First Baptist Church
If you ask a fish what it feels like to be wet, they would not be able to respond. Not just because they have too small and specialized a brain to process language, or because God did not create them with the ability to vocalize a recognizable language, and not because they have an average attention span of seven seconds, but because that is all they have ever known. They have no reference point outside of that experience with which to compare being wet. They have no context or means of contextualizing it for others. Since this is all they know, they cannot describe anything else.
For many of us in Cotton County, we have grown up with free and unfettered access to the Word of God. We have been to Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, revivals, funerals, weddings, and other special activities at the which the Bible has been read and even sometimes explained. We have been raised in a nation in which the Bible is the foundation (or was) for its laws, ethics, and expectations. We see the Bible on T-shirts, bumper stickers, television, billboards, and other places. We hear it in Christian music of every genre, the radio, television interviews, and even posters in the stands at football games.
To ask the average Christian in America what it is like to have the Bible available to us is like asking a fish what it is like to be wet. It is all we have known. We have heard stories of others that live in lands where the Bible is forbidden, but we have not experienced it ourselves. We have felt persecuted because they wouldn’t let us teach it in school or be on the walls of our courtrooms any longer, but the idea that it would not be available is so foreign that we cannot really understand what it would be like.
In the book of Amos, God tells Amos in the book that bears his name:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, But rather for hearing the words of the Lord. “People will stagger from sea to sea And from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, But they will not find it. (Amos 8:11-12, NASB95)
What would it be like to not only not have the Word of God, but to eagerly seek it and not be able to find it? Sure, we have heard stories from missionaries about how it is for them, but we have not experienced it ourselves. We feel motivated to give to make sure they can get the Bible in their language, but we do not really understand what it be like to experience it for ourselves.
Amos said that there would be a famine for the Word of God. Sadly, this is becoming more and more of a reality in America. No, the Bible has not been outlawed. No one has demanded that we turn over our Bibles to the burn piles like Hitler did to the Jews in Nazi Germany. No one has made it illegal to pray like in the book of Daniel. No one has told us we can’t share the gospel freely like Nero or Domitian in Rome. But we are beginning to experience a famine for the Word of God just the same.
How? I am glad you asked.
When our Bibles gather dust throughout the week and are only opened when the Sunday School teacher or pastor asks us to find a passage, that is famine. When the Word of God is read, studied, and memorized, but never obeyed, there is a famine. When we have been following Jesus for years, but still feel like we don’t know enough of the Bible to help disciple a new believer, there is a famine. When we avoid joining with other followers of Jesus for worship and study of God’s Word, there is a famine. When pastors tell their stories, jokes, and anecdotes, but don’t give priority to the Word of God in their messages, there is famine.
Are you hungry for the Word of God? How do you know? Do you read it for yourself? Do you obey it? Do you memorize it? Do you look for ways to live it out? If not, there is a famine. So maybe it isn’t that hard to imagine these verses coming true.
Let’s commit to eating well from the Bread of Life and refuse to let famine overtake the land of our churches, families and lives.