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Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
When you don’t pray, you are saying you don’t need God. When you don’t spend time reading your Bible, you are saying you don’t need God. When you purposely stay away from church, you are saying you don’t need God. When you live your life without communication with Him, without a personal relationship with Him, you are saying that you don’t need Him. When a person says he doesn’t need God, he is a proud person. There are serious consequences for being a proud person.
Christians communicate with God through prayer. God communicates to us through the Bible which has been given to us so that we can know God and carry out His will for our lives. Scripture Union’s daily devotional suggests the following questions when reading the Bible: “What’s the main point of this passage? What is God showing me about Himself or about my life? Is there a promise to claim or a command, a warning to heed or an example to take special notice of?” The people at Nehemiah’s time had rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem. They also looked at the spiritual foundation for their lives and looked into God’s Word. “All the people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel” (Neh. 8:1).
There are many distractions in life. Therefore, we need to be conscious and deliberate to schedule a time to pray, read and reflect on the Bible. Now, with the availability of the Bible in different sizes, of different font sizes, in different versions, in digital forms and even installed in hand phones, we should be able to read the Bible more. There needs to be a hunger for God’s Word: “And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law” (Neh. 8:3b) and a strong desire to obey it: “In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.” (Neh. 9:38). Otherwise we cannot mature in our Christian lives to be an impact for good in the society we live in.
