Where's My Book?
Back
in the day when our kids were in school, you didn't really need to pay
to go to a circus. You just could come to our house around 7:00 or 8:00
o'clock in the morning; any time before the school bus came. The boys
were trying to find their socks and their shoes, or car keys, homework,
contact lenses, glasses - mayhem. So many times they get home from
school and things kind of landed wherever they landed, and they had to
figure out where that was the next morning. The problem is, the next
morning you can't remember where you left it, so you panic to find your
stuff in those moments that you have to leave for school, because that's
pretty unforgiving when school begins when the bus comes. So it was not
unusual to hear in our house an old question ringing through the halls,
"Mom, Dad, book?" And finding it? Well, everything depended on it.
Our word for today from the Word
of God comes from 2 Kings 22, and I'll begin reading with verse 8. The
story takes place as young King Josiah has taken over as the ruler of
Judah. And he's taken over after a period of great evil in the land. And
he commissions Hilkiah, the high priest, and Shaphan, the secretary, to
begin to mobilize and clean out the temple, because it was a mess; it
had fallen into disrepair.
Here's what the Bible says,
"Hilkiah, the high priest, said to Shaphan, the secretary, 'I have found
the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.' He gave it to Shaphan,
who read it. Then Shaphan, the secretary, went to the king." So he gets
the book, and takes it into the presence of the king. Now, verse 13,
Hilkiah says, "Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and
for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found.
Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because our fathers have
not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance
with all that is written there concerning us."They didn't know what was in God's book. They had lost God's Book somewhere in the shuffle. That's happened in some churches. That's happened in some of our lives. Back in the 1940s Billy Graham was an unknown student preacher. He had his Bible. He started to preach some crusades and people began to take note of him. By the late 1940's he was sort of a rising star in the preaching circuit. But he had a crisis of faith because a friend of his had gone off to seminary; a liberal seminary in the East and came back with more questions than he had answers.
Billy Graham resolved that crisis of doubt that day as he went out in the woods, laid that Bible on a stump, knelt beside that stump, and poured out his heart to God and said, "From this moment on, I will accept this as your total authority, God, as coming from you." From that time on Billy Graham's ministry was known for these three words, "The Bible says... The Bible says..." He had settled once and for all the final word, the final authority. That's what we've got to do.
When you come to Christ you base your life on these three words, "The Bible says..." But how about the rest of our life? How do you make your cultural decisions, your family decisions, your money decisions, your entertainment decisions? You see, the Bible is God's final word, and many times as you look at what we do in our private lives it's like we lost the book. It's buried again. Oh, we go visit it on Sunday. We read it occasionally. But is it the final authority no matter what our culture says, no matter what the opinion polls say, no matter what everybody at the office or at school says. Is it, "The Bible says..."?
God has spoken, and without
God's Word it doesn't matter how nice the idea sounds or how charismatic
the presenter of that idea is, it's just a nice idea. I can almost hear
God running through our lives sometimes like our kids did back in the
school days crying, "Where's My book?"
(Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls. —Jeremiah 6:16)
-Culled from C.R.C OUTREACH NEWS LETTER
PLEASE PRAY FOR THE NATIONS
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands
Pacific
Area: 236 sq km
Over 100 coral atolls and volcanic
islands 3,500 km northeast of New Zealand, 15 of which are inhabited.
Population:
19,933
Annual Growth:
0.87%
Capital: Avarua
Official
language:
English, Cook Island Maori
Answers
for Prayer
ØThank God for the
ability of islanders to migrate to New Zealand in
search of jobs. Many are getting into new employments.( another
means of bringing new life into the ØThank God for the
financial progress these groups are making. (As around 90% of Niueans, 75%
of Tokelauans and
over 67% of Cook
Islanders now live in New Zealand)
Challenges
for Prayer
ØPray for
spiritual revival in this island to stem the fast fading Christian legacy.
ØPray for
great harvest of souls through this expected revival for the various
ethnic groups.
ØPray also
for economic revival of the island to reduce despair and quality of life of the
people.
ØPray for
cultural transformation that will lead to godly values and righteous mind-set.
Ø Pray for
the Island’s churches in Auckland and other New Zealand cities, to become more
missional and
reaching back to their homeland with the gospel.
(Adapted from Operation World)
