Often the things that we think are a sign of strength are in fact a sign of weakness.  A sign of immaturity.  We flex our muscles and strut our stuff only to show our lack of strength.  So the question we will look at is what it means to be strong?  Truly strong?  What do we need to take off?  What do we need to put on?  This series will run for four weeks looking at these topics: Defensiveness, Know it All, Invincible, Do it Alone.  Join us Sundays at 6:07 to join in the conversation. 

We concluded our recent series by talking about the authority of the Bible.  It was a great night as this idea of authority is a tough one to navigate in our current culture.  Many would say there is no one authority or if there is one it is self.  I'm the authority.  The fact is everyone has placed their faith in something.  As Rob Bell shares, "everyone is jumping."  So to look at this we discussed several things:

First, authority is God and God's alone.  It is in Jesus the creator, sustainer and savior of all creation.  God has put everything under the feet of Jesus (I Chron. 29:10-11; Col. 1:15-17; Eph. 1:19-22; John 19:6-11 & Rom 13:1-2; Matthew 28:18-20)  The Word that was with God and was God became written down?  No, it became flesh.  So authority, revelation, Word is firstly found in a person and not in a document.  So in understanding the "authority of scripture" we must see it as the authority of God exercised through scripture. 

Second, by authority we mean God's sovereign reign and rule in bringing about the Kingdom which includes the restoration of creation and the redeeming of man all through Jesus Christ.  God's plan will be completed and in the way which He desires.

So how does this work?  This is the hardest part.  We'd like to think it is as easy as "because the Bible says so."  It just isn't.  What do you do when the Bible says one thing here and another there?  And what about when people disagree on what the Bible "says"?  Also, the Bible is primarily written as an unfolding story.  How can a story be authoritative.  We share a diagram Sunday to help see this story.  It is a combination of N.T. Wright's Five act play and Intersect's diagram. 

One mistake we often make is letting one piece of the story exercise authority with out taking into consideration the pieces that follow.  This often happens with the Israel piece.  For example, what is our relationship with the Law?  This is difficult to answer without understanding how the cross, Jesus, changed everything.  So we must first filter each part of the story through the following pieces. 

We see in the N.T. the early church doing just that.  They struggle and wrestle with allowing the authority of scripture, which is their case was what we would call the Old Testament, function in a new part of the story and in new cultures.  And they did struggle.  In fact they sometimes disagreed and were even OK with some disagreement.  This is the part of the story we find ourselves in but it can not and won't look exactly like it did for Peter or Paul.  N.T. Wright uses a word for our part.  He calls it Improvising.  We have to play in key.  We need to keep the same tempo.  We must flow out of and into the next piece of music while keeping the whole in mind.  There is freedom though.  There is some creativity to the process.  He then lists several musts for this process to work and I'll end with these:

1.  Contextual reading - keeping the whole story in mind and reading from with in the current story.
2.  Communal reading - we must have others who are a part of the process to bring accountability and insight.
3.  Personal reading - we must read on our own as well so that we bring something to the table and are formed by it ourselves.
4.  Studied reading - or scholarship.  Allowing new things and discoveries to be said about the Bible.  There is more to learn.
5.  Taught reading - having those who can put in the time to teach and guide the community in the reading, understanding and living of scripture.

(a great resource is N.T. Wright's article "How can the Bible be authoritative?" )

So how do you move from simply reading for information to reading in a way that the Word enters you and brings transformation?  How do we eat this book?

Sunday night we looked at what we call Lectio Divina or Sacred Reading.  You could call it divine reading.  When reading encounters the Bible it turns into something else.  It is an encounter with God, Jesus and the Spirit.  And so we take it seriously and we go about the process intentionally.  This process also is not linear, it is circular and the order can adjust and move in many directions.  So with that being said, what does Lectio Divina look like.  Here are the four pieces we mentioned Sunday night.

Read
This is the lectio part.  We are often lazy readers.  When it comes to the bible, reading must become a physical activity.  Much of what was recorded in scripture was initially a very physical event.  They heard God's voice.  The jewish people saw the sea split open.  Peter walked on water.  Thomas touched Jesus.  We also need to dig, study the text.  Once words are written all the context is lost.  This is where the resource guide comes into play with many helpful tools.  So first, we read but that is not all...

Meditate
I think that this idea has sometimes lost it's depth.  The word used for meditate in several verses in Psalms (1:2; 63:6) is hagah.  This word is also used in Isaiah 31:4 where it says that a lion "growls" over it's prey.  We've all seen this happen or been told not to bother an animal while it's eating because they tend to get lost in it.  So meditating could be understood as getting lost in the text.  It is where we notice the sounds, colors, smells, feeling and emotions of what is going on.  It is how we remember what we read.  Once words are written they are forgotten.  There is no need to remember any more.  Meditation allows to to really get into it so that the details emerge and they stick in our minds.

Prayer
This is where we literally enter the conversation.  It is truly amazing that God is a revealing God.  He speaks.  What is equally amazing is that He listens.  We are allowed to question.  We can can say we don't understand or it seems to difficult.  We can vent our frustration and anger to just simply worship God for what we've discovered.  The Psalms are our example of a holding nothing back, honest dialogue with God.  We must see the reading of scripture as a conversation.

Contemplation
This is the last piece.  This is not something we do alone or in seclusion.  It is not something done only by monks and nuns.  This is the ability to be in the moment.  To notice the reality of the world going on around us.  Children do it all the time.  They see and stop to watch a beetle cross the sidewalk.  They see the lone flower in the yard and pick it for Mom.  It is being aware of the present world we are living in and how it connects to the divine.  How it relates to God's word.  In the end the Word must become flesh.  It must walk and talk and incarnate itself in daily life.  Without this step we will just be scribbling down a lot of information with no change.  Without transformation.  Without incarnation.

(again, much of these ideas come for Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson.  I highly recommend it.)

What is the Bible?  Ok, I know it's a book but what is it beyond the front and back cover and pages in between?  Last Sunday night we used some objects as examples of what the Bible might be.  For instance, if the Bible was a Yard Stick, what would that mean?  If the Bible was a crutch, what would that mean?  How about a brick or an umbrella or a tub of play-doh?  If the Bible were these things, there would be implications.  If the Bible were a fairy tale story book it would mean....

We then broke into some groups and looked at scripture together to see what the Bible says It is. 

Revelation (I Cor. 2:7-12; Col. 1:25-29; Eph. 3:4-6)  What does this mean?  God desires to be known.  God is not hiding.  We can't know apart from God showing himself.  We can't guess or search or create it.  It was created before the beginning of the world.  God's plan is now known.  His message is for all of us.  It is still unfolding.

Word of God (Isaiah 40:1-8; Hebrews 1:1-3; I Thess. 2:13)  What does this mean?  It is true.  It is reliable.  It has authority.  It is not a best guess.  It is not merely human smarts.  It is lasting.  It will endure. 

God Breathed (2 Tim. 3:14-17; Gen. 2:7; Isaiah 55:10-11; Heb. 4:12-13) What does this mean?  Scripture is living.  It is infused with the ability to bring life.  To change hearts.  To heal wounds.  To restore communities.  It has power to accomplish what God desires. 

This Sunday....how do we read it?

For the second week of this series we had one of our quarterly Seek Nights.  For the discussion, we posed many simple questions, or seemingly simple.  Then asked each person to agree or disagree with the statement by show of a card marked with an "A" or "D".  Here were the statements:

The Bible is easy to understand.
Only Christians can understand the Bible.
It is important which translation you use.
The Bible should be read literally.
The Bible is true.
The Bible is full of contradictions.
We can know for sure what the Bible means.
The Bible can become too important in the Church.

What do you think?  Simple?  Are there two sides?  Anyway, I won't spoil it by giving all the amazing answers we came up with :o)