Backpacks are a pretty common part of daily life in Barrouallie since you do lots of walking, and have to carry things with you.
Mine usually has the following items
- A book
- A notebook for journaling Scripture
- My Kindle
- And my carrying around bible
The carrying around Bible is a smaller one (the one above is my study bible) used in ministry during the day. Using a Bible on your phone is more convenient, but I’ve found a physical copy is much better when ministering to people. I like to turn the passage so it faces them directly, then they can read along with me.
My carrying around Bible has proved very useful in not only sharing the Gospel, but sharing devotional thoughts, and answering questions. Some people have begun asking me questions about Scripture as I pass by because they know that I carry a Bible in my bag.
The true reason why I carry a Bible however is because thats what God uses to transform lives….
And Satan hates it.
Monday I sat down in front of church with a man and we read through Psalms 91 together. A gentleman was sitting on some steps nearby, and asked me to speak louder so that he could hear. As we read and discussed, he nodded his head in agreement with what we were saying.
The same man stopped me the next day and after some small talk, started asking me questions about the Bible. It soon became clear that instead of agreeing with Scripture, he felt the Bible was a useless book.
During our conversation he told me
- The Bible had no facts in it
- The people in it never existed
- It was actually written by King James
- And the white man (his words) took the black mans story, then wrote the Bible so that they could control the blacks
Many times as we talked for about an hour he told me “I don’t want to talk about that (my open bible), I want to talk about facts.”
Now I have no animosity towards him, and the truth is, he wasn’t angry with me. But throughout the hour-long conversation, his goal was to get me to stop using the Bible.
And each time I refused….
Because if the Bible isn’t my foundation, then my own opinion is
Satan hates the Bible with a passion because it’s the Word of God. So he wants to draw us away from it. This isn’t normally done through false doctrine or complete rejection of Scripture, but using our own ideas and opinions instead of Scripture.
This is why ministry of every kind in my humble opinion must be done with an open Bible.
Though he didn’t say it this way, the man in our conversation was constantly telling me to “close the Bible” and give him “facts” (my opinion). But I reused because he wasn’t the one who wanted a closed Bible, it was Satan.
Johnhwilburn.org 