Icebreaker Question:
What are some of your
favorite songs? Ones that make you want
to turn up the music and dance, sing out loud, or that make you cry? Any songs you can’t stand?
Open With Prayer
Read Lesson:
Okay, I am assuming here that we
have all been Christians for a long time and that we all know the importance of
God’s Word. Now then, raise your hand if
you live like the Bible is “extra-credit”?
Or do you live like you really believe that the Bible is crucial to your
day, your life, your walk with the Lord?
I fear that in our day and age of
being too familiar and comfortable with God and His Word (in America), we have
lost the sense of awe and fear of Him and His Word. It’s too familiar, and we are too
comfortable. We have heard the Bible
stories again and again. We pick them
apart as objects of study, to be looked at closely under a microscope. It is educational and academic. Or we pick them apart so that we can piece
them back together again in a way we like better. We twist them for our own ends. Or we just shrug our shoulders and yawn and
ignore it.
We have lost the ability to put ourselves into the stories. To see God for who He really is. To stand with the Israelites at the foot of
the mountain when they trembled at the powerful voice of God. We need to start seeing ourselves in the
stories and in the people of the Bible if we are to learn from them, if we are
to understand what God wants us to know through them and to let it change our lives
and our hearts (instead of just educating our minds). So many people can know the Bible forward and
backward without ever meeting God there.
Or there are those who don’t even
feel the need to read the Bible more.
They have the sense that people in general should read their Bibles
more, but they themselves don’t feel convicted strongly enough to care. “Just enough of the Bible and of God to get
by” is good enough for them. How tragic!
I think that we, as Christians, are
missing out on a vibrancy and a passion in our lives and our walks because we
don’t take these two things seriously enough: prayer and God’s Word. If we are only half-committed to meeting with
God in prayer and in His Word, we will have only a partial relationship with
Him. We’ll get just enough of God to
make us feel good, but we will miss out on “great” - on a vibrant, living
relationship with Him. And we can’t
blame Him for that. We are as close to
Him as we work to be.
I think that if we can pinpoint why
we are lazy in this discipline and do away with it, it would free us up from
the false notion that it’s “extra-credit.”
So let me start with exploring some reasons for why we don’t read our
Bibles more. And many of these come from
reflecting upon my own reasons or excuses for letting my Bible sit on a shelf.
See if any of these reasons for not
reading our Bibles resonate with you:
1. I just
don’t care. I’d rather be doing other
things.
2.
Scripture is so familiar that I don’t think I’ll be missing out on
anything by not reading it. It’s old
news.
3. I want
to read it more and feel like I should, but I am just too busy. And God understands, right?
4. I
might be actively or passively avoiding it because I don’t want to be convicted
by anything that it might reveal to me.
5. I’m a
good Christian. Serving at church,
saying the right things, behaving well.
I know what the Bible says and do my best to abide by it. So do I really need to be reading it daily,
too? When I’m already doing what it
tells me to do?
6. It’s
just an item on a To Do list that needs to get done just so I can check it
off. And so I don’t really see much
point to it or much benefit in it. But
if this is what God thinks I should do - for whatever reason - then I’ll try to
get to it.
7. I feel
like I get enough of God’s messages through sermons and Christian music and
through my spouse, so I don’t really need to sit down and read it for myself.
[I actually read an article in a
Christian magazine by a woman who was married to the son of a well-known
preacher, and she said this very thing.
She said that we wives should get our Scripture teaching from our
husbands, that this was better than reading the Bible for ourselves. It blew my mind! Sounded like she was making up fancy,
godly-sounding excuses for her over-busyness and failure to be in the
Word. Seriously, it blew my mind.]
8. Other
civilizations and ancient people didn’t have the Bible to read. And they did just fine without it. If it wasn’t necessary for them, it can’t
really be necessary for us, too. Right?
9. And on
top of that, the Bible doesn’t command quiet, personal time in the Word, does
it? I never read a verse that said,
“Thou shalt spend thirty minutes a day reading this Book.” Right?
So how crucial is it really when the Bible itself doesn’t say that we
“have to read it every day.”
10. I
don’t like to be told what to do or to be forced to do anything. Then it’s not really a genuine desire on my
part anyway. So I’ll just show you all
how good of a Christian I can be without being forced into your idea of what’s
necessary.
11. It’s too hard to understand.
12. My
parents or neighbor or friend used the Bible as a sword to hack others to
pieces. And they forced it down my
throat. And so it’s left a bad taste in
my mouth.
13. I want
more emotional, dynamic experiences of God.
I want to find Him in miracles and nature and inside myself, instead of
inside some old Book.
14. I have
concerns with what seem like discrepancies in the Bible. And I don’t like the hard-to-swallow images
of God as being wrathful or killing people.
15. I’m
just plain old lazy.
Self-serving. I’m not known for
my self-discipline. And I am entitled to
my own happiness, and I won’t let “shoulds” infringe on that.
16. Yes, I
know I should read more, but . . .
I think that what all this comes
down to is that we are not passionate about God’s Word because we are not
passionate about God. We haven’t yet
seen Him for who He really is (as opposed to our own ideas of Him) and we
haven’t yet fallen in love with Him.
Sure, we love Him, but we are not wholeheartedly consumed by Him. Because when we are consumed with someone, we
hang on to their every word.
And the only way to get past this is
to confess it to God, to ask the Holy Spirit for help in understanding God’s
Word, and . . . to read it. Read it as
though God has something to say to you personally - about your life -
through it. Read it as though He is in
the pages, waiting to meet with you and speak to you.
The Bible isn’t about ancient
people’s sins from yesteryear; it’s about our sins today. It’s not about an old-time God; it’s about
the greatness, holiness, and love of the God who lives today. Once we grasp this - once we read the Bible
as relevant and alive - it becomes much more powerful and applicable to our
lives. It is so full of rich life
lessons and so full of the power, glory, mercy, wrath, and love of God - the
God who is the same today as He was then.
And it humbles us, like trembling children at His feet. The fear of God!
I can’t tell you how many times I
hear something like this, “I know I should make time to read the Bible more,
but . . .”
But
what?
But I just don’t care? It’s not that important to me? I have better things to do?
We make time for the things that
really matter to us. What does our use
of time tell us about our relationship with God?
The sad thing is, while many of us
wouldn’t actually say this out loud, if we dug down deep enough, we would have
to admit that this is exactly how most of us live our lives day to day. We know the importance of the Bible, yet we
find ways to excuse our lack of reading it and meditating on it. We think that listening to Christian music or
going to church once a week will suffice.
I have four young boys at home. I know the busyness of life and the need to
find ways to meet and meditate on God all throughout the day, even in the noise
and chaos of family life. Christian music
uplifts and encourages me as I go about my busy days. It helps me to remain focused on God, and it
has been an incredible source of comfort during very stressful trials. (Get all the albums you can find from The
City Harmonic. They are incredible and so
uplifting! I don’t know how well I would
have made it through this depressing, anxiety-filled year without listening to
them every day.) I value it immensely,
but I do not think that this wonderful resource should take the place of
personal, quiet Bible Time.
There are definitely times in our
lives that are busier than others, times of crisis or severe stress that leave
little room for quiet reflection and Bible reading. (However, this is usually when we need it
most.) And it is possible during these
times to have a spiritual walk that survives on the snatches of Scripture that
we get from music, books, sermons, and other people. But to live long-term with this practice, I
believe, will threaten the strength and integrity of our spiritual walks and
our faith.
I think that God gave different
revelations of Himself at different times.
First, there was the law and the commandments. Then there was Jesus. Now there is the Bible. While they didn’t have the Bible back in the
day as we know it, they did have commandments, Scriptures, and the law. And they were encouraged to read and meditate
on them often, to write them on the doorframes of their houses, to hide God’s
word in their hearts, and to have quiet times where they interacted with
God. The Psalms speak a lot of this:
Psalm 1:2: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.”
Psalm 5:3: “In the morning, O Lord,
you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my request before you and wait in
expectation.”
Psalm 119: 1-2, 7, 9-11,
15-16: “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according
to the law of the Lord. Blessed are they
who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. . . . I will praise
you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. . . How can a young
man keep his way pure? By living according
to your word. I seek you with all my
heart; do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. .
. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect
your word.”
My guess is that people with this
kind of devotion to, delight in, and respect for God’s words would hunger and
thirst for the words of the Bible, if they had one back then. They would probably hold the Bible in the
highest regard and advocate searching it daily for His truth so that they could
live more godly lives. If they had a Bible back then.
They didn’t . . . but we do!
I believe that we are all held
accountable for what is revealed to us.
For cultures that do not have a Bible, they have the revelation of God
through nature and the messages that He imprints on everyone’s heart. But for us, we have the revealed, written
Word of God. And we will be held
accountable for what we do with it and what we teach others to do with it.
While there is no Bible verse that
says, “Thou shalt sit quietly with this Book for thirty minutes every morning,”
it does show us by Christ’s example that quiet time is necessary. Jesus gave us an example of getting away
alone with the Father. And He is
God.
Mark 1: 35: “Very early in the morning, while it was still
dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he
prayed.”
Luke 5:16: “But Jesus often withdrew
to lonely places and prayed.”
Jesus is God in the flesh. He gives us His example to model. And Ephesians 5:1 teaches us “Be imitators of God . . .” Jesus, who is God,
needed to and often got away on His own, in solitude, to spend time with the
Father. And yet, somehow we think we can
fare better without regular quiet time with the Lord, though even Jesus Himself
felt it was important enough to do so regularly?
Jesus also stressed the importance
of Scripture when He said this: Matthew
4:4: “It is written: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every
word that comes from the mouth of God.” Every word from
the mouth of God. Scripture is
God-breathed. It is a whole book of
God’s words. Music and sermons are only
pieces, retold by someone else. Yes,
they are wonderful and necessary, too.
But Scripture supersedes all messages spoken to us by others - in
sermons, in songs, in other books.
Scripture is the measuring stick
that we judge all other messages and “truths” by. But you have to know it to be
discerning. And you have to read it for
yourself to really know it. In this
verse, being in the Word of God is compared to bread. Bread is a daily thing, our daily bread. We eat to sustain our lives. And we must eat daily, or we get weak and
malnourished.
Try as we might, we will never find
the kind of Bible passage that many of us wish we could find. A passage like this:
2 Bologna-ians 1:1-10: “Now,
brothers, we know that God has written down His Word and that it’s available to
us all. But we tell you that it is not
necessary to read it for yourselves.
Christ’s death is sufficient for salvation. And salvation is sufficient for leading a
godly, righteous life.
So let’s not add to your daily
schedule by claiming that you should read the Bible for yourself or that you
must meet with God in private quiet times.
It is simply not necessary for you since you have Christian music and a
pastor to teach you what God tells him in his quiet times.
We don’t think that God actually
meant His Word to be read by everyone, just by the teachers. So if you want to be a “good enough
Christian,” there is no need to read this long, hard-to-understand, and (let’s
be honest) sometimes boring Book. (Trust us, we know. We’ve read 1 Chronicles 1-9.)
But all you
have to do is listen to your Christian music, go to church on Sunday, and
listen to what your spouse tells you about the Bible. That is so much easier anyway. So let’s not complicate it.
Besides, God knows that you are
busy. Therefore, let us, the teachers,
do the reading of the Scriptures so that we can teach you what we
think it says. That way, you have more
time to clean your kitchen, feed your family, update your Facebook page, read
your newspaper, watch your television, and text all your friends.
As long as you listen to good, godly
music and go to church on Sunday, you will never go astray.”
Honestly, I think that many of us are secretly hoping to find a passage like that. Then we could feel a lot better about our busy lives and our lazy disciplines. But, I’m sorry to say, it’s not in there. (Trust me, I’ve read straight through the Bible four or five times now, and it’s not there.)
Instead, I find this example in Acts
17:11: “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the
Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined
the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
They received the message from their teacher, the famous and
godly Paul. And yet, they examined the
Scriptures . . . for themselves . . . every day . . . to see if Paul’s message
was on track. And they were called
“noble.”
While Bible reading and quiet time
are not necessary for salvation or to be a “good Christian,” I firmly believe
that it does have a tremendous effect on our understanding of Him, our level of
“righteousness,” our ability to be discerning, and the level of effectiveness
that we have for God’s kingdom work.
How much we immerse ourselves in the
Word (and spend time praying and listening to God) should have a huge impact on
how we live as Christians and if we are on target with God’s truth. Training in righteousness, discernment,
correction, wisdom, spiritual maturity (among others) are all things that come
with immersing ourselves in the Word.
Guidance, peace, learning to discern God’s whispering voice (among
others) all come with spending quiet time with God.
In this busy, disconnected,
self-focused age, we should be challenging ourselves and calling others up to
higher levels of righteous living and to drawing nearer to God through prayer,
His Word, and the quiet times. He
oftentimes speaks quietly, like a whisper.
And in Scripture, we are told over and over again to be still in God. I think part of the reason we are told to be
still is because that is when we learn to hear His whisper. But if we never slow down enough to do that,
we miss out.
Deuteronomy 4:29: “But if from there you seek the Lord your God,
you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your
soul.” I’m going to guess that searching for Him
with all our hearts and souls implies putting aside the necessary time to do it
properly and deeply.
We, unfortunately, can go on
deceiving ourselves for a long time that we are close enough to Him and doing
just fine with our books, sermons, and music.
(Or is it just me?) While this
may make us feel better at first - relieved of our guilt for not maintaining
quiet time with the Lord - it will leave us high and dry later. Someday, we will wake up and wonder, Why
don’t I feel close to God anymore? Why
can’t I hear Him or feel His presence like I used to? It won’t be God who drifted. Doing “just fine” falls far short of doing
our best for God’s glory, with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
What will happen to the level of commitment
and the Christian character of generations of believers brought up on the idea
that “Bible operator” is good enough, that accepting secondhand Scriptural
truths (without searching it for ourselves) is perfectly acceptable?
2 Timothy 4: 3-4: “For the time will come when men will not put
up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit
their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to
say what their itching ears want to hear.
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to
myths.”
It is only by knowing and training
ourselves in the Word, as God reveals it in His Bible, that we can correctly
discern spiritual myths. To feed on what
others tell us about Scripture (instead of having the disciplined, mature habit
of maintaining personal time in the Word and in prayer with the Lord) is a sure
way to make us susceptible to being misled by teachers who will say things that
we like to hear, things that sound good and right, but that might not be biblically
accurate.
But how will we know?
We won’t be able to discern
inaccuracy unless we are immersed in the Truth for ourselves. These myths are not always blatantly
obvious. Satan’s best schemes are the
super subtle ones that have an air of godliness. By these, we end up nibbling our way lost
because it “sounds good” to us. And it’s
what we wanted to hear anyway. So we
won’t seek any other truth. But it takes
careful studying and reading and discipline in the Word - in the God-breathed
Word - to keep on track.
Hebrews 5:12-14: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all
over again. You need milk, not solid
food! Anyone who lives on milk, being
still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by
constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
How do we get mature in this
Christian walk? Constant use of what
teaches us to distinguish good from evil?
Constant use of Scripture leads to
the spiritual maturity necessary to distinguish truth from falsehood. Is our level of spiritual maturity something
that we want to take casually?
So how important is Scripture and
quiet time really? I think that the Word of God itself has a lot
to say about that, and we would be wise to take it to heart and let it convict
us.
2 Timothy 2: 15: “Do your best to present yourself to God as
one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly
handles the word of truth.” We are
responsible for how we handle the “word of truth.” Is
correctly handling the Word leaving it on the shelf for extended periods of
time?
2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful
for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the
man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This says “all Scripture,” not just the few passages that we
learn about through other people and through music. Think about how many messages and lessons we
would miss out on if we felt that it was “good enough” to just listen to the
Sunday sermon or Christian music.
[I think it’s interesting to note
that James 5:16 says “. . . The prayer of a righteous man is
powerful and effective.” And we just saw that Scripture is useful for
training in righteousness. I think that
there is a link between abiding in the Word, seeking righteousness, and the
power of our prayers.
Now, it’s not our righteous acts
that make our prayers powerful and effective.
It is His righteousness working through us as we humbly submit our lives
completely to Him - for His glory! And
since we will always sin, we need to remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s
convictions and to return wholeheartedly to God in genuine repentance whenever
sin has broken fellowship.]
Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and
active. Sharper than any two-edged
sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit; it judges the thoughts
and the attitudes of the heart.” Scripture is living and active, and God leads
us by it and speaks to our hearts. But
by not constantly using it, we are opening ourselves up to being misled,
spiritually immature, ignorant, self-focused, and self-serving.
And we miss out on what God would
teach us through it today. We miss out
on seeing the messages that fit our needs each day, each moment we seek His
guidance through it. This is the living
and active part of it: it interacts with us each day as though God were
speaking right through it to our needs or blind spots. It guides and convicts and brings us up in
wisdom, as we use it (and need it) daily.
“My son, if you accept my words and store up
my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to
understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth
come knowledge and understanding.” (Proverbs
2:1-5)
My fear is that we are growing into
a community of ignorant, stagnant, weak, lukewarm, mal-nourished,
easily-deceived, less-effective Christians.
We have filled out days with too much activity and technology to really
dwell on God anymore. We are just too
busy and too self-focused. We don’t want
to be convicted of our shortcomings. So
not reading the Bible suits us just fine.
And we welcome any excuse that gives us permission to put spiritual
disciplines on the back burner.
And yet, we are offended by anyone
that implies that we are not disciplined enough in our Christian walks. And we look at those who diligently maintain
quiet-time with the Lord as super-spiritual giants. They are in a special class of believers that
we can never be a part of because we live in “The Real World.”
But the truth is that we just don’t
make the effort or time to draw that close to God (or we are actively or
unconsciously avoiding Him for some reason).
We want permission to focus on our lives, while neglecting a serious
study of the Word and quiet time with the Lord.
And yet, we still want to be patted on the back and hear, “Well done,
good and faithful servant.”
I have been there a lot during my
life, wanting to believe that I was doing good enough with my music, my
inspirational books, and my Sunday sermons.
I was a good Christian, and I loved the Lord, and I was growing in my
walk. But I was “so busy” with life that
I convinced myself that these other things were enough. Scripture was extra. Beneficial, but not as inspiring as music and
inspirational books. And honestly, it
was so familiar that it was boring and just not doing it for me anymore.
I wanted permission to remain slack
in my spiritual disciplines. But what I
needed more was gentle encouragement to persevere, to make devotional time a
priority in the midst of the busyness. I
needed to understand that my life, my faith, my trust in God, evidence of the
“fruit of the Spirit,” my level of righteousness, and my effect on the kingdom
of God are all greatly affected by the quality of my devotional life and the
priority that I put on meeting God in prayer and in His Word.
For so long, I didn’t know what it
was like to passionately pursue Him, to meet Him in the pages of the Bible, and
to know the living and active nature of Scripture . . . until these past
“furnace” years. Through these many
trials, God has broken me of my lazy, stagnating attitude. He has shown me the vibrancy that comes with
deep times in prayer and Scripture. I
always knew it was good and important, and I always valued it immensely. But I didn’t know what it was like to drink
deeply from it, to hunger and thirst for it.
Until now.
And now, I have become incredibly
jealous for it, for wanting to see God’s Word honored and valued above
all. God has moved me from seeing
Bible-reading and prayer as the icing on the cake, to seeing it as the whole
cake itself. It has become so precious
to me - a cherished lighthouse of truth - that I want others to know the joy
and peace and vibrant life that come with hungering and thirsting for the Word
also. It breaks my heart to hear, “I
know I should read the Bible and pray more, but . . .”
And I’m sure it breaks God’s heart,
too.
The God of the universe - the God
who is available to us and waiting to meet with us in His Word and to help us
have the fullest life possible - has written His message to us in the Bible. He has poured out His love and His heart and
His Truth to us in that precious book. And
we’d rather watch a mind-numbing television show.
How is it that we have enough time
for TV, newspapers, the mundane and unglorifying television shows, a leisurely
cup of coffee, the ridiculous amount of texting, emails, web-surfing, etc., but
we can’t carve out thirty minutes a day to see what the God of the universe has
to tell us? If we are really “that busy”
then we should get our affairs in order because we need to be prepared to die
of a heart-attack in the near future.
If we are not in the Word regularly,
we are nibbling our way lost and opening ourselves up to being easily
deceived. By the enemy and by
ourselves. And we are missing out on the
kind of life that God wants us to have, that He wishes we would have - for our
best and for His glory. (And if your
church isn’t preaching straight from the Word - if it’s editing His Word to fit
what they want to say or what others want to hear - get out of there fast and
find a church that preaches God’s Word as God revealed it.)
And, sadly, we are missing out on
the kind of relationship with God that we were meant to have. If we are not learning what God says about
Himself and about us in the Word then we are living out of our own misconceptions. Misconceptions about who God is, what He
wants from us, who we are, what we are capable of, how we are to live,
etc. And we will never be able to rest
in Him and His love because we won’t really know Him. And I speak from experience.
Or maybe we have learned to rest in
Him when we shouldn’t be. Maybe we’ve
gotten “comfortable” in life because we are not in His Word. We are not reading what He requires of us,
discovering areas we need to be convicted in, learning what He says we should
be striving towards and focusing on, and seeing just how much we miss the
mark. And I speak from experience. If this is the case, we need to get back in
the Word, or life will be lackluster and full of self-deception. And we will wonder where He is and why life
is so blah.
The Word is Truth. And only Truth and humility will break down
our walls, will break through the lies that we let ourselves believe . . . lies
that make us too big and Him too little.
I want to say this one more time . .
. and I want to say it LOUD: The
Bible is not extra-credit reading.
It is not “Gee, it’s sure nice to pick it up now and then for a little
burst of God” reading.
And it’s not just history.
It is the living Word, active and
completely applicable to our lives today.
It is God as He reveals Himself.
It is our map for how to live and think and act. And it is up to us to mine it for its riches. So many of us don’t even know what we are
missing.
I highly value godly music and
Sunday sermons and any bits of wisdom and truth I glean from others (because
God is the author of all truth, wherever we find it). They are good and should be part of our
lives. But I hold the Bible up in a
category of its own. Those other things
should not replace the daily reading of Scripture and daily, quiet time. That would be like living on the bread crust
that we pull off of someone else’s bread, rather than taking the time to sit
down and eat the whole glorious meal prepared by the Chef.
Well, I’m here to say, pull up a
chair, grab a fork, and put on a bib.
Dig in deep and get messy. And watch
as it changes your heart and your life. Watch
yourself get more and more hungry for the Word, the more you devour it. Don’t settle for second-hand lessons, but dig
deeply into the living Word where God is waiting to meet you. Hunger for hearing His whisper in the quiet
times, to see what the God of the universe, our Loving Father, wants to tell
you. Don’t look at it as a “To Do” item,
but as a chance to meet with the God who made you and loves you. If you look at it that way, you can see why I
say we need to do it every day. It will
change your life!
Bible Verses:
Psalm 119: 1-2, 7, 9-11,
15-16: “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the Lord.
Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their
heart. . . . I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous
laws. . . How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me
stray from your commands. I have hidden
your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. . . I meditate on your
precepts and consider your ways. I
delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.”
2 Timothy 4: 3-4: “For the time will come when men will not put
up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit
their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to
say what their itching ears want to hear.
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to
myths.”
2 Timothy 2: 15: “Do your best to present yourself to God as
one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly
handles the word of truth.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is
God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good
work.”
Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and
active. Sharper than any double-edged
sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it
judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart.”
Questions:
1.
Does this topic trigger any thoughts or questions you want to
share? Any other Bible verses you want
to add?
2.
What do the above verses tell you about God’s Word and what it means for
your life?
3. Finish this sentence: “To me, the Bible is . . .”
4. Do you read it because you have to or because
you hunger for it? What do you get out
of reading it?
5. I called the Bible “the measuring stick that
we judge all other messages and ‘truths’ by.”
What do you think I mean? Do you
agree? What happens when people forget
this?
6. Do any of the reasons for not reading it
resonate with you? Can you think of
more?
7. As I said, some of the reasons we might not
read it are:
“. . . My parents or neighbor or
friend used the Bible as a sword to hack others to pieces. And they forced it down my throat. And so it’s left a bad taste in my mouth.
.
. . I want more emotional, dynamic experiences of God. I want to find Him in miracles and nature and
inside myself, instead of inside some old Book.
. . . I have concerns with what seem
like discrepancies in the Bible. And I
don’t like the hard-to-swallow images of God as being wrathful or killing
people.”
Are these valid? Are they excuses? Are they common in our country? How would you respond to them and any others
that caught your attention?
8. What are some other problems that people
(Christians and non-Christians) have with the Bible? What kinds of problems have you had with the
Bible before? Any that you currently
have?
9. Do you think that how much we read and absorb
the Word of God has a great impact on our lives? How so?
How can we move from “just reading words on a page” to “absorbing it
into our hearts and minds”?
10. What happens when we don’t read the Bible
regularly? To us, our families, churches,
and culture?
11. How does society view and treat the Word of
God? How do you think Christians in
general treat and view it? What effect
is this having on Christian culture?
12. What do you think it means to be a “workman who does not need to be ashamed and
who correctly handles the word of truth”? What might cause us to
be ashamed? How can we correctly handle
the Word?
13. How is the Bible “living and active”? And
why should this matter to us? Have you
experienced this?
14. What does it mean that it’s a “double-edged sword . . . it judges the
thoughts and the attitudes of the heart”?
15. What does it mean to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work” and how does the Word lead to this?
16. Some people believe that the Bible is all we
need for every problem and trial we face.
Is this accurate? Some believe it
is wrong to get advice and help from anything else: counselors, doctors,
secular people, etc.? What do you think
about that?
17. In what ways can Bible reading become
unhealthy? Why would these be considered
unhealthy? (Think of things like “strict,
legalistic disciplines.”)
18. Have you encountered people who were too
extreme in their view of (or treatment of) God’s Word in any way? What were they like, why do you think they
were like that, and how did it affect people?
19. As I referred to earlier, I once read about a
wife who believed that because we wives and mothers are so busy, we do not need
to be in the Word regularly. And God
understands because we are busy working for Him. And so we should get our Scripture through
sermons and music and our godly husbands.
She even basically said that this is more important than reading it for ourselves.
How would you respond to this? Do you think this is a common attitude
today?
20. If we all adopted that attitude, how do you
think that would affect future generations of Christians and their witness in
the world?
21. Many
people believe it’s possible to live moral lives without the Word of God. Do you agree?
What about cultures that don’t have the Word?
22. We talked about this in an earlier lesson,
but what are some of the “tickle the ears” messages that we are hearing from
churches and lukewarm Christians nowadays?
What does God really say about these things?
23. Do you think a lot of Christians settle for
being “good enough” Christians?
Why? And how is this different
from how God wants us to live?
24. What kinds of things might snap us out of our
lukewarm-ness and spiritual apathy?
25. How might we live differently if we really
believed that reading God’s Word is not just a way to fill our head with
knowledge but to meet with Him in a very personal way?
26. Is God challenging you about anything in this
area?
