Chips and Soda

Have you ever noticed how we seem to overlook so many passages of the Bible?

I have a theory about that: We get so absorbed about the gems of truth that someone else has discovered that we forget to go look for gems on our own.

It’s as though we get so caught up admiring the gold nuggets that someone else found that we totally forget to go digging for gold nuggets for ourselves, and the result is we stay poor while our friend who found the nuggets becomes fabulously wealthy.

Here is an example: A few years ago a book titled “The Prayer of Jabez”, based on 1 Chronicles 4:10, became a best seller. Preachers all over the place preached sermons on The Prayer of Jabez, and countless people prayed The Prayer of Jabez. I wonder how many people were disappointed because what happened to Jabez never happened to them. It must have been a lot, because had what Jabez prayed happened in the lives of even a small percentage of those people who bought the book, it should have changed America.

What if those people, instead of praying The Prayer of Jabez, had gone searching for golden nuggets of their own? What if a small percentage of Christians began searching for God’s plan for their own lives, discovered that plan, and experienced the thrill of almighty God working in their lives?

Please understand that I’m in no way criticizing Christian books. There are many fine books out there, and I have personally benefited from many of them. However, we cannot, we must not, let them become a substitute for God’s Word.

This is the trap people fall into. We substitute the pre-digested for the real thing. It’s like eating chips and drinking soda when you’re hungry. Those things give an immediate high, but the high doesn’t last.

I encourage everyone to read books by good Christian authors. But don’t allow that reading to take away from your time of reading the Bible. Don’t substitute reading about God for reading the Word of God.

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Joshua 1:8 (ESV)

How successful do we want to be?