Thursday, January 11, 2007

The World's Best Bible-Reading Program--A Must Read at Cerulean Sanctum

I just finished reading this post about Bible reading methods and had to put a link here. I have never had long term success with any Bible reading method or plan, and always fall back to more of a reading on a whim approach. While I'm not sure I'll stick to the chronological order of the Bible, this plan seems very appealing to me. It focuses on reading Scripture as a narrative, taking in books in their entirety whenever possible, then rereading several times to focus on different aspects of the text and meditating on truth revealed to you. It sounds exciting because I think reading Scripture this way will prepare our hearts to receive revelation and wait for God's manifest presence, partly by conditioning ourselves to be more patient and less concerned with instantanious results, and partly by blowing away our pride of 'accomplishment' (I read the whole Bible this year or whatever). In any case, I highly recommend you take a minute and read it.

I think this gives me a start on something I've been thinking about doing for a while now. I believe I half jokingly announced a few months back that I would write a book . I'm now seriously considering writing one since God mentioned a title for it to me ( in a way that had me in tears on my bed one night marveling at his love). The title is Spirtual Delights and the idea is to chronicle my journey of delighting in God through various means both familiar and new to me. It would also be meant to come against the idea of classifying these various means as disciplines and duties, which I believe does not capture the intent of God's heart in giving us these ways to spend time with him. I think calling prayer or Bible reading, for example, discipline or duty is akin to calling married couples to the duty of sex or friends to the duty of hanging out and ordering pizza. I'll be looking for ideas on new ways to delight in God and his presence, so I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have.

1 comment:

Mrs. Cowan said...

I love the idea of the book! And as a literature teacher, I also love the sound of the bible reading program. While I certainly see merit in a "verse by verse" exegetical study of scripture, I have long lamented that to do so exclusively ignores the fact that scripture was written as whole units - entire letters, complete histories, whole poems . . . etc. - and I believe intended to be read that way. I gained a tremendous understanding of Romans through a verse by verse study, but it didn't speak to me until I sat down and read it in three sittings as one unit.