Welcome back to The Sola Panel for 2009. As Australia slowly begins to wake up from its self-induced summer coma, The Sola Panel are trying desperately to restore their IQs and start writing again.
(I read once that most people’s IQs fall 10-20 points during a long holiday, but this is restored quite quickly after a return to work. How about that, huh?! For those of you reading from beyond our sunny shores, the holiday is a national Australian pastime. The whole country goes into recess from Christmas until about the end of the second week in January; even our Prime Minister is watching the cricket, rather than running the country. Well, hopefully he’s doing a bit of running the country on the side.)
As we return to ‘the cloud’ (as I think the ‘web’ is now officially called), our desire and prayer for 2009 is to keep encouraging, challenging and stimulating you to be thinking God’s thoughts about him and his world. And as we do so, I thought I would kick the year off by asking a question: who are you listening to?
Now I know you’re probably listening to all sorts of people—your friends, your spouse, your mum and your accountant, not to mention your favourite music and, right at this moment, me (hopefully)! But that’s not quite the question I’m asking. What I want to know is who do you think you’re listening to when you read the Bible, or when you hear the Bible read out loud (in Bible study or in church or wherever else you hear it)? I ask the question because of a recent conversation. The latest edition of The Briefing contains an article about the old fashioned ‘Quiet time’. After reading it, Chappo rang me. (For those not in the know, John Chapman is an evangelist and author of books like A Fresh Start. He is called ‘Chappo’ because everyone in Australia gets their nickname by abbreviating their last name and adding an ‘o’!)
As always, it was a joy and an education to have a conversation with Chappo. His particular concern this time was the question of Bible reading and what we think is happening when we read the Bible. His words, still ringing in my ears, were profound:
Dear brother, we have lost the whole concept of hearing from God when we read the Bible. I asked a well-taught, ministry-minded young man the other day when he felt he was closest to God. He answered, “When I’m praying”. I said to him, “So you’re closest to God when you’re talking and God is listening! What about when God is talking and you’re listening?”
I am not sure quite how the young man in question responded, but I assume he was suitably abashed.
All of this leads me to a second conversation I have had recently with someone else about the ‘quiet time’. This second conversation was with a friend about the place of prayer in our time with God. His point was that when we talk about re-instating the ‘quiet time’, we are always on about Bible reading, not prayer. He told me that in his church last weekend, they talked about praying for the world, and then prayed for their local suburb and a couple of beach mission teams on the coast of New South Wales. (Apparently the world has shrunk recently.)
Granted that it’s notoriously unreliable to make assumptions about the nature of the evangelical world on the basis of two conversations, nevertheless, it has made me wonder about our culture of Bible reading and prayer. I am sure from my time in pastoral ministry (not to mention my own struggles) that we aren’t exactly a community characterized by personal Bible reading and prayer. And I wonder if that isn’t because we have turned them into a self-help method. In an age when immediacy and experience are everything, I read the Bible as a personal self-help manual, and I forget that the God who made the world is speaking personally to me every time I read it. We have bought the world’s agenda: we keep pretending that intimacy with God is found in our personal piety and worship. But the God who made and loves me shows himself to me every time I read his word. And maybe if I was reading the Bible to meet God, my prayers wouldn’t so much be about me and my little patch of the world, but about God and his plans in eternity for the glory of his Son and the future of all humanity.
This made me wonder how do you introduce the Bible readings in your church? Are you praying as you come to read not just a quick ritual prayer, but a genuine prayer: “God, please speak to me and change me for your glory”? Are you coming to the Bible with the expectation that God will make himself known, and teach, rebuke, correct and train you? And are your prayers and your desire to pray being shaped by knowing the God who loves you and loves his world in the Lord Jesus Christ?
My prayer for 2009 is that we will come to God’s word prayerfully together and know God better.
