Leadership Thoughts: The Sad Story of a Written Love Letter Left Unread.

Dear Friends,

I love the little story of the pompous college professor who was standing before his students while putting down the Bible. "This doesn’t make any sense to me. It is just a bunch of unintelligible gibberish – just a book of fairytales," he said, with an air of intellectual superiority. 

With that, one student boldly stood up and said, "Sir, the Bible is God's love letter to his children, and if you don’t understand it then perhaps it’s because you been reading someone else’s mail."

Yes, the Bible is God's love letter to his children, and yet so often that love letter goes unread and unstudied.

As believers we need to be students of the word, studying the word on a daily basis. The Israelites discovered that when they sought to gather huge amounts of manna and store it, so they didn’t have to gather it daily, it rotted.  Neither can we expect to gain proper spiritual nourishment by feasting on the word for a day or two while forgetting it the rest of the week. God’s word can be stored in our hearts, but unless it’s gathered daily, it will quickly lose its nourishment.

Our study must be daily, and it should be systematic. Whether we are studying the word from a bird's eye view, (viewing large chunks of it – as reading through the Bible in a year) or the worm's eye approach, studying small amounts, and breaking it down into little bites as we reflect upon those paragraphs or verses, or even words, we need to be studying it regularly, consistently, and systematically.

We need to remain flexible in reading the bible, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us regarding our approach an application. We need to find what works for us and stay at it until the Holy Spirit directs us down another path. 

However we choose to read God's word, we need to remember Paul’s exhortation to Timothy: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman, who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).

The great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon provides us good advice. He writes, "Never, never, neglect the word of God. The word will make your heart rich with truth, rich with understanding, and then, your conversation, when it flows from your mouth, will be like your heart, rich, soothing, and sweet…full of rich, generous love. Go Christian, to the great mind of riches, and cry to the Holy Spirit to make your heart rich onto salvation.  So shall your life and conversation be a boon to your fellow man; and when they see you, your face will be like an angel of God. Wise men will stand up when they see you, and men will give you reference."

This is the kind of man I want to be, and I know this is the kind of person you want to be as well. 

Let us be known as 'people of the book.'  So today, if you are lagging behind in your study of God’s word, let me encourage you to make a new commitment to begin re-reading those personal love letters He has written to each one of His children.

Yours in faith and friendship, 

Tom.

P.S. Remember, "it is not how many times you have been through the Bible that is important, but how many times the Bible has been through you."