Profitable Bible Reading

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by Dennis Gundersen

Recently, I read a book about profitable Bible reading in which the author suggested, when you read the Scriptures, “Endeavor to learn something new from every verse before you leave it.”

Really? 
Ok. 
In other words, make it my aim to discover something new from every verse I read? And stay right there in my reading until I can find something new?

Well, that sounds like a sure-fire way to get stuck. With that approach, I’ll be at a lasting standstill for most of my Bible reading from now on. I know the author means well and wants us to get maximum profit from our Bible reading, and not read casually or inattentively. But I think this suggestion is quite a bit over the top.

I must say, let’s get real here. For one, after you’ve been a believer for a few years, most days it’s going to be rare that you discover something new even in each chapter you read. You may wear yourself out making the effort, but the fact is, you’ve become pretty familiar with a lot of the Scriptures and may not be at all able to spot something new.

I’ll even go so far as to say, if you do find something fresh in every verse you read, well … I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re not reading it right. With that approach, chances are, you’ll be making stuff up. If you can find something new in every verse, your imagination is getting carried away and you’ll be seeing what really isn’t there.

May I suggest a few sounder, more realistic goals about what to aim for in Bible reading? A lot more could be said, of course, but my purpose is to state a few goals that are in contrast with the idea that somehow a Bible reader needs to find something new or fresh in every verse he reads. Or that it’s even of benefit to your soul to try. No — how about these goals instead:

1) Ask the Lord to show you what you need for today
That’s really more of your need than to see something fresh or new. Why, even if you do find something fresh in a verse that you didn’t see before, how long is that going to stay with you anyway? You know. It’ll slip out of your head in no time. Probably before the day is done.

But the Spirit of God is probably not really interested in enlarging your storehouse of Bible knowledge. He is interested in equipping you for a holy walk with God – today. Ask Him to show you how to walk with Him today. After all, as Jesus said in another context, “each day has enough trouble of its own.” Each of your days has needs of its own, that the Lord knows are coming. Ask Him to prepare you by your reading.

2) Ask the Lord to feed you 
If a man’s wife cooks him a meal with healthy, nutritious, and tasty foods, is it really important to him whether anything in the meal is new? Isn’t he glad and thankful to have this food again, even if it’s something he’s eaten a hundred times before? And he enjoys it. Again. It may even be a favorite. Much like singing a hymn that you’ve sung a hundred times before, and you love it every time. You need not concern yourself with newness in what you digest from the Word – look to the Lord to feed and nourish you. That’s more of what you need.

3) Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to you — again
If you’re a saved individual, the Spirit of God has already revealed Jesus to you. But what do you need more than to keep seeing Christ? Even if it’s features about Him that you have seen before. So what? You need to see Jesus again and worship Him again. The Spirit seeks to glorify Christ, we’re told in the gospel of John. Even the things you know about Jesus, you haven’t seen sufficient glory in those beautiful, wondrous features of Him. Ask Him to show you Jesus, again and again.

4) Ask the Lord to show you something in the Scriptures that you can serve others with today
Something that will help you be a blessing to others. Some light with which you can encourage other believers today. Or something that will provoke you to pray for people in need today. Or something that will help you be more effective in bringing the gospel to unconverted people you will meet, today. Again, this is a much more worthwhile goal than “show me something new I’ve never seen before.” How about, make me a useful instrument of love to others? As Jesus said, to love our neighbor, “This is the Law and the prophets.”

We all know that you’ll have occasions that you read the Word and none of the above will happen. You won’t experience any noticeable, felt edification at the moment. But you know that it’s still been worth your while to read and meditate on the Word. Often the effects and use of a reading are only consciously realized later.

When you’re reading and none of these benefits seem to be coming, you know what? Wait on the Lord to shape your life with His Word at the time of His choosing. And if you have time, keep reading until you have been fed. Years ago, I heard a young, new disciple say “I overcame this idea of getting my Bible reading done and then being satisfied that I did it, by taking a different approach. Now I keep reading until I don’t want to stop.” Not limiting yourself to the chapter numbers on a Bible reading plan or schedule. How about not quitting until you get something nourishing? Be like Jacob, refusing to go away until He blesses you.

Sure, there will be days that won’t work. You won’t have time to keep on reading. You have to get to work. The duties of the day press in on you. In that case, give thanks that you’ve been able to read the Word and know that God will produce fruit from the Word in your life, according to His will and in His time.

So, while more could be said, this is probably enough … for today.

Revival v. Revivalism

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Article: “Hey Calvinist, Enough of Your Revivalism” by Michael Lawrence, original source here: https://www.9marks.org/article/hey-calvinist-enough-of-your-revivalism/

How do you grow your church? It’s a question every pastor or church leader asks, a question in which almost every Christian is interested. And let’s assume the best motive for the question, a sincere desire to see men, women, and children both knowing and growing in the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The question is how?

HISTORY OF REVIVALISM

Ever since the early 1800s and the apparent success of the Second Great Awakening, the answer for most church leaders has been the techniques of revivalism. Revivalism and revival are not the same thing. Solomon Stoddard, a Puritan minister in western Massachusetts, defined revival as “some special seasons wherein God doth in a remarkable manner revive religion among his people.” [1] His emphasis is on both the surprising and supernatural aspect of revival, and its impact on the church generally. Conversion and discipleship, growth numerically andspiritually, are the result of divinely-wrought revival. His grandson, Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the First Great Awakening and its most able theological defender, would go on to argue that a genuine work of God’s Spirit isn’t “revealed by the quantity or intensity of religious emotions but is rather present where a heart had been changed to love God and seek his pleasure.”[2] In other words, it’s the fruit of the Spirit, not enthusiasm or momentum, that demonstrates God is at work.

Revivalism, on the other hand, is a set of techniques and methods that are assumed to reliably obtain “the external signs of conviction, repentance and rebirth.”[3] As historian Iain Murray notes, while revival preachers of the Great Awakening would have had no idea how “to secure a revival, a system was now popularized by ‘revivalists’ which came near to guaranteeing results.” [4] So much so that ever since the Second Great Awakening, a “revival” could be announced in advance! Today we call it “reverse engineering” results.

From the camp meetings, altar calls, and anxious bench of the Second Great Awakening, to the marriage of emotionally powerful preaching and singing in the ministry of Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, to the stirring rallies of Billy Graham, the style of revivalism has shifted to match the changing culture. But the techniques have remained largely the same: the context of the mass meeting to encourage a response, the deliberate use of emotion to motivate a response, and the routine of a set prayer or physical action to actuate the response. Underlying all of this is the assumption that conversion can be reduced to, or at least evidenced by, a personal response that the preacher can elicit, observe, and measure.

I don’t mean to imply that the Second Great Awakening, or the ministries of Moody, Graham, and others did not result in true conversions. They certainly did. In fact, most of us probably know someone who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ at a Billy Graham rally. But if Scripture is to be our guide, we must never say that people became Christians because of the techniques of these ministries. After all, conversion is the supernatural and sovereign work of God, in which, through the message of the gospel and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he brings about conviction of sin, lasting repentance, and faith in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our response of repentance and faith is the unfailing result of God’s necessarily prior work of regeneration. Unless he makes us alive and gives us the gift of repentance and faith, we will remain dead in our sins. And there’s no human technique that can either force his hand or accomplish his work. This is what it means to be a Calvinist. More importantly, this is what it means to hold the same theology as Paul (Eph. 2:1-­10) and Jesus (John 6:44­–45; 10:27–30)

However, it wasn’t long before revivalist techniques moved from the evangelist’s ad hoc “revival meeting” to the local church’s regular Sunday worship. These revivalistic flourishes have even occurred in churches that confess a Reformed, or Calvinistic, understanding of salvation. And why not? After all, it apparently produced results. If you could gather a crowd (attract), connect with them in an emotionally meaningful way (relate), and remove barriers to response (automate), then you could grow your church without abandoning your theological convictions.

REVIVALISM “WORKS”

From Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, to Willow Creek and Saddleback, to Mars Hill and Elevation, to your local megachurch, the style and music and branding has changed, but the method tends to be fundamentally the same across the theological spectrum. The pragmatic approach to church growth—attract, relate, and automate—works.

Just ask the Calvinists who pastor large, growing churches. “I like the (attractional) evangelism I do better than the evangelism you don’t do.” “Anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart.” “All it takes to grow a church is good music, a great children’s program, and sufficient parking.”[5] These comments defend fundamentally pragmatic, attractional approaches to the church, despite the sincerely held belief in the sovereignty of God in salvation by those who said them.

Twenty-five years ago, theologian David Wells published No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?, the first of his volumes critiquing modern evangelicalism’s love affair with modernity. [6] He concluded that as far back as the Second Great Awakening, evangelicals had begun to use the tools of modernity (marketing, technique, bureaucratization, etc.) to accomplish the work of God. The goals were noble, but the motivation was pragmatic. In the modern world, success is measured by numbers, and the tools of modernity worked. As revivalism was refined and perfected by the methods of the marketplace, churches were growing, the “unchurched” were streaming in, and multitudes were being saved. Blinded by our apparent success, however, Wells revealed what the rest of us had failed to see. The tools of modernity produce the culture of modernity, not the kingdom of God. As survey after survey revealed, our growing churches were not filled with the results of Spirit-wrought revival, genuine converts characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, but were filled instead with the results of modern revivalism, religious consumers characterized by the spirit of the age.

TRUST THE ORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE

So, back to the question: how do you grow your church? I suppose it depends on what you think a church is and who you think people are. If you think a church is just a crowd of people who are fundamentally able, perhaps with help from God, to choose to follow Jesus, so long as he’s attractive and relevant enough, then the tools of revivalism are just the ticket. But if you think a church is a gathering of people who were dead in their sins but have been born again through the sovereign and supernatural work of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, then revivalism just won’t do.

What we want is revival, a genuine work of the Spirit, not a product of human technique. From the very beginning, the work of God has been done by the Spirit of God through the Word of God in a world gone awry. [7] From the first preaching of the gospel at Pentecost, to the recovery of gospel preaching in the Reformation, to the explanation of the gospel that God used to save you, God has always worked through his Word faithfully proclaimed to bring the dead to life.

So, “Calvinist,” enough of your revivalism. Grow your church through the ordinary means of grace that God has always used to grow his church: the right preaching of the gospel, the right administration of the ordinances, and the right use of church discipline. Give yourself to the ministry of word and prayer as the apostles did (Acts 6:4). Stop relying on the tools of modernity to build the kingdom of God because they never have and they never will.

There’s nothing wrong with having culturally appropriate music, adequate parking, attractive signage, and a clear process for joining the church. Those are important matters to which we must attend. But don’t think those tools, and others like them, will build Christ’s church. They won’t because they can’t. It’s not our ability to design an attractive worship experience or authentically relate to people in our sermons that raises the spiritually dead to life. The Spirit alone can and will do that work, and he does it through his Word, not our techniques.

[1] Iain H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858(Banner of Truth, 1994), xvii.

[2] Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans, 1992), 96.

[3] Murray, xix.

[4] Ibid ., xviii.

[5] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Mission or Message(Zondervan, 1995), 219. Comments one and three from private conversations with pre-2015 Acts 29 pastors.

[6] David Wells, No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Eerdmans, 1993).

[7] HT, David Helm.