Kingdom Harbor

Repost from Spring 2010 but I’m in the exact same place personally. -JB

“My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times…How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Psalm 119).

It’s perhaps my favorite time of year. I’m sitting in the backyard, listening to the lively noises of birds, squirrels, lawn mowers, and children playing down the street. Aaaah…spring time in Minnesota!  Somedays I can just watch two squirrels chase each other up and down the trees for an hour.

But this spring an even more important renewal is taking place: a renewal of my deep hunger and thirst for personal Bible reading.  Not just any kind of Bible reading. I am experiencing again a deep satisfaction that comes from a simple reading of a well-familiar passage where new discoveries and fresh ‘ahas’ jump off the page.

Don’t let anyone fool you.  Even the most passionate Bible teachers and pastors, who gobble up other books on the Christian life all year round, experience dry spells in their personal devotional life.  You know you’re in a dry spell when you consistently crave Wright, Piper, Yancey, Ortberg and others more than the living word of the Scriptures.  In fact, many of us use such books based on or about the Bible to justify our lack of feasting on God’s Holy Word.  We say, “They bring the Bible to life, make it fresh, illuminate it, and apply it to contemporary life in ways more impacting than reading it firsthand.”

Certainly, there are portions of Scripture that are harder to grasp, seem far removed from our world and so on.  Yet, what I’m realizing this spring is that much of the Bible is potently relevant and self-explanatory in nature.  Much of it is hopelessly obvious and sharply convicting. I am discovering (again) that all it takes is a wee bit of engagement with a parable of Jesus, or his instructions to his disciples, or his sermon on the mount, or an episode in Acts, and I am being powerfully challenged and inspired and shaken out of my lazy funk and devotional dry spell by a fresh word straight from God.

I am also rediscovering my first love: feasting on a biblical text without needing a fluffy exposition or inspiring sermonette to give it legs. Friends, there were days when the Bible was enough to set my heart afire and jolt me into faithful action. If I’m honest, good sermons have never moved me as much as reading a simple passage on my own and acting on it without explanation.  The seasons of my life when I am enjoying great sermons (and I listen to several each week on my iPod), tend to indicate that my personal encounters with the Divine Word is lacking and I’m settling for human leftovers.

I worry about the enormous numbers of Christians who depend on a Sunday sermon about a passage, dressed up in cute stories and emotional appeal, to sustain them the rest of the week.  I worry about those who constantly complain that the Bible is too hard to understand, turning instead to Christian inspirational books, and yet never seem to spend much time trying to learn how to develop an appetite and understanding of God’s Word.

Where is this coming from?  Answer: My weekly inward struggle with teaching/preaching. I discovered (again) that I have a knee jerk distaste with contemporary ministry expectations when it comes to teaching the Bible. Most weeks as I prepare my message for our high school group, I feel great pressure (much of it self-inflicted) to take a brilliant or challenging teaching of Jesus and somehow extract a timeless principle, repackage it in “relevant” language, and apply it to the lives of a teenager living in the 21st century — making sure to throw in an emotional story, funny illustration, set up with a slick intro and concluding with an emotional appeal.

I’m tired of pretending that I can improve on Jesus’ words.  I’m tired of believing my slick repackaging of the text can somehow make it more life-changing.  I’m tired of pretending the Bible is somehow incomplete and I have what it’s lacking. I’m coming back to my first love. I’m seeking shelter once again in simple truths I once believed — namely, that “God’s Word is powerful and active, sharper than a two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12) and that “My Word will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isa 55:11).

Let’s admit that not everyone can relate to the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 119.  Let’s admit that there are many for which the Bible is not a feast worth savoring and a meal worth sitting down to enjoy.  There are many people for which talk of “spiritual things” just doesn’t make sense. According to Paul, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).

I’m stepping aside again.  I’m placing the Word of God at center stage and pleading with the Holy Spirit to illuminate the text in ways that effect spiritual change and transformation in those “who have ears to hear.”  I have plenty of theological bones to pick with Pastor John Piper, but this is one area where he continually challenges and inspires me as a pastor and teacher.  He knows that the power in preaching is in the Word itself, and the preacher’s only job is to explain it clearly, get out of the way, and leave the results to God.  I love this about John Piper.

In the upcoming weeks you will be noticing many more posts where I have been simply drawing out simple yet powerful lessons from various texts I’ve been studying verse by verse, phrase by phrase, in my quiet time — Luke 10 and the Gospel of Mark in particular. May you come to find God’s Word absolutely delicious in your own Bible reading time this spring as well.