John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
I used to think I needed to carry my Bible with me to school. I thought that's what good Christians did. I gave up. And sometimes, as I grew older, I heard about men and women who kept a Bible on their desks or in their office. Having a visible Bible let people know they were Christians. It was a way to witness.
Sometimes the Bible acts as a prop. You put it on the coffee table. You keep it in your backpack. You place it prominently on the desk. It symbolizes Christianity.
The thing is, I never actually heard about these very good Christians actually reading those Bibles, except maybe a few verses a day. And that's a problem.
We memorized passages. We explored apologetics and knew how to argue for certain doctrines. We carried the Bibles to church and learned where all the books were.
We certainly didn't read entire books at one sitting. We didn't read for the stories. And we didn't read to know Jesus.
And in this, we're a lot like the Pharisees, who search the Scripture because we know it'll make our lives better and even give us eternal life, but we don't see that every story, every law, every piece of instructions, points us to Jesus. And we get so busy being good Christians--or feeling bad about not being good Christians, that we even forget to talk to Jesus. Or listen to his voice. Or look around to see what he's doing all around us.
When we read the Bible, really sit down to read it, we find out who Jesus is. Who he really is. What he sounds like. What he does. How he treats people. Sometimes what he does is totally unexpected. It's not always the way we would respond or react. It's not always what he would do.
And I'm just thinking that one of the most important things we can do is read the Bible and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the Word of God. It always points to Jesus.
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