Christians At Their Best

In his Preface to For the Love of God, vol. 1, Don Carson writes, “At their best, Christians have saturated themselves in the Bible. They say with job, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread” (Job 23:12).” This was the lesson the Israelites were to learn when God allowed them to become very hungry and then fed them with manna. He did this to teach them (and us through them) “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). Jesus quoted these words when he was tempted by the Devil to put his necessary food ahead of living by God’s word.

The promise we receive from this is that we will surely grow in spiritual health if we regularly absorb and live by God’s words. There will be a definite connection between Bible reading and the experience of deepened faith and a sense spiritual wholeness. If we really want to “live” spiritually, if we want understanding, courage, peace, joy, love, and so on, we must consume the Bible as regularly as we consume breakfast, lunch, and supper. As Carson states, Christians at their best will tell you this is so.

We cannot think that because we have read our Bibles a lot in the past or because we know our Bibles well we don’t need to read them daily. That is like saying, “I ate breakfast, lunch, and supper two days ago, I don’t need to do that today”. We cannot bank a fresh filling from God. If we want to be a Christian at our best we need to chew upon God’s word daily.