We’ve looked at the implications of the doctrine of inspiration for reading the Bible. Since the Bible is God’s word, we don’t read it ‘just like any other book’. We reverence it as we revere God. We can’t understand the Bible without knowing the Author. We receive every part of the Bible as God’s word, no picking and choosing. This final discussion of inspiration focuses on the unity of the Bible.
Taking the initiative and asking a fellow Christian who is further along in their walk to read with us can provide accountability, increased understanding, and growth in ways that reading and learning alone wouldn’t.
Most pastors at one time or another have had a conversation with someone engaged in ministry, when they tell us things aren’t going so well. It can be hard to diagnose the problem in the moment. Maybe the person is over it or burnt out, too busy elsewhere, or wanting to try something new.
A collection of things worth reading from around the web in the last week.
Regularly when I sit down with someone, they’ll use the phrase ‘called to ministry’. I don’t have a dislike of this phrase, it can be very useful—only when most people use it, it isn’t.
The third in this series on reading the Bible well. This time John looks at how knowing that God's word is his changes how we approach it.
Amidst all the sound and fury about same-sex marriage, it’s often hard to find a straight-forward, clear, thoughtful Christian defence of what marriage is. Sandy Grant has had a crack, and a very good one, in this recent public lecture at St Michael’s Wollongong.
I am a reluctant convert to the Swedish Method for Bible study. I read the Briefing article all of those years ago and decided to try it out in a couple of Bible study groups. It didn’t work! It didn’t seem to make group members think deeply enough about the passage, and it seemed to promote surface-level easy answers.
In our instruction of our children we need to make sure, even as we convey knowledge, that the deep and intensely personal aspects of our faith are communicated too.
10 studies on the book of Psalms in the popular Pathway Bible Guides format,