s decisions are made from the head and the heart. If the Bible is to help us make decisions, it should be in our heads and hearts. We should take the Bible seriously enough that its message becomes a part of our decision making processes. If it is not in our hearts, we will not believe it or practice it. We should be emotional about the Bible. It should make us laugh and cry. It should make us stop and think about our lives and cause us to change what needs changing in our lives. We should be emotional enough about the Bible to share its message about Jesus with other people. After all, Jesus is the main focus of the Bible. I do not consider myself an expert on the Bible. I am a student of the Bible. I read it through every year and learn something new almost every day. I do not write this to brag, but to get you to see that if I can read it through, you can too. Pick up your Bible, read it, think about and believe it in your heart. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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