Blogging is harder than I thought

Well, blogging reguarly is a pain isn’t it! I promise there will be a couple of posts coming later today sometime 🙂

How to read the Bible – 5 minutes that changed my entire perspective

Around two years ago (ouch, has it really been that long!), I completed the Newfrontiers Leadership Training course. One of those sessions was on Hermenutics (which is the practice of working out the meaning of what the Bible says). It was a fairly standard session – translations of the Bible, the different types of Scripture, the author’s intent etc…

But then Adrian Birks, who was leading the session, said something in a 5 minute window that I will never forget and has changed my entire perspective on reading the Bible. I’m sure I have probably heard it before, but it really stuck out at me.

Adrian was talking about promises in the Bible (particularly when we as Christians read the Psalms) and automatically assume we can take hold of those. Adrian then reminded us how the Psalms are actually the author’s experience of God, and that what they describe is possible for our experience of God but not something you automatically attain to.

Take Psalm 62:1-2 “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I shall never be shaken” (NIV)

We can read it, we can agree with it. We can pray it, we can even read it out passionately on a Sunday. But do we know it and believe it for ourselves?

I know for myself, that my soul doesn’t always find rest in God alone. It finds rest in reading the news, in sitting on my computer, in spending time with friends. Is God alone my rock? In some areas of my life, but not others – I am tied to my Excel spreadsheet when it comes to finances (another post on that one to come).

Then take Psalm 63:2-5

“I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”

This is actually my favourite Psalm. But I don’t see God in his sanctuary and behold his power and glory by reading this Psalm – as I used to do. From reading verse 2, you can say that God is powerful and glorious, but you haven’t experienced it, or know it in your heart. Actually reading the Psalms should give us a yearning to know and experience God for ourselves – outside of reading the Bible. In just spending time with him, worshipping him, living our day by lives with him at the centre.

“Your love is better than life” – You don’t know it by reading it, you know it by experiencing it!

So now I read the Bible differently – yearning for the experience that the authors had of God for myself, and not just reading it as knowledge or facts about God and my relationship with him is better for it.

How do I do this?

1. Read the experience / emotional response of the authors and ask myself what truth about God are they responding to and how I can do the same in my own life.

2. Have complete confidence that how the authors of the Bible experienced God is how God wants me to experience Him.

3. Pray through the Psalms, asking God that my experience would be like theirs.

4. Aim to discipline myself in active commands. Eg “My soul finds rest in God alone”. Asking God to show me the benefit of doing so and doing my best to make sure I find my rest in Him everyday.

That was probably my biggest take-away from the entire two year course – 5 minutes of revelation. Thanks to Adrian, but most of all, thank you to God for providing his Word to describe the experience of knowing Him, knowing that he wants me to experience Him in the same way too.

Not another book review of “The Shack”…

Lots of people are reviewing The Shack. Good reviews and bad reviews. (If you’re not in the loop – The Shack is the latest book to take hold of the Christian book market in the west). It’s ‘controversial’ because it portrays God as a woman and a few other things – google to listen to Mark Driscoll talk about it or you can read a comprehensive 17 page review from Tim Challies here

I’m not going to actually review this book – I started reading it, got to the point when the dialogue between Mack and God began and gave up – I personally would have preferred to follow the story of the FBI chasing down the serial killer – that seemed far more appealing!. I smiled and grinned at a few of the digs the author put in at various types of Christian but I just got bored.

But why did I read this book? Because I’d heard about the controversy of the book – nothing good, only bad. I think the vast majority of people who are reading The Shack are doing so for the same reasons. With the power of the internet, a few people quickly hear the opinion of a few influential people and it suddenly spreads like wildfire. Pastors (because they love this kind of thing) casually mention on Sundays “I’ve read this book, it may be helpful, but I don’t agree with everything in it”. Of course, at this point, everyone in the church wants to buy and read the book, so they can find out what it says, at the end of it also say “I’ve read this book, it may be helpful, but I don’t agree with everything in it”. Some pastors even go to dedicate an entire sermon as to why the book is bad and the need to defend the truth.

I think the sales of The Shack are so high not because lots of people are reading it, enjoying it and suddenly praying “Our mother in heaven”, it’s because all the evangelical, reformed types love to defend the truth, defend the gospel and with all the controversy surrounding it.

I think the impact of books like this is overstated. The only people getting excited about this kind of thing are those ruled by fad-driven Christianity. A few years ago it was The Purpose Driven Life, this year it’s The Shack, next year it will be forgotten about and people will move onto something else (the sequel I imagine!)

The Shack connects to lots of people because it speaks to them in an emotional way about intimacy with God, knowing him in a loving relationship and also how to deal with the hurt and pain of life. Perhaps people perceive that The Shack gives them something more than the Bible alone can.

Yes, we need to defend the truth, but I think more than ever, we need anointed preaching and teaching which shows from the Bible how God wants intimate relationship, that we see how God can deal with the hurt and pain of life. We need to teach from the heart, not from the head and show the emotion that is found in the Bible – poetry, song, lament and so on.

People are reading less and less – if you mention The Shack in church and state the controversy, I’m guessing over 50% would buy it. If you recommend a book you found really helpful on understanding the Trinity, such as this one, 10% or less will give it a second thought.

People are using The Shack as their spiritual nourishment – it’s a fad and will feed them for a month, I expect most will read the book once and never read it again. Instead we need to pursue with passion and energy to show people that the only words which ultimately have life are found in the Bible and that can nourish and sustain us every single day for a lifetime.

I think through this God has humbled me and I’ve learnt not to respond how I used to. Usually I would somehow work out a way to mention the book in a sermon, I would quickly engage in any conversation about the book and be aggressive about rubbishing the book – in short I would enjoy the controversy and take pride in the fact I knew better.

This time round (thanks to some helpful wisdom from Amy as well), I’ve pretty much ignored it, not mentioned it in sermons and instead I want to focus on a desire and appetite for the Bible beyond any other book and spend my time effectively absorbing it, experiencing it for myself in the hope that I can show people the all sustaining and enjoyable diet of God speaking through his word and then the understanding of God in his word is then displayed in my own life and in my relationship with Him.

Welcome and let’s get started

Well, I’ve been reading blogs for going on 6 years, and I’ve always thought of starting a blog, but perhaps I’ve never known what to say or had enough to say but now is the time to jump in and get started – when your wife and best friend start blogging then you know it’s time.

I’m good at reading blogs, whether or not I’ll be good at writing one is another matter. I’ve decided to call it “Always Learning” – because that’s what I’m constantly doing by reading the Bible, listening to friends & family, reading books, blogs and digesting wisdom to shape my own life and others around me. I also hold to the principal of learning anything from anyone – I’m not “above” anyone else, everyone has unique experiences and insights into God which I can learn from.

For those of you reading this, if you weren’t sure, I’m a Christian and this blog will be concentrating on my relationship and walk with God, church life, leadership and so on. If you know me, you know I’m also passionate about software development – I’ll be starting a separate blog for that in due course!

I’ll hopefully get kicked off with a few “What I’ve learnt” posts this week- they may be useful to you, they may not – either way it’ll provide a nice archive for me. Plus if you read this thing you’ll get the benefit of my hours upon hours of reading other people’s blogs, hoovering it all up and spitting out the best bits so you don’t have to read all those other boring blogs like this one.