Gone are the days of hell-fire preaching. Today’s pulpit has to be careful not to be too judgmental or critical. Have we gone soft? Or is this an improvement? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both.
Thank God sermons are not used to browbeat us into submission and conviction anymore. I just hope we haven’t swung the pendulum too far the other way. We tend to stay away from anything that challenges us on a deeper level. But I say that we need the challenge. We need questions that make us think more deeply about what we believe and why we believe it.
When We Read the Bible
Even though most have moved to a digitized Bible, we are still reading it today. Sometimes, though, there’s just nothing quite like tangibly having a Bible in our hands so we can feel the page turns and mark it all up with our thoughts, notes, and cross-references. I just hope we continue reading the word.
One thing I have noticed, though, is that we keep this sort of aesthetic distance when we read. That’s a term I learned in theater. It basically means that we can get all absorbed into the story playing out on the stage, but we never think we are in the story. We recognize that distance removes us from the play or movie itself.
Many are guilty of reading God’s Word and maintaining an aesthetic distance. We don’t put ourselves into the pages, and we don’t take the words out of scriptures and apply them to real life. Isn’t that backward?
Shouldn’t we want scripture to change us?
Challenge Accepted!
When we read, our goal is for it to challenge us. But we tend to skip over those challenging parts, like the book of James. It has some tough topics in it, and sometimes they can be overwhelming. But it’s good to be overwhelmed from time to time. It’s not a failure to not have an answer to the question. Our goal is to read, reread, and read it again until we gain enough understanding to make it applicable and practical.
Jesus didn’t mince words, especially when He was talking to the religious leaders of the day. He even called them names like vipers and whitewashed tombstones. He challenged them on every level. My favorite question He asked them, though, was, ” Haven’t you read where it says…” That was like the ultimate insult because, of course, they had read the law. They read it over and over, memorized it, and made a whole new set of laws to boot. They read it – but they couldn’t live it. It wasn’t applicable to them. They used what they read to try to make themselves look superior and everyone else look inferior. That’s sad.
Bring it on!
Try taking a different mental stance next time you read your Bible. Instead of thinking of it as a nice story, let it challenge the way you think and act. Instead of reading the word and keeping it at a distance, let it shine the spotlight on your thought life and theology. Let it challenge you on the deepest spiritual level. That’s where true change begins.
DFM has numerous Bible study guides loaded with thought-provoking questions. Check them out on Amazon (they’ll be here soon, too!)Or grab a copy of Command Your Morning – And the Rest of Your Day Will Follow. Even though it’s a “devotional,” it will challenge you to one-up your game.
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