Live by the Word

Tonight I watched The Book of Eli with some high schooler's from my youth group. We watched it on a clearplay so some violence and language were edited out (honestly I don't think I could have handled the real thing). It was an extremely interesting movie. But, it is not a Christian movie, despite what some think. But it does have some gems in it. One line that really caught me was when Eli said this: "In all these years I've been carrying it and reading it every day, I got so caught up in keeping it safe that I forgot to live by what I learned from it." This is such a profound and cutting statement. If you watch the movie and hear him say that..you hurt. You hurt because you know it is true. You forgot to live by the word. How many times have we done that? How many times have we gotten so caught up in protecting the the Bible..the Gospel...maybe just being legalistic in reading every day or maybe just defending it as truth against others, that we don't live by it. We don't put it into practice in our own lives. Sometime when defending our faith in a debate we can become angry and say or do things that are not Christlike. We don't do what the bible says...watching our tongue..or doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. This guy read the bible every single day for thirty years. And yet he says he still forgot to do this. What if we started now? We don't have to wait thirty years. We don't even have to wait a day. Start living it out.