Searching for the Truth

To get us started on our Bible Reading Plan journey, please fasten your safety belt until the captain turns off the fasten safety belt indicator.  Remain seated for the duration of the flight unless you have an emergency.  The Old Testament was written as a story.  The story starts out with creation and then takes us on a fantastic journey with a lot of turbulence as our pilot navigates through history showing us exactly why we need a Savior.  If you want to get right to the point of our need for salvation, go look at the Old Testament Law in Leviticus and try to live by those rules.  Good freaking luck.  Thank Christ that God came down to save us.  Much of the Old Testament is showing us through history that we cannot stay true to God.  He gives us abundant chances to turn to him and we continue to turn away.  In one way he illustrates his love for us by telling Hosea to go marry a whore.  In the symbolism, God is Hosea and we are the whore.  We continually bring shame to his name, but He continues to love us.  His mercy is shown throughout the narrative of Hosea in that he always loves his wife.  He never breaks his covenant with her.  The entire Old Testament points to Christ.  In all books and in all ways, we can relate the stories back to a single point of origin: we are jacked up and need a Savior.  God sends someone to save us. 

For the Old Testament, read them as novels.  Some of the more difficult ones you are going to have to read and muscle through.  Let's be honest, Numbers is not terribly exciting.  All of the books are there for a purpose and bring glory to God, but sometimes it's difficult to stay awake no matter what time of day you are reading.  Unless you are a history buff and enjoy reading through long narrative history textbook kind of stuff, you may need to intersperse the Old Testament with a refreshing letter from Paul.  We will talk about these letters as well as the Gospels later this week.  I will provide some resources to get you started on the last day.

Goodnight! There are a lot of plans out there.  Which do you choose?  How do you go about choosing one?  Why would you want to read the Bible in a year anyway?  What's so special about a year that I get through the whole thing? These are some of the questions that go through my head when I thought about my approach to reading this year.  This new task often looms ahead of believers everywhere.  We cry out, "This is the year that I'm going to read through the whole thing!", only to find ourselves in February hopelessly falling behind schedule as work mounts up and spring sports for the kids take over our evenings (not that I have any, I just know that's what tends to happen).

So, here's the scuttlebutt.  Some plans just want to get you through the whole thing with no regard for your time.  Some plans tease you and tell you that it only takes five minutes every day.  Other plans attempt to, either chronologically or in order, read from front to back.  The problem with almost all of them is that they forget how the author originally intended the books to be read.  The New Testament is mostly letters, which meant they were to be read in one sitting.  The Psalms were mostly prayers that David and others were crying out to the Lord in honor or frustration and other emotions.  The Old Testament is God's beautiful display of his chosen people coming to know him.  With vast viewpoints and authors and different styles, how do you come up with the perfect plan to accommodate the different styles?

In the next week or so, I'll discuss why each section of the Bible should be read a particular way and how to go about doing that.  The whole point of reading the Bible is that we grow in our love and affections for Jesus by reading his word.  Everyone is going to be different and it may be beneficial to read like I do or adopt your own plan.  Stay tuned in the next week to gather some insight into how to read the Bible.

This is going to be a 4 part series on how to read the Bible in a year.  This is my opinion from what I have learned, so take what you like and get rid of the rest.  This is by no means the only way to do it.

On Tuesday around 2pm, I decided after a tough week that I would drive a long way away from Dallas.  I wasn't really sure where I was going, but plans lined up to head down to San Antonio.  I left at 3:30pm.  My spur of the moment decision found me driving down listening to All of Grace and some Shane and Shane.  My head was chocked full of racing thoughts that were all over the racetrack.  I'm glad the thoughts didn't spill over into my driving, otherwise I would not have come back at all.  After a few hours I was back in a place of peace.  I tend to get overwhelmed by my sin and getting away from Dallas and forcing myself to sit in the presence of our God and King.  I saw my older brother on Tuesday night and once again sat in awe of HDTV and BluRay discs watching an episode of Planet Earth on Caves that are run on bat guano.  Seriously the whole cave is powered by three million some odd bats that drop their stuff and then a whole ecosystem can thrived by them doing this natural activity.  Crazy.  I am so glad that my Freebirds burrito came before watching the bats.  I spent some time with my college buddy Todd the next morning for an amazing breakfast in Boerne, Texas before heading back to the shopping mall known as USAA for lunch with my brother.

Lessons learned:

1. Faith is required to do anything that God wants to do in my heart.  Not only does God want me to come to him with my burdens, he delights in taking them from me.
2. God is mighty to save.  Trying to master my sin is about as successful as "attempting to hold the north wind in the hollow of my hand".  Why not let the one who can raise people from the dead do the hard work?
3. God started salvation in my heart and does not intend to abandon me and leave me to sanctify myself.  He intends to finish the work he started in his timing.
4. Always eat good food BEFORE watching a special on caves powered by bat guano.
   

All of Grace was cool water to my soul.  It's not often that I listen (yes, this was an audio book), to books, but this was a great endeavor.  From my previous entry, I obtained this book for free and listened to it in between work and home.  15 minutes really is less than ample time to grasp the whole flow of thought from beginning to end.  The thing that I loved most about listening to this in two sittings is that Spurgeon really drives home the fact of our depravity in a way that is not condemning.  He really makes you aware of how dependent we are on God for everything including repentance.  He stretched my faith and allowed me to see God in fresh Biblical light.  This is not a read that you just thumb through and be done with it.  It is full of wisdom and nuggets of truth that need one needs to dwell upon to graps their full weight.  This was originally written for skeptics as noted by the long introduction extending an invitation to read on, but is great for believers with a skewed view of God such as myself.

I read Making Room for Life a few weeks ago and managed to read the whole thing in about 4-5 hours.  It's a fairly quick read, but the application portion is the toughest.  The premise of the book is that we are a nation (not a world, but particularly the United States) robbed of community.  This book aims to give some wisdom and insight into why that is and what we can do to fix it.  The typical American family has no relationship time except with the TV right before falling asleep and with other drivers on the road on the way to soccer practice in a suburban while shoving unhealthy meals down our throats.  "This is the privileged life", we tell ourselves.  We wake up early and go to bed late fueled by caffeine throughout the day just to survive.  We wonder why we have no money when Starbucks sells lattes for $4 a pop.  Hmmmm.... sure sounds privileged to me.

Hop into the Hebrew day calendar and with some ambition you can slow life down to a more manageable schedule that gets all the work done before 6pm and time with family comes naturally and rhythmically the way the God designed it in creation.  I know that when I plan my day according to the way God created the world, life is a lot less stressful and seems to flow so much better.  It's curious that when we do it His way, things tend to go better...