Christian Support Group Community Group
This is a place for everyone who loves Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (or those who are seeking Him), to come and discuss important issues in their lives and find support from fellow believers in regards to their faith and life. We uphold the Bible and living a Christ-like life, not as a way to heaven, but as a reflection of our love for God.
A Book of Good News
Many of us approach the Bible not as oxygenating, but as suffocating. We see the Bible lying there on the end table. We know we should open it. Sometimes we do. But it is usually with a sense of begrudged duty. Life is demanding enough, we think. Do I really need more demands? Do I have to hear even more instruction telling me how to live?
That’s an understandable feeling. But it is lamentably wrong. And it brings me to the central thing I want to say about the Bible as we think about how real sinners get traction for real change in their lives. The Bible is good news, not a pep talk. News. What is news? It is reporting on something that has happened. The Bible is like the front page of the newspaper, not the advice column. To be sure, the Bible also has plenty of instruction. But the exhortations and commands of Scripture flow out of the Bible’s central message, like ribs flowing out of a spine or sparks from a fire or rules of the house for the kids. Paul said that the Old Testament was written so that “through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). He said, “The sacred writings . . . are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). The Bible is help, not oppression. It is given to buoy us along in life, not drag us down. Our own dark thoughts of God are what cause us to shrink back from opening and yielding to it.
When we yawn over the Bible, that’s like a severe asthmatic yawning over the free offer of a ventilator while gasping for air. Read the Bible asking not mainly whom to imitate and how to live but what it shows us about a God who loves to save and about sinners who need saving.
Wrong Ways to Read the Bible
Perhaps it seems obvious that the Bible is good news. How else would we read it? Here are nine common but wrong ways to read the Bible:
- The warm fuzzies approach—reading the Bible for a glowing, subjective experience of God, ignited by the words of the text, whether we understand what they actually mean or not. Result: frothy reading.
- The grumpy approach—reading the Bible out of nothing but a vague sense that we’re supposed to, to get God off our backs for the day. Result: resentful reading.
- The gold mine approach—reading the Bible as a vast, cavernous, dark mine, in which one occasionally stumbles upon a nugget of inspiration. Result: confused reading.
- The hero approach—reading the Bible as a moral hall of fame that gives us one example after another of heroic spiritual giants to emulate. Result: despairing reading.
- The rules approach—reading the Bible on the lookout for com- mands to obey to subtly reinforce a sense of personal superiority. Result: Pharisaical reading.
- The Indiana Jones approach—reading the Bible as an ancient document about events in the Middle East a few thousand years ago that are irrelevant to my life today. Result: bored reading.
- The magic eight-ball approach—reading the Bible as a road map to tell me where to work, whom to marry, and what car to buy. Result: anxious reading.
- The Aesop’s Fables approach—reading the Bible as a loose collection of nice stories strung together independently, each with a nice moral at end. Result: disconnected reading.
- The doctrine approach—reading the Bible as a theological repository to plunder for ammunition for our next theology debate at Starbucks. Result: cold reading.
The Right Way
There is some truth to each of these approaches. But to make any of them the dominant lens through which we read Scripture is to turn the Bible into a book it was never intended to be. The right way to read the Bible is the gospel approach. This means we read every passage as somehow contributing to the single, overarching storyline of Scripture, which culminates in Jesus.
Just as you wouldn’t parachute into the middle of a novel, read a paragraph out of context, and expect to understand all that it means, you cannot expect to understand all that a passage of Scripture means without plotting it in the big arc of the Bible’s narrative. And the main story of the Bible is that God sent his Son, Jesus, to do what Adam and Israel and we ourselves have failed to do—honor God and obey him fully. Every word in the Bible contributes to that message. Jesus himself said so. In a theology debate with the religious elite of the day, Jesus told those who claimed to be faithful to Moses and thus opposed to Christ, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). Jesus told his disciples, “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms”—shorthand for the entire Old Testament—“must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44).
The Bible is good news. It must be read as gospel. And the result of this approach is transforming reading. We grow. As Luther said:
He who would correctly and profitably read Scripture should see to it that he finds Christ in it; then he finds life eternal without fail. On the other hand, if I do not so study and understand Moses and the prophets as to find that Christ came from heaven for the sake of my salvation, became man, suffered, died, was buried, rose, and ascended into heaven so that through him I enjoy reconciliation with God, forgiveness of all my sins, grace, righteousness, and life eternal, then my reading in Scripture is of no help whatsoever to my salvation.
I may, of course, become a learned man by reading and studying Scripture and preach what I have acquired; yet all this would do me no good whatever.1
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We finally came to the point where the clearing of the stuffs at the damaged areas will begin. Tomorrow a woman from the content removal company will come to our house to start the plan to move and pack up things that will go to the storage. The contractor told me unless he finds out that it is not safe for us to stay inside the house during the whole repairs, his plan is to do it in such a way...
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If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea. Isaiah 48:18, NIV
Anyway, God can use however much Bible we read in our lives. Nobody has to read any certain amount.
@MarleneJ, really good article. Thanks for sharing it.
May God bless you both and give you peace.
I knew God since I was 20, so that helps. I have bi-polar disorders. Well, please keep me in your prayers. I will be praying for you and your son as well.
What Bible version are you reading? I only read modern ones, or German, French, Greek & Hebrew. Older Bibles, with overly flowery and obsolete words make me unable to concentrate. KJV does that to me it's the only major translation I can't read. I get lost in the second person singular "thou" and so many words which are archaic, or have changed meanings. Even the NASB I read for 25 years, 25 years from cover to cover, got very boring. It's modern English, but very stilted and overly rigid.
But fortunately, we have websites like BibleGateway.com! It has the Bible in 150 versions, and you can read, and compare. Lavender, you might want to read in Thai. Maybe that is your heart language.
The ones I like, are NIV, and HSCB. The second is loose and flowing. I read NET, because there are 66K footnotes and then I don't have to get a commentary to read.
Anyway, switching translation might help. Or not! I don't want any more stress on you than you already have! I didn't know you were bipolar, either. That can also make concentration hard, esp when depressed.
Love you! And so does God!!
I started getting disability money in 1994 due to bipolar disorders. I am glad you understand what I am talking about when I said I have difficulty concentrating when I read the Bible. The weird thing is I have less difficulty reading the online news but that too has been difficult. Now that I am talking about it, I have a set of NIV Bible on cassette (complete New Testament) by Steven B. Stevens that I never listened to and a cassette player. I think I will try that. I think what I need is to pray for desire to read God's words. I will let everyone knows how that works out.
On another note, Is there a kind of housing like the nursing home you mentioned, but that would accommodate your daughter as well since she's disabled?Just wondering, but I guess if there was a simple solution like that you'd have found it already.
There are some group homes for adults in our town. My daughter gets SSI. I think she will qualify to live in one of them but what is unbearable for me when I think of it is she has lived with us and does not socialize with anyone outside home except for one friend who she knew since the second grade who lives forty-minute drive away from us. Her friend (a girl) at present lives with her father and younger brother. Let's say if my husband and I were to suddenly disappear, the ideal will be for my daughter to move in with her friend. They live in a three-bedroom trailer so that is not workable for the time being, and the friend's younger brother is single. My daughter has fatigue problem and social anxiety. She is able to walk into a store to get something without anyone going with her but never go any places alone. I mean for instance, I will wait for her in the car when she goes into a building to see her doctors.
A woman told me she knew a forty-year-old man who lived with his parents all his life. He could stay in the house alone while the parents went out. My daughter now is able to learn more life skills such as driving but she won't survive living in a place alone. Her friend moved from our town to that other town when she finished highschool and has no plan to move back. So the conclusion about my daughter's situation is she won't survive being alone. I can't stick her in a group home right now because it will ruin her since she won't be happy. She has suffered mental and physical illnesses since the age of fourteen when the depressions illness hit her but by Gos's grace and mercy she is as okay as she can be at her age of thirty-five. She does not have learning disability but grew up in a very isolated setting.
Today I am taking my daughter to her new therapist who she has seen three times so far. I am thankful we have doctors and social workers to talk to. I have a therapist too who is nice person but told me she has no advice for me as to how I am going to find an ideal living arrangement for my daughter. in the future. I hope you can see a clearer picture of what my daughter's situation and needs are. It is one of those rare cases of people who have very little or zero human support. I thank you for all who pray for her.. She and my husband are not believers.
"What is unbearable for me when I think of it is she has lived with us and does not socialize with anyone outside home."
What I mean is I feel very depressed thinking about how my daughter will be miserable with the future change that does not look good right now.
My sister & I moved our mom out of her condo she shared with my brother last year, into independent living. She had some very bad falls, breaking her pelvis & hip 3 times. So we upgraded her to assisted living, in the same facility and my brother moved into her old independent apartment, we sold the condo. My brother is much happier away from my mom, eats better, and visits my mom daily. We thought he would hate it, but he likes having more independence.. You might be surprised. My brother was born with a birth defect. He has an extra bone in his forehead, which is always growing, a form of giganticism.,he has had it removed several times. It affected .him more emotionally than physically, although it did affect his balance reflex. But emotionally he was teased his whole life, and we didn't know till he was in his 20's. He has never worked, though capable, just lazy. And borderline personality disorder, with narcissism.
Anyway, glad you have a plan and are following it!
I don't think #4 (hero approach) is that bad of an approach. Now if you read Genesis and say, "Oh no! I'm nothing like Abraham or Jacob," yes, than the hero approach is bad.
But I like reading the Old Testament because there's a theme. To me reading about Abraham, Jacob, Moses and others, makes me understand that just because you do one excellent thing doesn't mean you are going to have no other challenges. In fact, if you do one thing really well, you will most definitely have more challenges as those biblical figures did.
I think the key is to read about people in the Bible and see how they relate to us. Some themes in life or difficulties in life are timeless. In other words, challenges faced by Abraham can be challenges we face now.
I've been praying for you, Lavender!