What type of reader are you?
Chris Erdman writes:
But mostly in the American Evangelical church, we are asking different questions. Generally they fall in among one of three major varieties:
1.Questions of the refrigerator variety: is there something here that I can consume and feel satisfied?
2.Questions of the pharmacy variety: is there something here I can take that will make me feel better?
3.Questions of the life-preserver variety: is there something here that I can use to pull myself out of this mess I’m in?Now, these on the surface one can hardly argue with these questions. They come from very real needs we all have. But we are recognizing how different are these questions from the one we are beginning to believe ought to be first: “What is the Bible trying to do to us?” The typical questions put “I” as the subject acting on the Bible as the “object.” But “what is the Bible trying to do to us?” puts God, and the Word of Scripture before us. The Bible acts on us just as God acts on us. The Bible seeks to form us just as God formed us from the soil of the earth.
At nccc one of our spiritual disciplines in “Entering the biblical story”. You can see our spiritual disciplines in the logo on top of signposts (thanks Joe!) or you can download a pdf of our spiritual disciplines from the nccc web site.
If we enter the biblical story and don’t merely read it - we become part of the story. It is not a reference text to have on the shelf but the script that changes us. It is not the devotional bed time story but we are the story in our own lives. The word is experienced in the story not merely when we read it but when we become the hands and feet of Jesus.