This morning I flipped open Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and found a couple of paragraphs that express something I've thought about for a long time, but could not express properly in my own words.
"Maintaining doctrinal purity is good, but it is not the whole picture for a New Testament church. The apostles wanted to do much more than simply "hold the fort," as the old gospel song says. They asked God to empower them to move out and impact an entire culture.
"In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, 'Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it--yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence on him.' [1]
"One way to recognize whether we suffer from this disconnection is to look at our concern for people who are dirty . . . people who are "other" . . . people who don't fit the core group's image. [. . .] Yet Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are different."
~ Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, p. 140-141
[1] William Law, The Power of the Spirit, p. 19
Reflecting on this, I realized that our response to the Bible must not be just, "Ah, what intellect! Ah, so much to discuss!" - as is often the temptation. The Bible is not for surfing the crest of the wave. It's for engaging life. It is not solely about transcending; it is about struggling people, for struggling people. Think about Jacob wrestling with God, and how often we end up wrestling with God in trial. The Bible was never meant to help us quit struggling. Indeed, the more we read and truly engage, the more trials God will send our way - and how we should rejoice for that (!), because the more we struggle (and ultimately prove our faith), the more we will grow. And truly it is darkest before dawn. Just before we think we've lost the fight, when we're hanging by that last bare thread, it is over - the sun shines again and we wonder why we ever even thought to doubt.
As I thought about all this, I heard my mom reading aloud to my siblings about George Müller - the first time he attended a Bible study. "George was amazed. [The leader of the study] had never been university, yet he prayed a better prayer than George, a divinity student!" May our reading the Bible teach us to pray better!
I don't care to defend Christianity in an intellectual debate so much as to prove it with my own life - quod erat demonstrandum (which is Latin for "which is the thing which was going to be proved," which means, "thus it is proved" - a phrase I found in a novel I read; I love it! :P). If someone has their heart set on believing something, no amount of argument and logic can evoke the heart change. It can influence them. But why not let them see for themselves!
This led to another thought. Could it be that God would be more pleased with me if I read just a bit of the Bible and it evinced a true change in my life than if I read much of it "intellectually" and had no heart change? And by change in heart and action here I don't mean just in our personal lives, but in touching the lives of others. So often we limit our jurisdiction to our own selves. The Bible is about so much more than perfecting our own selves. But again, we...I...have that tendency to think I'm the center of the universe. And literally I am, to myself, because this is my center of thought. But oh, how easy it is to forget to use that thought center to tell myself that I ought to view others as more important than myself!
About how much of the Bible I read: this is hard for me to grasp - this delicate balance. It takes discipline and a love for God's Word to really immerse myself in God's Word, and yet I could do that and not truly love God's Word, because it evinced no change in heart and thus no change in action. And if that were the case, reading God's Word would be only a "outward appearance" (1 Samuel 17:9) rather than the heart-change God looks for.
So each time I'm tempted to read just for volume, I need to ask myself how I'm letting what I've read so far impact my own life. And also, is it impacting me to have a true love for God's Word and to want to read it more and more? It's this sort of symbiosis that is so hard to achieve, and it exists only in the power of the Spirit.
2 comments:
I love that book. And I DEFINITELY feel what you're feeling. Sometimes I feel sickened to my stomach that all week, I can eat the Word, but really, I'm just feeding my intellect and critical thinking skills... and not meeting Jesus face to face... and definitely not reaching out to a sick world like He did.
Man... this stuff is hard.
But it encourages me greatly that you're reading the Bible. You have no idea how much that encourages me. I feel like sooooo many of my Christian friends, including other Bubble alums, read everything BUT the Bible -- philosophy, Blue Like Jazz, etc.
Let's keep fighting for intimacy with Him :) Every inch we gain... is eternal joy and real joy now :) - Ed
Oh, man...so true, Ed. That is a huge temptation for me too. Read all this stuff that draws from the Bible and consider *that* to be your "nourishment" for the day. But, oh, goodness - when you really let yourself read the Bible, you wonder why you don't go back to the wellspring rather than fish downstream. :) I mean...it just feels so fresh and good!
Thanks so much for your comment. You have no idea how much it encourages me to know that someone read it and was encouraged too. That's the thing about blogging...you just don't know who your audience is.
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