How to read your bible and how to encourage others to do the same

The Bible is central to the Christian faith and yet it is often ignored by many because it can be a challenging read and, if you start in the wrong place it can break your resolve to get to know parts of it well. It is very difficult to be Jesus disciples without having his word to guide us and encourage us. It is very hard to call others be Jesus disciples if God's word has not flavoured our thinking and acting for Jesus.

In a nutshell, the Bible is a book about Jesus. It's his story and if we can keep that single truth in our minds and hearts as we tackle it we will find a deeper appreciation of the scriptures and a greater love for the God who wrote them. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me. - John 5:39

Everyone comes to the scriptures with some sort of a lens through which they interpret what they read. Some read it through the ‘rule book’ lens leading to despair, because how can we ever meet up to those kinds of expectations? Others read it through the lens of a guidebook leading to worry because there is so much of our lives the bible does not speak about.

There is only one lens through which to read the Bible and that is through Jesus and the good news about him. What is this book saying about Jesus and my relationship to him? What is this book saying about Jesus grace and my response to it? What is this book showing me about what Jesus has done for me in his death, burial and resurrection?

The best place to start reading is in the New Testament so that we can get to know Jesus and his story and allow his life to flavour our reading in other parts of the Bible. If we read the bible through any lens other than Christ we will either dismiss it as an interesting ancient literary artefact or we will find ourselves trapped in rule based moralism with no way to find forgiveness of sin.

The Bible is the story of God’s rescue plan to save a broken and sinful world by sending the rescuer, Jesus. It contains the tools to diagnose sin and then points us to the one who can heal our terminal illness, Jesus who is Saviour, Lord and King!

With that brief introduction in mind here are some helpful hints to reading God’s word:

1. Use a good bible as there are different styles of translation and not all are equal. Two excellent translations are the ESV which is a very good translation and is as close to the original text as you are going to get in English and then there is the NLT which is an easy reading translation especially for teenagers.


2. Make notes, underline and scribble in the bible itself, mark passages you want to come back to, underline helpful points and put question marks in the sidebar where you need to understand more. The contents of the book are holy, but he book itself is just paper.


3. Find a mature Christian who you can ask for help in understanding tricky parts of scripture. This book is written to the people of God and reading it is something of a team event. If you are married it is good to spend time in scripture together so that you can hold each other accountable and each can encourage the other.


4. Pray before reading that God would fill you with his Holy Spirit and that the Spirit would give you wisdom, insight and understanding so that you would be obedient to the commands in the scriptures


5. Allow scripture to read you. What do I mean by this? Allow your life to be interpreted by scripture, where is the Bible calling you to repent and trust Jesus and where is it encouraging you? Our lives are to be lived under the light of scripture and we must allow scripture to speak into how we do everything we do. (Hebrews 4:12)


6. Start by reading for 5 minutes a day. If you do less you will not gain any substance, more and you might find too much to chew and swallow in one go, some of it is really meaty. If you find a verse that is especially meaningful to you write it down and stick it on the fridge or on the bathroom mirror to remind yourself of God’s promises to his children. It is good to keep a journal as you make this journey with Christ. (Acts 17:11)


7. Start with Mark’s gospel, it is a chronological account of Jesus life and a great place to get a handle on Jesus and his work. Then head to John, Acts and to Galatians and from there you can start unpacking the rest of the New Testament. There is no right and wrong in this but some of the meat in books like Romans will be too much for a new believer to handle.


8. The Psalms are a great place to learn the language of worship and prayer. You would do well to end each time with God’s word with reading a psalm out loud, hearing the word of God is a powerful tool in allowing it to transform our lives. Think of it as love poetry to God as we speak of his greatness and ask for his deliverance.


9. Pray blessings from the word over your children and your spouse and tell others about the wonder of what you are reading in God’s word as it points you to Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith.


10. Finally: do the word. Act upon it’s instructions, be obedient to the commands to serve, love, witness and worship. It’s no use to read about them and not do them! (James 1:22-25)

There is no greater book on this earth. It is the incredible story of God’s love for humanity and his self-sacrifice to save us. This book contains the great promise of resurrection and eternal life for those who trust Jesus. May the word of God live in you richly!

Sola Christos

We are a reformed church and when the Reformation happened the Reformers came up with the 5 solas, sola being Latin for 'alone'.

1. Sola Christos - Christ alone, no saints, Mary or others are need to get to God
2. Sola gracia - grace alone not good works is the means of salvation
3. Sola fidei - faith alone is the way to access all the promises of God not religious rituals
4. Sola scriptura - scripture alone is the final rule of faith and life for the church
5. Soli Deo gloria - For God's glory alone

I thought it would be helpful to blog through these over the next weeks to remind you of the great truths to which we adhere.

Sola Christos - Christ alone

In this day and age we have an obsession with ‘lite’ things that look like the real deal but have half the calories. ‘lite’ beer, ‘lite’ chips there is an obsession with low calorie foods that don’t have real substance so that we can still fit into last year’s jeans and look good on the beach for summer!

Sadly the church has often become Jesus-lite. It may still look like the real thing, but the one person who should be the centre of everything is often conspicuously absent. In fact at a recent service in a mainline church that I attended, I heard Jesus spoken of just twice: once in a scripture reading the other at the end of a prayer. A church without Jesus is NOT a church at all.

Scripture teaches that Jesus is the centre of all things and the fullness of God as Paul reminds the Colossian church Colossians 1:15–17 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This means that everything we do revolves around Christ. Whether it is preaching up front, teaching children, spending time in rest or working a 9 to 5 job. Jesus is the centre of the life of a disciple.

Jesus is the head of the church and anything that does not point to the head, Christ, needs to be cut out or reshaped into something that is Jesus-full! Too often the church clouds Jesus in all sorts of other things to the point where he is often almost completely hidden. When Jesus is hidden we've lost everything. The Reformation was a reaction against the church taking Jesus out of his role as the only mediator between God and humanity and placing other things or people alongside or sometimes even above Jesus.

We have nothing else to proclaim and nor do we need anything else to proclaim other than Jesus crucified for sin: 1 Corinthians 1:23–24 We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Those looking for truth need us to preach and teach about Jesus. This narcissistic world needs Jesus, not self-serving religion. The hurting need Jesus power and healing, not self-help. The sinner needs Jesus and not do-good moralism. The lost need the Truth and not feel good story telling. Those who are despondent need the work of the Spirit of Christ and not a pep-talk.

Everything we do needs to point people to Jesus and so the writer of Hebrews reminds us Hebrews 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Our job as Jesus leaders, full of the Holy Spirit is to point people to Jesus as John the baptizer did, and we must become less that He might become more. Jesus is everything. He is a treasure of greater worth than anything and when we’re all for Jesus everything else pales into insignificance! Perhaps we might also get to the point that Paul did when wrote Philippians 3:8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Jesus leaders should have that kind of passion and priority so that they might lead people to Him!