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A BOOK TO IGNORE #2

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!

It's a story that's 30 years old now, but Christians around the globe still enjoy reading the delightful bestseller, God's Smuggler, by a man with a famous alias: "Brother Andrew." This incredible man successfully took the Word of God — multiplied thousands of copies — behind the Iron Curtain. And this was when the Iron Curtain was pretty much made of iron; there were guards and towers and machine guns and searches and KGBs and all the rest.

But Brother Andrew didn't start out being God's Smuggler. As a boy he was a wild Nazi-baiter, putting sugar in the German jeeps' gas tanks. At the age of 17 he signed up for military duty himself, going off to the East Indies to reclaim colonies for his native Holland.

But before he went, his mother — Mama, he called her — got out her Bible. "Andrew, will you take this with you?" And he said yes. What else could he say? "Will you read it?" "Sure." He wrote later: "You can do no — but you can't say no." So he put the Bible down as far as he could in his dufflebag and forgot it.

For the next two years he fought hard and drank hard, always with a jaunty yellow hat that seemed to dare the enemy to shoot him. Then one day he was hit in the ankle by a stray bullet and the war was over for him.

But in the hospital, that old Bible of Mama's finally surfaced. He read all the way through it, finally making sense out of the crazy world around him, the horrors and the stupidity of war, the atrocities he had seen and inflicted. And over the next several years, this tough-guy soldier who was always half-drunk, always had a belligerent buzz on . . . became a born-again Christian.

And during the next decade, he took that same Bible that had changed his life, and smuggled it across one barbed-wire border after another. For some unexplained reason, Communist guards seemed to go blind whenever he drove his little blue VW through the checkpoints. Bibles lying right there on the front seat were strangely invisible.

It's a marvelous story, but the point today is that the Word of God does indeed come into a person's life and completely turn it around. Here was a man whose attitudes, life philosophy, career, passions — everything! — were altered by that Book. And not just nudged a few degrees in a different direction. No, this was a complete about-face, a 180°-turn in every facet of his being.

Now friend, what was it that caused the Word of God to cause this change? So many people stuff the Bible in that duffle bag and it never even touches them. But thousands of others do eventually pick it up, leaf through it for a bit, and it simply doesn't "take." It doesn't work for them; it doesn't transform. Very clearly, it hasn't gotten into their bloodstream, so to speak. Now, why is that?

It's interesting, as we speak of bloodstreams, that Jesus Christ Himself talks about the Bible as a kind of food, as nutrients. In fact, He once said to His disciples:
"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in Him."

In the very next verse He talks about "feeding on Me," on Christ. Now, this can sound a bit primitive and even ghoulish, but it's actually a straightforward biblical principle. He goes on to say, "The words I speak . . . are spirit and life." Just as food has to enter the body and become part of us, blood and tissue and energy, so the life of Jesus — that is, His Word, His experience, His Bible — has to actually enter us. We can't just read and have it go "in one eye and out the other." No, it has to get fixed in the mind, become part of our thought process, the mosaic of our attitudes and convictions.

King David, in his beloved Psalm 119, says this in verse 11:

"Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee."

So clearly there's a process whereby the words in the Bible can — and must — become a real and living part of our hearts, our minds. This isn't scanning, or casually peeking at a verse a day, "with our hand on the doorknob as we head out," as one preacher has described it. No, this is meditative study, hiding verses in our heart, planting them in our minds. Again borrowing from the concept of food, this is a process of digesting, assimilation, where the Word of God actually becomes part of us.

How does this happen, then? Well, time is a factor, obviously. If you're reading and studying, ten minutes is better than one minute, and an hour is better than ten minutes. (By the way, don't let my saying that keep you from spending the ten minutes, which is actually a pretty good start.) Every day is better than once a week. Thoughtful, meditative reading is better than a cursory, Evelyn Wood-type of zip-through-it approach.

However, let me say right here that when this half-drunk, wounded Dutch soldier, Brother Andrew, first picked up Mama's Bible, he did begin with the Noah's ark and lions' den stories and a lightning-fast zip through the entire Book. And you know, he found that first quick trip so fascinating that he went back and read the whole thing again, and hasn't stopped studying since.

Christians everywhere will testify that the Word of God also becomes "them" as they memorize key verses. "Hiding them in the heart," as King David did. What a blessing it can be during a time of discouragement to be able to reach in there and pull out a promise, a guarantee of God's love or protection. I wish I had many more verses locked away in my mind than I do, but I'm always trying to add more.

Here's another strategy for making the Bible a real part of us. Tell others and discuss. Trade verses; sit around at lunch with a Christian friend and dissect something you read that morning; get into a good, old-fashioned loving argument if you like! But every time we talk about the Word of God with our friends and family, that simply creates more mental and spiritual hooks in our lives where those verses are now fastened more securely than ever.

The apostle Paul, in writing to his new Christian friends in Colossi, gives this advice:

"Let the Word of God dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude to God."

I like that challenge — having God's Word not only dwell in me, but to dwell in me "richly." And notice that Paul's right on target when he suggests that teaching each other, admonishing our brothers and sisters, in a positive sense, of course, is a great way to feed on the nutrients of God's Word.

By the way, we don't have time this week to comment on how great Christian music, especially Bible verses set to music, is a superb way to infuse our minds with God's truth. Every Christmas we do a series from Handel's Messiah, that beautiful oratorio that makes majestic music out of the plain teachings and promises in the Bible.

Speaking of talking "Bible" with friends, one of the great anecdotes in this book, God's Smuggler — a real jewel — is where Brother Andrew was in a foreign country with Christians he'd never met. There was no common language, no possibility for verbal communication. But they did have Bibles in several languages, so they simply pointed to favorite verses that expressed their support, their prayers for one another. Soon they were laughing, hugging, crying, and having a marvelous time of fellowship . . . and all the while, those favorite verses got anchored even deeper in their minds.

You know, I can tell stories that make it sound like so much fun. But the plain, simple truth is that much of the time, it's hardly any fun at all. Face it, friend, you and I are sinners. The things of God are basically strange to us; they're foreign. Even the Bible itself admits, "This is ‘foolishness' to the unbeliever." Our inclinations and instincts all run in the other direction. We have minds tuned to gossip and trash TV and the salty vocabulary at the office. All of these are disadvantages to us, and they make reading the Word of God — really reading and absorbing it — a painful, difficult task.

In his book, The Victorious Christian Life, Pastor Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, admits that making the Bible "us" isn't an easy thing. It's not kid stuff. In fact, he puts it this way:

"Consistent study is a vital discipline." Then he adds: "The truth is, studying the Word is sometimes like eating vegetables. They don't do a thing for your taste buds, but they'll work wonders in your bloodstream."

Well, friend, I do want to say this in closing. That's true about the vegetables, but I can also testify from my own experience that our God has packed some desserts in with the Christian menu. Bible study is work, hard work, but there are delights waiting for us as well. God's Word contains tough truth and also precious promises. Stern warnings but also portraits of an attractive Savior and Redeemer.