James Saxon: Take Up and Read

Around the year 1910, an American missionary stopped in a village just long enough to win two converts. He left a Bible with them and journeyed onto Japan.

Over the next thirty years, with no contact with any other Christians and only a Bible to guide them, these two converts evangelized their village, leading to peace and prosperity unknown in the region of the time.

When the American army landed on the island in 1945, an advance patrol entered this peaceful village with guns leveled. The two original Christians stepped forward, bowed to the Americans, and through an interpreter, welcomed the Americans as fellow Christians. The war-hardened soldiers were stunned. One tough army sergeant made this profound observation, “I can’t figure it out – this is from a Bible and a couple of old guys who wanted to live like Jesus? Maybe we have been using the wrong kind of weapons.”

The same Bible that guided this small village has impacted countless believers throughout history. The great reformer Martin Luther credited his conversion to the Lord laying it on his heart to “take up and read” the Bible—something that he had never done despite his perceived piety. His reading and rediscovery of Biblical Christianity sparked the Reformation, leading to the translation of Scripture into a common language, and ultimately its wide availability.

That same Scripture is available to you today. God promises that His Word will not return void; what might be done in your heart and life this season if you too heeded those words “take up and read?”