Uncategorized Murray McLellan on 08 Jun 2007 07:24 pm
Jesus and My Mini-Van pt. 3
Here is the third in the Steve Lehrer series. Make sure to scroll down to read the first posts …
Let me summarize a bit so that I can move on to explore how to “put some shoe leather” to what I have said so far. In part 1 I tried to show from Scripture that one cannot be a Christian without being radically self-sacrificial for the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of Christ. It doesn’t matter what you and I profess with our mouths and it doesn’t matter what we did for Christ in the past. If you live a life in which you try to have both God and money, both worldly pleasure and spiritual gain, both this world and the next, then you cannot actually ever have known Jesus Christ in a saving way. The Scriptures are crystal clear about this. The problem is, I bought a mini-van. That is, I have gotten relatively comfortable and non-sacrificial in the way that I live. Perhaps you have as well? So what should we do about this? Well, I started to answer this question by addressing how we should think (in pt. 2). I wrote about the problem of pride and how my prayerlessness shows that I thought I was adequate to live the Christian life without God. I said that I even had twisted my good theology to support my adequacy theory in that I thought of myself as having a “full tank” of new heart so that I didn’t really see that I needed to ask God for anything to live for Him in most ordinary situations. We not only need to see ourselves as inadequate and having empty tanks that lead us to cry out to God for help in living before Him, but I found that I need to view everyday as a desperate spiritual battle rather than simply another hum drum day. Finally, I pointed out that we need to ask and answer the “why” question. Why did God create the world, us, and Satan? Why did God choose to use such weak and ineffective people like you and me to defeat the powers of evil and accomplish His plan? The answer is, so that God could showcase His power and bring Himself glory by using us. Think about it for a moment. Our weakness is actually a good thing! When people really know us and they see how we are really nothing special (that we are actually weak and foolish in the way the world counts strength and wisdom) and yet they see how our lives are pure and upright and when they see what we accomplish for the Kingdom when we suffer unbearable persecution; or when we give sacrificially to help someone; or when we have amazing courage and clarity in speaking about Christ, God is manifestly seen as the power behind it all. He is seen by the world as real because everyone will know that weak people like you and I could not possibly do what God has done through us. But that is mostly theory. How do we get to where we will move from being comfortable to being radically self-sacrificial for Christ? That is what we will be thinking about in these next few entries…
How To Read Scripture to Change Your Life
If you are a person who does not thrive on structure, you probably don’t normally do a bible reading program that has you reading several chapters each day. Don’t feel bad about that. You are no worse off than the structured reader who is in the word at the same time each day checking off his chapters with a satisfying stroke of his special bible reading pencil. But please don’t misunderstand me. I think structure is very valuable. I have my own little structured bible-reading program (no special pencil though!). But neither structure nor lack of structure ensures Bible reading that really transforms your life.
So, what is the secret? What is the key? Desperation!
I will tell you what the secret is in my life and I hope that it unlocks your reading of Scripture as well. When I wake up in the morning I get my Bible and I read as a DESPERATE MAN. When I wake up I don’t feel desperate. I feel tired. When I wake up I don’t feel like I need God. I feel like I need coffee (actually tea since I don’t drink coffee anymore…and I miss it!). But that only shows me that I am totally deceived. I need God to reveal to me my sinfulness and my inadequacy all over again and I need to see with fresh eyes how powerful, holy, compassionate, loving, merciful and beautiful my God really is. I need fresh encouragement to live for my God today. I cannot live simply off of what I know to be true…I need to see that it is true once again in the pages of Scripture in the almost infinite variety of ways that God reveals Himself to His children. I need God to speak to me through the pages of His Word and tell me that He loves me and the He is sufficient for me today. If I don’t hear from God in His Word everyday…if I cannot glean something encouraging and hope giving each day, I am like the owner of a car with no gas. I can’t go anywhere myself and I cannot give anyone a ride who needs one. So, recognize the reality that you are desperate and read desperately.
What follows are some suggestions that I have found helpful. If you don’t think they are helpful, that is fine. Find something that works for you and let me know about it!
Write It Down!
This, for me, has led to another practice. You see, I find that when I read desperately I am engaged and prayerful because I am wrestling with each chapter begging God to give me something to feed my soul with. Every morsel that God gives me I natural see as a precious gem. So, in order not to forget these gems I now read with paper and pencil so that I can write down passages that impact me and thoughts that come to me as I read those passages. I now have hundreds of pages of passages of Scripture that I have found life-giving to my soul and explanations as to why that is so. So there are days when I read Scripture and although I pray to God for insight, my mind is a blank slate and my heart is a cold stone. On those day I flip back in my notes from times past and I am always able to find something to stir my heart to love God more and serve Him with joy.
A Close Reading of One Passage (Meditating on Scripture)
In my daily bible reading I typically read anywhere from 8 to 15 chapters. I find that I get much from reading large sections of Scripture like this, but I need to focus on one portion of Scripture as well or my mind will not fix on any particular idea the way it needs to. So what I do is a pick a short passage in one of the epistles, the Gospels or the Psalms that is very rich and I begin to slowly work through it trying to figure out the flow of thought and then exactly what implications the passage has on my life. I typically write the passage out and I write out what it means in brief and any questions I have about it. I try to avoid going to commentaries so as not to get bogged down. Then I write down thoughts of how I will need to change in order to obey or reflect that particular passage. I do a lot of praying during this time. I am currently working on making a list of good passages for this so that folks won’t have to spend time hunting for them as I often do.
But I Don’t Have That Kind of Time!
Typically my Bible reading and prayer time will take anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. You might be very busy with work or school or kids or all three and you wonder where you could ever find that kind of time. I understand. Much of the time I have a very demanding schedule with family and appointments and travel. I am no stranger to the busyness of life! First, I want to remind you of is that nothing is more important than getting to know God better so that you have the spiritual stamina to walk worthy of His calling at work or school or kids. The God of heaven and earth has revealed himself in the pages of a book that He promises to change your life with and speak to you through if you spend time reading it and praying it. It is worth sacrificing TV, sleep, chore time, or almost anything else in order to commune with God over His self-revelation. Second, if you can only squeeze 40 minutes out of your day (I have never met anyone who could not legitimately get that much time to meet with God), pray that God would meet you as you cry for Him during those minutes that you do have. Third and last, God is a compassionate God who loves to meet with His children who want to know Him better and trust Him more. I am confident that you will be shocked at how reading Scripture this way will change your life and you will beg borrow and steal time in order to be able to spend more time with God through reading His Word.
In my next blog entries in this series I plan to talk about prayer and then sacrificial living.
Steve