Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
A man wrote of his experience as a youth when he would read the Bible every day simply because he enjoyed it. He had a Good News Bible, and was attracted to it. Then he went away to college and got in with a group of earnest-minded people who emphasized discipline. "Have you had your 'quiet time' with the Lord?" they would ask him frequently. "Are you maintaining your devotions?"
He got so he dreaded to hear the questions. Now, reading the Bible and praying had passed from a pleasant experience to a burden, an obligation imposed upon him with dreaded consequences if he slipped up. Now his "Christian" experience had become a list of "shoulds": you "should" pray more, you "should" read your Bible more, you "should" do this or do that more.
What happened? He tried to think it through and concluded that he was in the spiritual condition that Paul describes as "under law" (Rom. 6:14, 15). He was trying to do all the right things for the wrong reason. The joy was gone.
The "world" is much with us; we are enmeshed in countless activities and it seems the busy days fly by and we drop exhausted into bed at night and remember, "Oh, I forgot to pray, or I forgot to read my Bible! Now what's going to happen to me?!" That's what it's like to be "under law."
Yes, you're busy; but when you drop into bed at night do you suddenly reproach yourself, "Oh, I forgot to eat breakfast this morning! I've been too busy to eat lunch! And there was no time to eat supper! And I haven't even had a snack for a week!"? I doubt it. You have a built-in device called "hunger" that pretty well makes that impossible, at least for very long.
There's an alternative to being "under law"--being "under grace" (Rom. 6:14), under a new motivation imposed upon you by a heart-appreciation of God's loving and His giving that you might not "perish" (John 3:16). And thatproduces a "hunger and thirst for righteousness" that simply will notgo unsatisfied for long! (Matt. 5:6).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 27, 1998.
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