By the Book

Personal experiences can teach Biblical truth. This isn’t about a news story, but it illustrates a timeless lesson.

A few weeks ago, I plugged in a refrigerator, but it wouldn’t turn on. Although electricity was clearly going in, no compressor motor was running to make it cold.

Several possibilities came easily to mind. Perhaps a circuit breaker had tripped, or the wall plug was bad, or a faulty connection had come undone, etc., etc. Each of these checked out negatively. I got a screwdriver thinking to disassemble the insides of the control box from which the thermostat knob extended. At length I suspected a blown fuse in the refrigerator itself, but where was it located?

I asked my wife where we might find the instruction manual that came with the unit. Finding the trouble shooting section, my eye ran down the list. Under "Fails to start," I found a fascinating sentence. "May be in defrost cycle. Wait 30 minutes and unit will turn on."

Could it be? Yes, it was. We waited about 25 minutes, and, sure enough, the unit kicked in, and all was well. A couple of weeks before, the power to the refrigerator had been turned off—apparently just as it had started the defrost cycle. (Strange as it may seem, frostless refrigerators have a heater that activates once a day to melt accumulated frost, which then drips down into a pan and evaporates.)

I was reminded that, "When all else fails, read the instructions." Had I done that first, I would have saved much anxiety over a failed refrigerator. In life, people live in wrenching troubles because they ignore God’s manual of life—the Bible, the Word of God. It tells us what is wrong, why life won’t function as it should, how to fix the failure and how to keep our lives from spoiling.

Every descendant of Adam is naturally turned off from God. Romans 3:23 states, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Romans 5:12 adds, "For as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned." 1 Corinthians 15:22 gives both cause and remedy. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive."

God’s manual gives clear instructions to get the power back on by accepting the repair work of the master spiritual craftsman. Nicodemas, the Jewish Supreme Court Justice who rendezvoused with Christ at night, learned from the Savior that it was by spiritual rebirth, being "born again" (John 3:3 & 5).

John explained it in John 1:11-13: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood (heredity), nor of the will of the flesh (self will), nor of the will of man (desire of others), but of God." As noted preacher Stephen Olford once outlined, it is "not by human descent, design or desire."

Someone once said, "A baby has no past." Being born again gives a new life in which God remembers our sins no more. When the crippled mechanisms of life have left us hopeless and lifeless, God’s instruction manual saves the day and saves the soul who responds to its message of enduring repair in Christ.

Dave Virkler