"Phone Home"

#1789

To very many, both learned and unlearned, the Bible is like a sealed book! They see the words, but they do not discern the meaning. Or if they understand something of the meaning, they do not feel its mighty power. It does not convince them of their sin--nor does it help them to know and love the Savior. And why is this? Because the veil is upon their heart.

Reader, be sure you never neglect to pray whenever you take the Bible in your hand. It is only in this way that you will find real profit and comfort in reading it. Pray that you may understand whatever you read.

If you read there of one who committed sin--then pray that the grace of God may preserve you, that you may never fall into the same snare. 

If you read of any one who exercised any particular grace, as faith, or repentance, or love, or patience, or obedience--then pray that the Spirit may plant the same grace in your heart. 

If you read any solemn warning or threatening--then pray that the curse or punishment spoken of may never light on you. 

If you read any gracious promise--then pray that God may make good the promise to you. 

If you read anything of Christ, as the Good Shepherd, as the High Priest--then turn in prayer to Him, and ask Him to guide and guard you, to make you and keep you as one of His sheep, to bear your name before the Father, and to intercede on your behalf.

There is no part of Scripture that you cannot in some way turn into prayer--and the more you do so, the more you will find it like a well of living water. You will never fail to find help and refreshment from it.

Reader, may you learn to prize God's precious Word, and to find it food and drink to your soul. The Bible is the only book that tells us . . .
  about the way of salvation,
  of Christ and His cross,
  of the gift of the Holy Spirit,
  of the new life, and
  the blessed hope of everlasting life. 

May it be yours to use the book aright, to meditate therein, and as you read to grow in the knowledge of Christ Jesus your Lord.

Addition:  Dr. Morris

According to the news, yesterday, the writer who wrote the most famous 3 words in American Movie History, died.  The words, "E.T. phone home".

In my lifetime, phone service has increased exponentially.  There was never a phone in the home in which I was raised until after I had finished college.  My aging parents living alone way out in the countryside, I had to force NC Utilities to provide them with a phone.  Now, everywhere you go and this sightless veteran is informed, every car, everyone talking on phones.  Yet, the greatest need for supernatural communication in the universe the Christians need to communicate with God through prayer.  The church has nothing to offer the unsaved except salvation.  I don't believe God hears anything from the unsaved except a repentant plea for salvation but the Christian needs to "phone home" often...praying without ceasing, (1 Thessalonians 5:16), seeking healing, help, advice, the grace for every area of human living.

Many years ago, yard sale, I purchased vinyl recordings of the Bible.  I played the new testament over and over.  I was always so amazed at the things I had missed...new things revealed to me every time it was read.  I have encouraged Christian leaders to read and reread the Bible constantly.  He always has a new message in His words for us. 

One of my women employees was always sick I told her one day to read the gospel of John at least once a week, and you will get healing.  Of course she claimed to be a Christian, but she never read the Bible.  A male employee, as do so many young men I try to inspire, when I asked him if he believed in God, "my religion is none of your business".  Later, he said, "I don't believe in fairy tales."  I encouraged him to read Psalm 139 every day for one week.  Forever, the word of God has changed the hearts of men...the only hope of the world. 

This writer was speaking before a ministerial conference of a large denomination, computers were new back then, these men were talking about all the information that could be stored on a computer, they thought it was just marvelous...this bottomless ocean of technology. 

When I got up, I said, you were so amazed by the computer, your speaker has traveled to both the North and South pole, 240,000 square miles of glaciers both at the top and bottom of our earth...these glaciers formed by one snow flake at a time, each different, each designed by God, never two alike.  I said, under a microscope you can study the grains of sand on every sea shore and will never find two alike, I said, I have studied the human body, trillions of cells, yet, each cell in your body totally you.  You can take any one cell of your body and the DNA information from your family, enough to fill many many pages, is there for your perusal. 

This is the greatness the power, the mercy of our Creator God.  In the beginning, He was all alone, with all his love, mercy and power.  Through the Trinity His beloved son, His Holy Spirit, He gave to us the gift of Grace. 

My parents never kept the realities of the world from their Children, did not shield them from anything.   As a very small child, my mother's first child, I remember my first experience with death...the bleak days of the great depression, holding onto my mother's hand, we went in the house where there was a cheap cassette sitting in the hallway.  A friend of my mother who had died in childbirth.  Back then death was not sensitized/sanitized as now.

People were fortunate just to buy a cheap cassette. I remember my mother told my father that the baby, who never breathed, was wrapped in a blanket in the mother's arms, that was love, but not as much love as Jehovah God has for us in leaving us his answer book, the solution for the problems of every person in this world, "phone home."  Our citizenship is in heaven.  (Philippians 3:20)