Pastor's Corner: Staying in bed

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man/woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

One night a boy fell out of his bed. The next morning when he told his mother, she asked him how it happened. He answered, "I don't really know, but I expect I stayed to close to where I got in." There are many people who also stay too close to where they originally got in when it comes to their faith. They join a church but never grow in their faith. They go to church on Sunday but never open their Bibles during the week. They never attend Bible studies. Thus, they never move deeper in their walk with the Lord. When a Christian stops growing in his or her faith, he or she runs the danger of falling out of the bed of faith!

Growth in faith comes through the Word, the Bible. The Bible is, after all, "God-breathed" - God's inspired Word to us. It not only makes us "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15), but is "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training the righteous, so that the man [and women] of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Each of us must ask whether we're growing in our faith. If not, we must do something about it. "Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity" (Hebrews 6:1).

     What should we expect when we read the Bible?

1. We should expect to encounter God. The Bible is like a window. It is intended to allow us to look through it and see what God is like.

2. We should expect to discover what can be called the "first language of faith." The Bible supplies us with a vocabulary to talk about God and what it means to be the people of God.

3. We should expect a language rich in metaphor. In the Bible we find many metaphors, such as "lamb of God," the "rock of our salvation," the "bread of life," and the "way." These metaphors in the Bible point us to God.

4. We should expect to be challenged. The Bible provides a picture of what it means to live as a child of God and as a follower of Jesus.

5. We should expect to find meaningful answers for life, but we should not expect to find in the Bible an answer for every ethical decision we face. We need to take what we find in the Bible seriously enough to let it challenge us. But we have also been freed by the gospel. We are not to be enslaved by the instructions found in the Bible but we are to use our God-given wisdom to serve our neighbor.

6. We should not expect to have every question about God answered. From the Bible and through Jesus we learn about God's grace and mercy and God's will for a restored world, but we do not have all our questions answered.

7. We should expect to find out about God's here-and-now relationship with us. The Bible does talk about life and death. Whatever one says about life after death, one thing is for sure. It is not a reward. It is an extra gift from a gift-giving God.

8. We should expect to be left with tensions. God is described in many ways in the Bible - as creator, as righteous judge, as ruler, as shepherd, as tender father or mother, as Savior. God is both this and that. The Bible does not resolve all these tensions. It reveals life's beauty and life's messiness. The purpose of the Bible is to invite us into a living relationship with God.

9. We should expect that each book of the Bible was written for a particular purpose and has a particular message. When we discover the purpose and message of the book in the context of when it was originally written, we are better able to discover the message it holds for today and the future. What it meant provides a kind of anchor for our interpretation of what it means now.

10. We should expect the Bible to say something to us now. It is not just giving us information about the past, though it is doing that. It is not making predictions about the future, though it does make promises that carry into the future. It is calling us here and now to a deeper relationship with God and to a deeper understanding of our calling in this life. "These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)

--

Pastor Michael O'Hearn

Hi-Line Lutheran Churches