Three modern imposters of reading the Bible …

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Regardless of how much you might claim you value the Bible, it can do nothing for you if you’re not an avid reader of it.

That’s because, as boxer George Foreman would learn, the Bible isn’t some kind of Christian “lucky charm” …

    In George Foreman’s book, “God in My Corner,” the former heavyweight boxing champion writes: “In 1974, before I went to Africa to fight Muhammad Ali, a friend gave me a Bible to take along on my trip. He said, ‘George, keep this with you for good luck.’ I believed the Bible was just a shepherd’s handbook, probably because the only verse I knew was ‘the Lord is my shepherd.’ But I was always looking for luck, so I carried that Bible with me. I had lucky pennies and good luck charms, so now I added the ‘lucky’ Bible to my collection of superstitious items.

    After I lost the fight, I threw the Bible away. I never even opened it. I thought, The Bible didn’t help me win, so why do I need it? I thought I’d get power simply from owning it; I didn’t realize that I needed to read it and believe what it says. Since then, I’ve come to understand that the Bible is my road map, not my good luck charm.”

No, the Bible isn’t a “good luck” charm, it’s the primary way God reveals Himself and communicates with us, and it’s essential to building our faith:

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ,” Romans 10:17 (NIV).

That’s why we’re in the tail end of a season when many church leaders have been working hard to encourage their congregations — and anyone else! — to read through the entire Bible during this new year. As a Christian, there’s literally just about nothing more important than making time every day to read the Bible.

So why do ministers have to nearly beg and plead for professing Christians to be daily readers of it?

Because we just don’t want to. Truth be told, we’d rather be doing something we find more interesting or entertaining. The most common defense from professing Christians as to why they don’t read the Bible is that they don’t have time to do so.

Many professing Christians think they may have found a loophole. Instead of completely bypassing scripture reading, they claim any of the following three things are how they digest scripture on a daily basis:

SCRIPTURE MEMES.
The same professing Christians who say they don’t have the time to read the Bible every day are the same professing Christians who have a couple hours each day to spend online scrolling through their social media platforms. Now these 21st century Christians claim they read a few scripture verses posted as memes while perusing social media, and so that meets their need for “daily time in the Word.”

Not even close!

What usually happens is the person quickly reads the meme and hits “like” or clicks on a heart icon, then scrolls to the next post. At most, they may have given the scripture meme five or 10 seconds of their time before moving on.

That is not daily Bible reading!

READING A “VERSE OF THE DAY.”
If you think you can adequately deepen your relationship with God, and knowledge of Him, by reading a single verse of scripture each day, you’re fooling yourself. Pastor Sebastiaan Van Wessem also isn’t fond of “Verse of the Day” and posted on Facebook yesterday why he isn’t:

    I’m not a big fan of the verse of the day. Did I ever tell you that?⁣
    ⁣
    Yes, that verse can be inspiring, comforting, uplifting. It probably is, because that’s why it probably is selected to be the verse of the day! The verse of the day is also easy to share on social media thanks to the “verse images” functionality of YouVersion. Sharing the word of God surely is a good thing!⁣
    ⁣
    The problem is that many people don’t get past reading the Verse of the Day. This is all the Bible reading they do. That’s like eating only one bite of a Michelin star five course meal. You’ll eventually starve to death.⁣
    ⁣
    Besides that, only reading one or two verses makes us read the Bible out of context, and the verse can take on a totally different meaning than intended by the biblical author and by the Lord himself who inspired that author. That can be dangerous.⁣

And by coincidence, someone posted the meme to the right which is a gross example of just how “Verse of the Day” can actually be seriously misleading!

DAILY DEVOTIONAL BASED ON A VERSE.
Some people get that a single verse each day is not adequate time in the Word, so instead they opt for picking out one of a plethora of “daily devotional” books. Most of these “devotionals” feature a “verse of the day” paired with a paragraph or two of the author’s thoughts pertaining to the daily verse.

That’s hardly more than just a “verse of the day,” and you’re really just depending on someone else to tell you what they think is the correct message of that single verse.

MODERN DAY IMPOSTERS
All three of the above — scripture memes, verse of the day, and daily devotionals based on a verse of the day — are all modern day imposters for people making time to read their Bibles in a serious way each day.

There’s a bottom line: if the Bible is as important to you as you say you understand it should be, you’ll do whatever is necessary to create time to read (and even study!) it. William McPherson did, and his story was told in the Annual Report of the American Bible Society:

“William McPherson was the superintendent for a stone quarry when a blast severely injured him. He lost his eyesight and both hands in the explosion. He was determined to read the Bible, and learned to read raised letters with the tip of his tongue. It is said that he read through the Bible four times in this manner.”

Are you ready to dump the excuses and find a way to make time to daily dive into the Word?

Scotty