Daily Devotion: You Are What You Read

Bible Reading:  II Timothy 2:1-15

Key Verse: Verse 15 – “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Key Words: Study

In order to study one has to read.  Now I know this is a reference to God’s Word; but let’s face reality, we all read other things.  We should be readers, but we should remember we are becoming what we read.  So be careful with what you choose to read.

            Now be honest, do you like junk food, all of that sugar and calories?  Now, it’s not called junk food because it is good for you.  It has no nutritional value.  Junk food grows fat cells.  I can speak with some experience there.

            How about trash; do you like to go through the trash and find a left-over cup of old coffee and maybe some fast food that’s been in the dumpster for a couple of days?

            How about road-kill, you know, dead creatures laying along the side of the road?  Would you take some road-kill home, cook it and eat it?

            I am sure right about now most of you are thinking, Pastor has lost his mind.  How ridiculous!  And I agree, about the ridiculous part anyway.  It is ridiculous and we all know about the woes of junk food, and we would never eat food from the trash can, nor would we stop and pick up road-kill and take it home to cook it.  Our bodies couldn’t take all the junk, trash and road-kill.  We would become physically ill.  But have you ever considered the same is true about what we put in our minds and hearts?  All the junk that enters into our mind through what we read and what we watch and who we allow to teach us. 

            It is the reading aspect that I want to focus on for the remainder of this article, because what we read we will become.  I made this statement to our staff recently.  If we want our children to be Christian in their thought life, we need to put Christian material before them to read.  Here are four questions you need to ask when choosing reading material.

Ø     What type knowledge is the article or book imparting?  Is it  scriptural, sensual, humanistic?  What is the material imparting?

Ø      Does the material cause you to think on that which is true, honest, just, pure, and lovely...or does it cause you to think worldly, wicked, evil, sexual, selfishly?  In what direction does the material you are reading take you?

Ø      Is the material genuinely Christian or humanistic?

Ø      Does the material you read motivate you to Christian action?

Just as junk food, food from the trash, and road-kill are not good for us physically, neither is reading material which pollutes our minds.  So go out, read not just a good book, but a good Christian book, and always put the Bible first on your list of books to read.

What to do:
✞ Read God’ Word first and foremost.

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