Through the Bible

This year, I am reading through the Bible. All of it. You might think that's quite a lofty goal, but the truth is that last year, I read through the Bible. All of it. And the year before that. And the year before that. And the year before that. In fact, I have read through the Bible, in its entirety, for the past six or seven years, once each year. 

To many, that probably sounds boring. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard, "I read through the Bible once already. Why would I do it again?" And then the person moves on to read through something else or picks up a devotional or spot-reads as the mood strikes him or her. 

After all, how many times can you watch a movie you've already seen? Especially a long, sometimes boring, movie with a lot of what seems like unnecessary information? There's too much going on, too many distractions, too much in the Scriptures that simply isn't "relevant" for life today. 

Yes, many conclude, it's much better to read the Bible once, to say that you've done it, and then focus on the important parts or the parts that are most pertinent to whatever you're doing. 

There's so much false in that that it's almost impossible to know where to begin to refute it. 

First, let's be clear: the entire Bible is relevant. It's relevant today. It's relevant tomorrow. It's relevant for Jesus-lovers and for Jews. It's relevant for anyone and everyone who wants to live a life of faith and do something sacred and holy in this world. There is not a single Scripture that is not useful for teaching, rebuking, loving, leading. So let's stop pretending that some parts of the Bible are less meaningful than others or that they have less to do with anything than others. 

Second, yes. Some of the Bible is more boring than other parts of the Bible. Some of it is a drudgery to read through sometimes. The genealogies, for example, can be grueling. But if you don't read through every name, you can't put the pieces together when peoples run into each other. And you miss some of the best little snippets of faith when you skip the lists of names. The tale of Nimrod is tucked away in a genealogy, and so is the prayer of Jabez. In the New Testament, it is the genealogy of Jesus that is the first testimony to His holy identity. 

Or what about the Old Testament law? Boring, right? Wrong. Most Christians are content to skip right by it because we're no longer bound by the law, but unless you understand the law, you can't understand what Jesus teaches about it. You can't understand what He means when He says He came to fulfill the law unless you know the law first. 

And the sacrifices? What could Jesus on the Cross possibly mean to you if you don't have a framework of sacrifice in which to place it? You can't understand why He is called the Lamb - and not the Ram or the Male Goat - unless you've read through the sacrifices and understand what they all mean. Or, as I've written about before, how His sacrifice on the Cross most closely mimics the sacrifice of the pigeon or the dove, the poor man's sacrifice. You miss that stuff when you don't read the law. 

But here's the most important thing, I think, and the truth that we have to know about reading the Bible: every time we read the Bible, we find something new in it. It's true. The story doesn't change; what's written is written. But the lens through which we read it changes as our lives and seasons change. 

I've read the Bible through every year for several years, and every year, I've taken new notes, had new insights, learned new things, and grown deeper. Because every time I read those words, they're fresh and new and something different is happening in me. 

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to take you through the Bible with me this year. Most days, I'll be sharing with you something that I've picked up from reading the Scriptures this year - Genesis to Revelation. Sometimes, I may break to do a topical series or I may take a few extra days to develop a point, but it's going to be right here - the Bible. In ways that maybe you've never read it. Things maybe you've never seen. But that I hope will give you plenty to think about and encourage you to pick up the Bible yourself and see what you can't uncover. 

There's life in these words. And it's beautiful. 

Join me. 

Faith that is Blind

One of the temptations of modern Christianity, as discussed yesterday, is having a blind faith, a faith that doesn't want any additional information about God and isn't really looking for Him in the world. It believes what it believes, and it doesn't need more data. 

But another temptation of modern Christianity, at least as pervasive as the first, is a faith that is blind. 

That is, we can believe so strongly in God and what He's doing that we no longer see ourselves as responsible for anything or as needing to grow or to change or to really even participate. We can believe so much that God loves us and will just take care of everything that we come to believe just as much that we're perfect just the way we are and that nothing is required of us. 

There is a version of this that comes out of the too-simplified statement, "Jesus loves me." It's the idea that Jesus loves us, so there must be something about us that's lovable, and that Jesus loves us just the way we are, so there's no need for us to ever change. That's not the version of this kind of blindness of faith that we're talking about today. (That particular version is so ridiculous that it should not require elaboration to see how false it is. It has also been widely discussed.)

No, this version of a blindness of faith believes that God is going to do what God is going to do to me and through me and for me and that all I have to do in preparation...is wait. That's it. I just have to be patient. I just have keep doing the things that I'm doing, keep living the life that I'm living, keep praying the prayers that I'm praying, and God is going to do it. In His time. 

I don't have to prepare myself. I don't have to study differently. I don't have to pray differently. I don't have to live differently. I don't have to change my attitude or grow my heart or work on my weaknesses and blind spots. I don't have to do anything because whatever God is doing through me, He's doing through this me. If it's not happening right now, that's not because of me; it's just not His time yet. 

In other words, because I am not responsible for what God wants to do in this world, I am not responsible for whatever role I might play in it. I am not responsible for being ready. I am not responsible for being qualified. I am not responsible for any of it. It's all God. It's all Him. All I have to do is be alive and...voila! Watch Him do it. 

This is a difficult frame of mind to combat, for any of us. It requires us to understand a lot of things that are, honestly, much easier to not concern ourselves with. We have to understand what it is that God wants us to do. We have to understand where it is that we're not quite ready for the mission yet. We have to understand what we can do to help ourselves grow into what God wants to do through us. And we have to also stay patient because even if we are ready, that doesn't mean that God is ready or that the world is ready. 

We're just one piece in the puzzle, but we're one piece in the puzzle. And we do need to put in the work to make sure that our rough edges are rounded out so that when God needs to lock us in, we fit. We're ready. It's seamless. 

One of my prayers for this season of my life is that I would not have a faith that is blind. I'm not prone to a blind faith; I'm too enamored with God to stop looking for Him. I can't wait to discover all of the little things about Him. But a faith that is blind is a struggle for me, just as it is for all of us. It's harder to look at myself and know that I'm not ready. It's hard to motivate myself to change when I'm not sure exactly what it's for or when my day is coming. 

But that's a bit of a lie in itself, and if we want to live a faith with eyes wide open, we need only realize it as such. Not sure what it's for? Not sure what my growth and change and development and maturation are for? Not sure what my discipline and direction are for? Not sure what my prayer and worship and study are for? 

They're for God's glory.

Which isn't just going to happen one day when I'm just being me. I have to be His. And to do that, I have to have a faith that sees. 

Blind Faith

Not too long ago (relatively), most of civilization had what we might call a blind faith. They believed that God was the center of the Universe, that He had created and guided them, and that anything and everything that happened was His doing. They attributed their entire lives to Him, good and bad, and lived as though He, not they, was running the show. 

Along came our own explorations, advancements in our technologies, breakthroughs in our discoveries, and we began to think, how silly. How foolish those persons were. We began to believe that there was more that we could understand about our world than just throwing God at everything, and we determined that faith no longer need be blind. In fact, the argument went, the more you see, the less you need faith at all. 

Yet, we hold on to faith because we know that faith has something for our souls that we haven't discovered anywhere else in the universe. We know that faith does something that nothing else can do for us. We know that faith holds a truth that hasn't yet been uncovered. 

But the faith of the modern Christian is once again becoming a blind faith, something it was never meant to be. 

It ought to be that the more that we know about God, the more ewe discover about Him and even about His world, the deeper we love Him. It ought to be that we seek to know as much as we can about Him who we love (and who loves us). It ought to be that we aim our inquiries heavenward and seek to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible of the God of the universe. After all, He's never claimed to be a mystery; forever and for always, He has labored to make Himself known to His people. 

For many modern Christians, however, in a world in which faith is just an option, in a world in which it's private and personal and really about whatever you get out of it, whatever it does for you, that just doesn't seem to matter. For many modern Christians, there is no drive, no instinct, no desire to know anything more about God than one already knows. 

Ask a Christian what they know about their God, and they are likely these days to shrug and say, "He's God." 

He's God, and that's enough for me. He's God, and that means that I believe in Him because He's God. He's God, so He has heaven, and that's all I really want. He's God, and everything in the world is His and I'm just a cog in His machine, but if I'm a good cog, then I get to go to heaven when I die. And that's all the faith I need.

Scarier still, try to teach a Christian today something about God's goodness, something about His grace, something about His love, something about His heart, and they will tell you that's all well and good, but it doesn't necessarily change anything about their relationship with Him. It doesn't form their bond any deeper. It's not relevant, they say, to what's going on here.

He's just God; He doesn't have to have a heart for me to believe that. 

So here we are in a time where we have more tools than ever before to uncover and discover the fabric of God knit into our universe, and too many Christians are living with a blind faith. Not because we can't know, but because we don't want to know. It doesn't, for some reason, seem like valuable information to us. 

In some cases, it would require us to have to...grow. And who wants to do that? 

Nah, it's cool. I believe in God. That's enough. 

Is it? Is it really? 

Yesterday

Be honest - have you already ruined this year? It's day two of something new; does it already feel like something old?

The truth is that most of our resolutions, if they aren't already broken, will not last longer than a week or so. A week. Which means that most of us, in the very same breath that we have so much hope, so much optimism, so much joy, so much confidence...will breathe out utter failure, self-hatred, self-loathing. 

We can't even do the things that we really, really, really want to do. We can't even keep one measly promise that we made to ourselves, a promise we made because, honestly, it was important to us. It was meaningful to us. It meant something, not just for today, but for all of our tomorrows. 

And already, even our best promises are so...yesterday. 

That means that many of us, in this new year, are already looking back and no longer looking forward. We're already wondering what happened to our hope, wishing we had yesterday to do over again. Wishing we had a chance to do it better. Just like that, we went from living in our bright and glorious future to living in our dark and defeated past, still longing for the future but believing it now to be hopelessly and forever out of reach. We blew it. 

It's the same kind of pessimism and defeat that creeps so easily into our Christian lives, as well. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that every time I feel deeply the love of God, I go off and do something so stupid that I can't even fathom how He could love me at all. I go from feeling an intimate connection with Him and the fullness of what it means to be His child to hiding in the corner, hating myself, wishing I had a chance to make that decision all over again. Believing, in the same breath that I embraced all of His promises, that there's no way now that I could ever really hold them. 

Look at me. I blew it. 

So we spend our Christian lives looking backward, trying desperately to come back to yesterday, to come back to the point at which we blew it, the point at which we messed up, the point at which we went astray, wishing there were a way for us to get back on track, but feeling like we've ruined everything and it's just not possible any more. All the hope that we had for forever is buried in the rubble of yesterday, and we spend our whole lives turned around, trying to dig it back out. 

It's a lie. Do you hear that? It's a lie. Because here's the secret truth, the little bit of truth that escapes us in all of our clocks and calendars and artificial notions of what time is - quietly, while you were sleeping, yes. Today became yesterday. 

But it didn't change a thing about today. 

The hope you had for this day passed on, maybe in failure, to yesterday, but when you opened your eyes this morning, it was this day again. Today all over again. Today is happening right now. Which means all that hope you had for today? You can still have it. 

You can still embrace the promise of God. You can still look forward with great anticipation and confidence. You can still mark your time by what is coming, not by what is passed. Because every breath you take, every time you blink your eyes, every time you move your feet, it's always today. The strange thing is, it's never yesterday. Never. 

So let yesterday be whatever it was because today is what it is and the promises of God are just as real, just as vital, just as near, and just as much yours today as they were yesterday, when yesterday was today. And no matter what happens today, that remains true tomorrow, when today passes into yesterday and tomorrow becomes today. 

God loves you. 

You can't blow that. 

Today

And so it is here, the dawning of a fresh, new year with all of its possibilities and opportunities and promise. With all of its hope. 

If you're like many around the world, you have grand ideas for a day like today, a plan for how things are going to be different. But not just different, better. And maybe not even just better, but good. The resolutions that we make for ourselves are all centered around this idea - what is good? What is good for me? What is good to do? What is good to get involved in and invest my energies in and sink my time into? 

None of us ever decides things just aren't bad enough. Of course not. We're always looking for a greater good. 

It's a start, but it's also a deceptive start. The sad truth is that more persons, including most Christians, live with more conviction today than they do for the rest of their lives. Most persons, including Christians, have their greatest conviction on the first day of a new year than they have in the first breath of any given morning. And all because they've decided to give themselves good, and they've decided to cling to it. 

There's a lot to be said for what we can learn about ourselves on a day like today, and what we can learn about living as a people of good. The way we cling today to the promises we've made ourselves for good shows us what we're capable of. It shows us how to hold onto something that we've deemed worthwhile. It shows us how to live in light of a new hope, and it gives us practice in doing so. 

But if we only ever hold on to the promises that we've made to ourselves, if we only ever cling to our own expectations of good, then we've missed the greatest opportunity and the true greater good. 

The conviction that we feel today - that attitude that confidently and passionately and adamantly holds onto what we hope, that will that says yes, we're going to get it, that seeming inability to either give in or give up - that's the kind of conviction we ought to be living with every day. Particularly as Christians.

Particularly in light of the fact that God truly gives us something not just better, but good. Oh, so good. 

What if every morning looked like this morning for you? What if every day looked like today? What if you woke up, looked around, realized that today is a day where there's something good going, and you decided to cling to that with everything you've got? Every day. 

What if we were a people who lived holding on to the promises that God has made us for good, promises that don't depend entirely upon our will to go out and get them? What if we were a people who believed that every day holds the same promise, the same hope, the same opportunities as this one, and we lived each day to the good things wrapped in that day? 

The truth is that God has already promised us greater good even than we have promised ourselves. We get excited about the ideas that we have because they're usually very meaningful for us - we don't make our resolutions on a whim; they matter. God's goodness? It's good, but...it doesn't always make as much sense. At least not right away. 

But what if it did? What if we believed that every good and perfect gift from above is ours for a reason, because it matters, because it's meaningful for us? What if we believed that the good in every day, like the good in today, was something worth holding onto? What if we locked into the promise of Heaven, to the notion that love lives here now, to the call on our lives to live in the fullness of His glory? Not just today; today is too easy. We've tricked ourselves into believing it's somehow different.

What if...every day? What if every day, we lived with the same conviction, the same passion, the same hope, the same energy that we will live with today - to go out and get the good things God has promised us and to cling to them with all we've got? Not giving up, not giving in, not letting go. 

What if?