If you have ever had a light come on in your mind, you will really appreciate what I want to share with you today. First, a little background because it will help to place what I am going to say into context. Back in my younger days, growing up in a small town, I attended church mostly because this is where the girls were. I remember we had a young man from a wealthy family and his wife who were the youth directors at the church I attended. This couple took us on several youth trips to other churches. My mother attended church some, but my father never attended church, so the Bible was never important in our home. But I got enough religion from the youth group to make church important to me. The church I attended was not a Bible-believing, soul-winning church. As a result, I did not know what it meant to be saved. 

Looking back, I paid a high price for this, and I made some poor choices and went through divorce and hurt my children. Then in 1978, I married a woman who knew Jesus and she had a very positive effect on me. While attending the First Baptist Church in Mayflower, Arkansas, I came to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. On Feb. 26, 1984, I went forward and accepted Jesus and was baptized the following week. My life was changed forever. A few weeks later, leaders in the church asked me to teach a Sunday school class for young boys, and I accepted the invitation. However, it did not take me long at all to realize that I did not know the Bible. 

At this point I made the decision to read the Bible all the way through in a year. Would you believe that I continued this regimen for 25 straight years and got to know the Bible well. Later, I taught a “walk through the Bible” course at the Harlan Park Baptist Church in Conway. It was fun to take the 66 books in the Bible — 39 chapters in the Old Testament and 27 chapters in the New Testament — and give the highlights of each chapter, from the Creation story in Genesis to the fact that Christians WON in the book of Revelation. 

Now, here is where the light came on. In 2013, I went on a trip to Israel with Don Chandler, Pastor of Central Baptist Church, and I could not wait to read the Gospels when we returned home. This is because I had personally visited many of the places the Bible talks about in the Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I had been to many of these places in person. However, it was not until recently that I read a study book titled “Be Loyal” by Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe, one of our nation’s foremost writers of Christian teaching materials, that I understood that “Matthew” was the bridge that linked the old and the new together. It was then that the light came on, and I understood why God sent his Son to earth.

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(Jim Davidson is an author, public speaker, syndicated columnist, and Founder of the Bookcase for Every Child project. For a personalized copy of “Keep Your Fork” send $25, which includes postage and handling and tax, to Jim Davidson, 2 Bentley Drive, Conway, AR 72034.)