“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Joshua 1:8
I read a Christian fiction book a couple years ago that was very good. It is one by a less-than-well-known author and it was on sale for free, a price 
I sometimes have a hard time passing up. The book was intriguing and revolved around about twelve people, all of whom had incredible conflicts going on in their lives. The way their lives intertwine is fascinating, but what I really like about the book is the writing style. Some of the characters give wonderful insights and I remember reading a gem that I thought I would share. One of the characters talked about his grandfather who was a godly man and explained the grandfather’s philosophy of life. He had what he called a “top-button” view of life. When someone buttons up his shirt, if the top button’s right, all the other buttons fall right into place. If the top button is off, no matter how a person tries to get things lined up, it can’t be done. Our relationship with God is our top button. If it is right the rest of our life will align. If it is not, the effort to try to get things right in the rest of our life will be a constant battle.
I think one of the the things that can “get our top button right” is cherishing God’s word. As we get older, we often see less need to read the Word because we know so much of what it says. But if we don’t stay in the Word, we will actually lose those memories of what it says and how it can help us. We can start taking what it says for granted and don’t really feel the need to consult it any longer. Although the Word never changes, our lives do and we need to stay up with how the Word functions differently for us in different times in our lives.
As you know, I am not much of fashion aficionado. 
I am always about three years behind the latest trends. My ties are fat when they should be skinny and skinny when everyone else is wearing fat. Unfortunately, when we stop reading the Bible, we are often pulling out fat ties during a skinny-tie time in our life. In other words, a verse we read in 2005 probably has a different meaning in 2020 not because it has changed, but because the times have changed and because we have changed. In Joshua 1:8 it says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” The words “for then” presuppose that we are doing the first part of the verse which is reading the word daily.
If we do not stay “current” in the Bible by reading it often, we will not really know how it can serve us and how we can serve God. The great preacher Alexander White, when he was too old to mount the pulpit, would rise every morning to prepare a sermon, even though he never preached them. He did so until the day he died. He was convinced that study of the Word was essential to living life completely. We often say that we can’t read because we don’t have enough time to read. Martin Luther used to say that he was so busy and his upcoming day was so full, that he could not afford not to read the Bible. We seem to find the time to do less meaningful things, so it makes sense that if we truly believe the Bible is the most precious book in the world and contains value for us every day, we would find time to read it. We all prioritize our daily lives. Although part of our day is structured, there is much of the time that is left up to us, to use as we please. We decide when we will get up and what we will do with that time; we decide how we will use our empty moments; we decide how we use our breaks, and we decide how late to stay up and what our late night activities are.
George Mueller, after having read the Bible through 
one hundred times with increasing delight, made this statement: “I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God. Friends often say, ‘I have so much to do, so many people to see, I cannot find time for Scripture study.’ Perhaps there are not many who have more to do than I. For more than half a century I have never known one day when I had not more business than I could get through. For 4 years I have had annually about 30,000 letters, and most of these have passed through my own hands. Then, as pastor of a church with 1,200 believers, great has been my care. Besides, I have had charge of five immense orphanages; also, at my publishing 
depot, the printing and circulating of millions of tracts, books, and Bibles; but I have always made it a rule never to begin work until I have had a good season with God and His Word. The blessing I have received has been wonderful.”
I don’t think any of us can describe our days as full as George Mueller’s, but yet he prioritized his day to include the Bible. When Dr. David Livingstone started his famous trek across Africa, 
he had three packs of 180 pounds of books. Those carrying the baggage were so fatigued that he was obligated to jettison some of his books. By the time he finished the journey, he had one left, his Bible. He had prioritized his bible over all the scientific, medical, and scholarly books he had taken.
If we think we can grow in the Lord just on our past knowledge of the Bible, we are sorely mistaken. We forget, things change, we age, but if we stay in the Word we will be amazed at how it can stay new. It doesn’t matter how much we ate this morning, we will eventually have to eat again. A 
meal last week does not fill us up today. Good News Club is not meant to be enough Bible for us for the rest of our lives. There is no better way to “get our top button straight” than to remain in the Word. If we don’t , we will spend a lot of time trying to get everything else squared away and no matter how much we try, we will still be a mess.
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