Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages has been using a rather catchy slogan the last few years.  Their tagline on all their billboards, radio, and television commercials is "Life's Most Used Book".  It caught me by surprise the first time I ever heard it.  When I got to thinking about it, I even began to take issue with it; I mean after all, the Bible should be life's most used book.  But then I was okay with their slogan when I thought more about the idea; because they are right!  While the Bible SHOULD be life's most used book, I'd venture to agree that the yellow pages gets a lot more "page time".

 

I mean really, the Bible isn't even used at a lot of so called "Christian" churches.  I'm not even saying that figuratively speaking (because they don't use the bible as an authority and guide for leadership, organization, and worship) I literally mean that there are "Christian" churches where the Bible is not used!  The kids aren't taught from the Bible in Sunday school classes, the preachers use biblical passages for maybe 1-5% of their sermon material, the members don't follow along in their Bibles while the preacher is preaching, and oftentimes folks don't even BRING their Bibles to church!  So if the bible isn't even life's most used book at church, it stands to reason that it's not life's most used book elsewhere either.

 

Let's look at the home for example (I'd go to school, but most kids aren't even aloud to take a Bible to public school anymore).  Is the Bible your life's most used book at the house?  Do you spend more time using cookbooks than using the Bible?  Do you spend more time reading magazines than the Bible?  Do you spend more time reading "Oprah's Book Club" list of books or the "Best Sellers" than you do reading the Bible?  I know most of these seem geared toward women, but let's get real... about the only thing guys read is the TV guide, and unless it contains the secrets of how to get to the next level of the videogame I doubt your son has read a book all summer.  So you might say, "Well, I use the Bible, I just don't read it."  Yeah... okay.

 

Is that even possible?  If we don't read the Bible, we don't study the Bible, we don't meditate on God's holy word, how can we claim to use it in our lives?   There's lots of ways we need to use it.  We need to use it to save lost souls.  We need to use it to remind us of all the things we have to be thankful to God for.  We need it to strengthen our faith, to remind us to guard our tongue, to train us in all righteousness, to discipline us in holiness, to reprove us in our error, to rebuke us in our sin, to exhort us in godliness, to protect us from evil, to guide us in training our children, to instruct us of God's will, to lead us in light and wisdom, and to free us from worldly ignorance.  There are a lot of things that we NEED to use the Bible for; but perhaps we are too busy using life's MOST used book instead of using life's most NEEDED book.

 

The Bible is God's wholly divinely inspired word that is a manual, a guide, an instruction book, a map, a compass for our lives.  If we are not reading it and using it, then there is a good chance our life is put together wrong, broken, and lost.  God is writing His own "yellow pages*"; and there's a real good chance that if the book He already wrote for you is not the most used book in your life, then your name won't be in the yellow pages* edition He is putting together right now!

 

David Osteen

Minister - Texas City church of Christ

 

 

* Disclaimer - Author is only illustratively making a point and does not claim to have any inside, divine, or special knowledge in regard to the color of the pages of the "Book of Life"

**Special Note: The Sunday this article was originally published, I arrived at the church building to find a freshly delivered phone book sitting at the foot of the front door.  Coincidence?!?!

Originally Published: Grace Gazette - July 9, 2006 - Volume 2 Article 27

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