In the
month of February 2008 two programmes on ‘Rereading the Bible’ were organized at
our Resource Center in Nagpur. During
the morning tea-break on the first day, after the programme was introduced, I
was chatting with some of my friends and making a joke of the whole thing as we
were asking each other ‘have you read the Bible at least once before coming
here to ‘reread’ it? We all laughed at
it and instantly it became a running joke in the premises.
If we
pause for a moment and think here, did we really make a joke or was it prompted
by an inner voice? Is it not true that most
of us do not read the Bible the way we should read it? As young people many of us read the Bible
looking for the answers we want. Or, worse, we read it to find proof
texts for what we already believe. Some of us think that we “have to”
read the Bible daily to be a good Christian and so we feel guilty if we miss it
by any chance. Still some of us do not read Bible much at all, perhaps to
avoid legalism or because we think they’re too busy. This is one of the reasons why our lives lack
the love, joy, peace, and power that Jesus’ disciples demonstrate on the pages
of the New Testament. God wants that we
need to read the scriptures to listen
to God speak his life into our souls rather than using the Bible to get
what we want. The
Bible is called “the Word of God” for an important reason! Our great
opportunity is to humble ourselves before the Sacred Scriptures to listen to
God speak his wisdom and his life to us today.
Reading the Bible regularly is essential
as it disciplines us in our Christian living. I’ve been doing this for
years myself. I learned this from my childhood. But I have to keep
reminding myself as somebody has said that ‘more important than getting through
the whole Bible in a year is to get
the Bible through the whole me’! When we read the Bible rightly
then we’re letting it, or rather God, read us. We need to ask God to
examine us as we actually are in that moment and to use the written Word of God
to draw us to the Living Word of God, who is Jesus. If our Bible reading does not lead us into a
closer relationship with Christ such that we become more like him then it has
no value. Recall that Jesus said this to the Pharisees (John 5:39).
What I’m trying to say is that we need to learn to read the Bible with an
attitude of submission to God.
This is the key to how we live our whole lives. We should go to God’s
Word with our hearts open and eager to hear, trust, and obey whatever he has to
say to us today. One way that we know that we’re reading the Bible
submissively is if we’re surprised or challenged by something we read.
God’s Word is so deep and pervasive in its wisdom, goodness, and grace that no
matter how many times we read it we should find new discoveries for our
lives. This is even true when we memorize a chapter or other long
section. We’ll find that when we’re turning it over in our mind in prayer
for the umpteenth time that God brings something new to us for our life and our
relationship with Him that day.
The word of God is living and active (Hebrews
4:12). May God use it to bring His life and the activity of His Kingdom
into us and through us to others! We
need to always bear it in our mind that our aim of reading the Scriptures
should not to be a scholar or to impress others with our knowledge of the Bible;
our aim must be only to nourish our soul on God’s word to us.
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