Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Bullet of Scripture: More Than Just the Facts …

Reading a book can be merely a practical exercise undertaken for utilitarian motives … “I have to!” or “I need to!” Ask any student cramming for an exam pouring over his or her textbook. Some people take pride in reading only for information. Philip Martin, in his article entitled “Reader’s Remorse,”* paints a picture of the “Captain of Industry” being interviewed for a feature piece in some business journal who comments with disdain that “…he hasn’t time to read fiction, that all his reading is designed to provide him competitive advantages…”

Yet reading should provide more than a “competitive advantage” over others. Its higher purpose is to serve as a cultural repository to feed one’s thinking, nourish the heart and enflame the vision! The great heritage of the ages is to be found in the “Great Books” and not in great financial payoffs. A people who do not have even a passing acquaintance with “the books of truth” not only “starve” their own intellects but abet the slow suicide of their own Culture as they have known and experienced it. Not every member of a culture needs to be a connoisseur of books on religion, philosophy, literature and history but there needs to be many among their number who are widely read. Society needs an appreciation for the content of such tomes that inspires respect for learning … otherwise, the past loses its role as prologue and becomes the funeral pyre for civilization. Just as the riches of antiquity burned under the torches of the barbarians at the gates of Rome, and the Romans themselves once destroyed the ancient world’s greatest library in Alexandria, so we destroy ourselves when we destroy knowledge … by the fire of ignorance and the idolatry of the immediate!

There is also a personal pleasure to be found in the reading of books that should not be discounted as trivial or “old fashioned.” To sit down with the object … a book … in one’s hands and concentrate on the words and symbols displayed on its pages is like opening the curtain in a theatre where one’s imagination can be fully engaged and filled with anticipation, pleasure and significance. When reason, hands and eyes work together to deliver the experience of reading, the results within one’s heart can be engrossing. It is a form of recreation unique to itself as much as fishing, golf, travel, gardening, shopping or ballroom dancing.

The most exciting and beneficial experience a person can have on earth is learning how to exchange his or her ideas for God’s ideas … your minimums for His maximums; your limitations for His new horizons; your blindness for His light; your ignorance for His brilliance; your bondage for His freedom. Only reading the “right” things for you … and especially reading the Scriptures … can give you the most profound tool imaginable to expand your mind and your life to the utmost. The quality of your life experience can improve overnight with the intake of the “thoughts” of God! In Isaiah 40:31 we read, “But those whose expectations are in the LORD will renew their strength …” In Hebrew the word renew can mean to exchange! Exchange your thinking for His thinking! To replace, convert or swap your conclusions for Christ’s conclusions brings incredible empowerment. To renew your heart and gain a fresh take on life start reading for truth … for God’s ideas! To start thinking like the Messiah is to start reigning in life as a continuous “overcomer.” Just one of His words can change everything.

A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” Proverbs 25:11

The words I speak unto you are spirit and they are life!” John 6:63

Let the same mind that dwelt in Jesus Christ dwell in you.” Philippians 2:5

*“Reader’s Remorse: Have books lost their shelf life?” by Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Sunday, April 5, 2009.

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