Saturday, April 24, 2010

The Bible - The Christian's Instruction Book

Last week I bought a new computer. My old computer is almost 5 years old and it began to have some problems with the hard drive. Try as I might I could not fix this problem and realized that a new computer was the best solution. So, I spent some time checking out what was available, found a computer I liked and bought it. After I ordered my computer I found the manufactures user guide for this model on the Internet and started to familiarize myself with what my new computer could do and what features were available.

My excitement over having a new computer tempted me to fall into the trap that many people do when they get a new computer or something else new. I was so happy to have this wonderful new computer that I wanted to just start using it without reading the user guide. But I realized that if I did not read the user guide then there would be many things involved with using my new computer that I would not make the best use of, if I even knew to use them at all. The user manual for my computer is 192 pages long and I just wanted to skip around to read about the parts I thought were most interesting to me but I put that off too and made my way through the document. Now, while I am still learning how everything in my new computer works, because I read through the instruction book I believe that I am having a much better overall experience with my computer than I would have had otherwise.

For Christians, the Bible is our instruction book. If we want to have the best "Christian experience" we should read the user guide given by the manufacturer. So many people are excited about God and being a Christian but they fail to take advantage of all of the great things that God has provided for them and sometimes Christians fail to use what has been given to them in the right way because they have never read the entire instruction book. There are parts of the Bible that people may want to spend more time focusing on than others but to get the best results we need to read and know everything that our instruction manual, the Bible, has to say.

As I talk with people it is surprising and sad to see how many Christians really do not know very much about the Bible at all. While I would never claim to know everything in the Bible I do know from all of my years as a Christian and a minister that most people really do not know what the Bible has to say and they live below what God intended them to have as a result. The best thing we can do as Christians is to make it a habit to read the Bible often, and not just the parts we think are interesting, and learn everything we can about what God has provided for us through Jesus. It's all in our instruction book, we just have to read it and make the proper use of it.