An explorer discovered an ancient sundial. Recognizing its value, he restored it to its origianal condition and put it in a museum where it would be shielded from the elements – including the sun! Although he valued it, he never used it.
Is this a picture of how many Christians treat the Bible: valued but unused? I think many see the Bible as valuable, but as requiring a lot of effort to understand and apply. People really feel that they are reading about the long ago and far away. Most people think the Bible just can’t compete with Time or Newsweek.
Do you value the Book or do you use the Book? The real test of value is in the use. Agree or disagree?
Tags: Bible, value
A couple of weeks ago I shared in church the story of opening the sunroof on our new car while going through the car wash. Everyone had a good laugh at our expense. If we had only read the instruction manual first, we would’ve known which buttons to push. Come to think about it, most of our mistakes are the result of not reading the instructions first.
Much of the pain in our life could be averted if we just read the instructions in The Book first. God loves each of us with a love that cannot be measured. Because He does not want us to hurt, He gave us some wise counsel for living in the Bible.
The Book says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect [mature] thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Old Chinese proverb say: “He who ignores instructions could end up in hot water!”
Tags: Bible, instructions, mistake
When a team of Christians visited Stavropol, Russia, in 1994 to hand out Bibles, a local citizen said he recalled seeing Bibles in an old warehouse. They had been confiscated in the 1930s when Stalin was sending believers to the gulags. Amazingly, the Bibles were still there.
Among those who showed up to load them into trucks was a young agnostic student just wanting to earn a day’s wage. But soon he slipped away from the job to steal a Bible. A team member went looking for him and found him sitting in a corner weeping.
Out of hundreds of Bibles, he had picked up one that bore the handwritten signature of his own grandmother. Persecuted for her faith, she had no doubt prayed often for her family and her city. God used that grandmother’s Bible to convict that young man.
The language of the Spirit is coincidence. Do you have a coincidental story relating to a Bible?
Tags: Bible, grandmother, persecution
Can there be a mistake in the Bible? History records quite a mistake in an eighteenth century printing of the scripture. The command in the Gospel of John to sin no more had been printed as “sin on more.” This simple one-letter reversal obviously changed the entire meaning of the text and subsequently had to be revised and the wrongly worded Bibles pulled off the market.
In 1712 an Oxford edition of the Bible printed a chapter heading in the Gospel of Luke referring to a vineyard gardener as, “The Parable of the Vinegar.” And a gender mix-up in a 1923 version produced, “A man may not marry his grandmother’s wife.” These blunders make it appear that the Bible cannot be trusted. But I think its printers who cannot be trusted. God has never made a mistake.
What arguments have you recently heard about why the Bible is untrustworthy?
Tags: Bible, mistake
Tonight Show host Jay Leno did “man-on-the-street” interviews. One night back in 1999 he collared some young people to ask them questions about the Bible.
“Can you name one of the Ten Commandments?” he asked two college-age women. One replied, “Freedom of speech?” Mr. Leno said to the other, “Complete this sentence: Let he who is without sin….” Her response was, “have a good time?”
Mr. Leno then turned to a young man and asked, “Who, according to the Bible, was eaten by a whale?” The confident answer was, “Pinocchio.”
Are you laughing or crying? We live in a culture where the basics of Christianity are absent. What is the dumbest misunderstanding of scripture you’ve recently heard?
Tags: Bible, humor, ignorance
I have a spelling checker
I disk covered four my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot see.
The words are spelled correctly, but they aren’t the right words to convey the message of the writer. It’s proof positive that if you’re looking to the wrong source for correctness, then you aren’t right.
It follows then, that its possible to trust the wrong source of information about finances, sex, or spiritual matters. It is wisdom to find the source that has real answers to life’s problems and stick to it. The Bible is always write.
Tags: Bible, communication, mistakes
Bible teacher Arthur Arnold shared that he was calling on a family in his church. Before leaving the house, he asked the family if they wanted him to read from the Bible to them. The lady of the house said to the young son, “Go bring the big book we read out of so much.” The boy returned with the Sears & Roebuck catalog!
The Bible was meant to be kept in a prominent place in our lives, and that doesn’t mean open on the coffee table. The prominent place is in our hearts. And we have to read it to know what it says.
What portion of the Bible have you been reading lately?
Tags: Bible, humor