Majority of Christians don't read their Bibles daily

One of the spiritual disciplines I am most thankful for is that of daily Bible study.  A few years ago, one of my pastors was talking about how much Bible study had a positive influence upon his life and so I decided to get more serious about it.  I can truly say a daily time in the word is one of the greatest blessings in my life.  The majority of churchgoers do not engage in this activity however.  A recent study from Lifeway research has shown that only 19% of churchgoers read their Bibles daily (frankly, I am surprised it is that high).  40% of churchgoers read their Bibles a few times a month or less often. 

I was recently listening to a question and answer session from Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul was asked by someone in the audience, "do you think it is sufficient to read your Bible once or twice a week?"  Without hesitation, he said, "No."  He went on to explain the importance of feeding on the word of God on a daily, ongoing basis.  I heartily agree with him. 

For clarification, we do not read our Bibles to earn favor with God, but rather to learn more about the one whom we profess to love and worship.  We cannot know God without knowing what He says about himself through His holy word.  We do that by reading. 

Here are some verses to consider. 

     I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;

     I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food.-Job 23:12

    But he answered, “It is written,
    “‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
        but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”-Matthew 4:4

    Blessed is the man
        who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
    nor stands in the way of sinners,
        nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
    but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
        and on his law he meditates day and night.-Psalm 1:1-2

    How can a young man keep his way pure?
        By guarding it according to your word.
    With my whole heart I seek you;
        let me not wander from your commandments!
    I have stored up your word in my heart,
        that I might not sin against you.-Psalm 119:9-11

(Actually, you should read all of Psalm 119--It might be a good place to start)

If you are not sure where to start, go here.  Or you can try the one I just put together. 

You Are No Longer An Orphan

Over the past month or so, I have been rolling an idea around in my head that I wanted to write about for the blog.  Specifically, I have been wanting to write about the idea of God's adopting love.  I think sometimes I live as one who is justified and forgiven, but fail to live as one who was adopted.  Christine Hoover at Desiring God beat me to the punch, as she reflected on a forthcoming book by Rose Marie Miller.

She writes, "Rose Marie Miller’s husband, Jack, characterized her self-justification as orphanhood: 'you act as if you are an orphan. You act as if there is no Father who loves you' (11).

• Orphans have to take care of themselves.
  
• Orphans must be strong.
  
• Orphans must protect themselves from being taken advantage of.
  
• Orphans cannot depend on anyone.
  
• Orphans cannot be weak.
  
• Orphans crave to be taken in and loved but doubt they ever will.
  
• Orphans want to be accepted, to belong.
  
• Orphans only trust themselves.
  
• Orphans cannot get too close.
  
• Orphans are on the outside looking in.

Friend, are you living as one who is not adopted? Are you continually trying to justify yourself to God?  Are you continually trying to save yourself?

Yet Another Bible Reading Plan

    Blessed is the man
        who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
    nor stands in the way of sinners,
        nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
    but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
        and on his law he meditates day and night.
(Psalm 1:1-2 ESV)

I believe that reading the Bible is important for the Christian. It is the most effective way to know what God says. The past couple of years, I have reviewed several Bible reading plans.  You can find the list of programs I reviewed here.  Each of these programs has different strengths and weaknesses, but whatever gets you reading the word is a good program.  When I started with serious Bible study, I began with the John MacArthur approach, which allowed me to cover large sections of scripture repeatedly.  Over the past few years, however, I have switched to the Grant Horner plan, which involves reading chapters from 10 different places each day, which allows for understanding of passages in context. 

This past year, I took a course in biblical hermeneutics. One of the points that Jeannine Brown made in her book Scripture as Communication (2007) was that many of the books of the Bible were written to be read as long letters rather than isolated chapters or verses.  In order to truly get the understand what is being said, in order to get the context, it is useful to read large sections of books.  Doing this also allows the reader to have a broader sense of the historical-redemptive context of the Bible rather than as a series of moral stories.

So, taking what I have liked about Grant Horner and John MacArthur specifically, I have decided to pull together my own program, which also recognizes the importance of reading large sections of scripture. Like the Horner program, it is important to read through at a moderately quick pace. About his program, Horner wrote, "GET THROUGH THE TEXT--no dawdling, back reading, looking up cross references." If his program is any indication, you will become quicker as you continue on.

Here is what I am proposing to try.

1) I broke the Bible into 5 sections: Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, Gospels+Acts, and New Testament letters.
2) Each day, you will read one chapter from psalms and one chapter from proverbs. These books are such that smaller units retain their meaning in isolation.  When you get to the end of Psalms, go back to the beginning and start again.  (You may wish to break 119 into several sections--it is 179 verses long).  You can do the same thing with the Proverbs if you wish, or you can read the Proverb of the day (e.g., read Proverbs 1 on the 1st, etc.)
3) You will alternate between Old Testament, Gospels, and rest of New Testament as follows: First, you will read all of Genesis over a period of 1 week. Then you will switch to Matthew and read that over 4 days. Then you will read Romans over 2 days. Then you will switch back to the Old Testament and read Exodus over 5 days.  You will continue switching Old Testament-Gospel-Other New Testament on and on.

I plan to read 1 chapter from Psalms, 1 chapter from Proverbs and roughly 6-8 chapters from the other books each day.  This will lead to a maximum of 10 chapters per day, which is very doable if you don't bog down with deep study.  You can do that later if you wish.  Right now, you are trying to get through text.  You can certainly alter the number of chapters that you would cover in each day to meet your time constraints.

Assuming approximately 6-8 chapters per book, it would take this many days for each book: Genesis-7, Exodus-5, Leviticus-4, Numbers-5, Deuteronomy-5, Joshua-3, Judges-3, Ruth-1, 1 Samuel-4, 2 Samuel-3, 1 Kings-3, 2 Kings-4, 1 Chronicles-4, 2 Chronicles-5, Ezra-2, Nehemiah-2, Esther-2, Job-6, Ecclesiastes-2, Song of Solomon-1, Isaiah-9, Jeremiah-7, Lamentations-1, Ezekiel-6, Daniel-2, Hosea-2, Joel-1, Amos-2, Obadiah/Jonah-1, Micah-1, Nahum/Habakkuk-1, Zephaniah/Haggai-1, Zechariah-2, Malachi-1, Matthew-4, Mark-2, Luke-3, John-3, Acts-4, Romans-2, 1 Corinthians-2, 2 Corinthians-2, Galatians-1, Ephesians-1, Philippians/Colossians-1, 1&2 Thessalonians-1, 1 Timothy-1, 2 Timothy/Titus/Philemon-1, Hebrews-2, 1 & 2 Peter-1, 1,2,3 John/Jude-1, Revelation-3. 

If you read at the pace of 8-10 chapters per day, you will read through the OT passages about 1.5 times, the Psalms about 2.5 times, Proverbs 12 times, the Gospels 9 times, and the NT letters about 3.5 times in one year.  Here is an example in scribd of what it would look like for a year.

If you choose to try this, or have more questions about how it is going for me, please let me know!

Book Review: Lectures on Calvinism

Eric Johnson, who is a friend of mine and the founder of the Society for Christian Psychology, has been deeply influenced by Abraham Kuyper and has recommended him to me with some regularity. I have also discovered the influence of Kuyper on several of the people who have affected my thinking including Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Colson. The Stone Lectures on Calvinism were recommended to me as a good place to start with Kuyper. 

Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch theologian, but he was also a journalist and primer minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.  He was deeply influential in a number of areas, likely reflecting his broad biblical worldview.  He delivered the six Stone Lectures on Calvinism at Princeton in 1898.  The lectures were entitled: 1) Calvinism: A life system, 2) Calvinism and religion, 3) Calvinism and politics, 4) Calvinism and science, 5) Calvinism and art, and 6) Calvinism and the future. 

Kuyper attempts to demonstrate that John Calvin never intended his writings to be merely for church or religious life, but rather, to be a whole life system. In other words, Christians were to have a faith that affects all of life.  His prescience of the future was remarkable. The things he observed happening or believed would happen are in full swing in America today.  He wrote, "If this battle is to be fought with honor and with hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle; then it must be felt that in modernism, the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system assails us, then it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power." He saw the implications of modernism and the importance of having a robust response.

Near the end, he makes an observation of the "Christian" church and his indictment is right on.  He writes, "A theology which virtually destroys the authority of the Holy Scriptures as a sacred book; which sees in sin nothing but a lack of development; recognizes Christ for no more than a religious genius of central significance; views redemption as a mere reversal of our subjective mode of thinking; and indulges in a mysticism dualistically opposed to the world of the intellect,—such a theology is like a dam giving way before the first assault of the inrushing tide. It is a theology without hold upon the masses, a quasi-religion utterly powerless to restore our sadly tottering moral life to even a temporary footing." He calls the church back to its roots, to realize that it is to affect all of life, a call that is sorely missing in many churches today.  Even if you are not a "Calvinist" per se, I would commend this book to you. 

Book Review: The Hole in Our Holiness

I like Kevin DeYoung and so I pre-ordered his latest book, The Hole in Our Holiness (2012).  DeYoung issues a stern warning to Christians who ignore the pursuit of holiness for whatever reason they may cite.  He writes, "No matter what you profess, if you show disregard for Christ by giving yourself over to sin--impenitently and habitually--then heaven is not your home" (p. 14).  He goes on to suggest that the pursuit of holiness, or obedience to God, is at the heart of the Great Commission.  He further seems to caution against the stream of the current "gospel centered"movement that says that if we truly understand the gospel, we will by extension grow in holiness represented by writers like Tullian Tchvidjian, Michael Horton, Paul Tripp (and I would say Martin Luther).  Some of his caution is appropriate, I believe, to avoid antinomianism (lawlessness).

Someday, I want to read a book like this and feel hopeful.  Too often, the message in books like this is that 1) growth in holiness is a part of the Christian life, 2) BUT you are truly justified by faith alone, 3) BUT keep the rules, and 4) IF you are not, maybe you are not really a Christian.  It is hard to feel like I am measuring up to God's requirements  after reading a book like this (here's a hint: I'm not, which is why I am fully dependent upon the blood of Christ). 

On the whole, I do think this is a good book.  I do think that Christians must consider whether they are truly pursuing righteousness.  I do think that good trees bear good fruit.  I do believe in progressive sanctification, particularly as described by David Powlison (which DeYoung talks about later in the book).  His chapter, "Saints and Sexual Immorality", is particularly good.  I wish I had read it, and lived it out, before I married.  I am glad that I read it now.   So is his discussion of union with Christ.  These two topics are worth the price of the book.

Still, though I believe that the pursuit of holiness is absolutely essential to the Christian life, I agree with the guys at the White Horse Inn that we must understand that before understanding our responsibilities (imperatives), we must first understand what Christ has done for us (indicatives) and continue to go back to the cross again and again when we are unsure.  I would recommend this book, but perhaps encourage you to read it alongside something by Tullian Tchvidjian (e.g., Surprised by Grace) and pray for grace and growth in holiness. 

Book Review: The Transforming Power of the Gospel

A few months ago, this book was a free offering on Kindle.  I told many of you about it and I hope you got it for yourself.  Jerry Bridges is one of my favorite authors and this book of his is no exception. In The Transforming Power of the Gospel (2011), bridges discusses how growth in holiness is deeply rooted in the Gospel and he seems to be close to the right balance between God's grace and personal responsibility, in my opinion.  Many authors that I like (e.g., John MacArthur, Francis Chan) are strong proponents of personal holiness as a mark of faith.  Although they talk about the importance of grace, what comes across is a strong call to holiness.  On the other end of the spectrum are writers, who I also deeply respect, like Rod Rosenblatt and Tullian Tchvidjian, who focus deeply on grace and seem to address personal holiness to a lesser degree. Recently, I have been talking with a good friend of mine that neither end of this spectrum seems to get it quite right.  Bridges, as he does in many of his books, discusses the importance of holiness and spiritual transformation, but clearly grounds it in the gospel of grace and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.  I think all of the authors mentioned above also believe this, but the message comes through more clearly in Bridges' work. 

I want to concluded with two of the closing paragraphs from his book.  Bridges writes, "If you commit yourself to the pursuit of Christlikeness, you will discover an increasing tension between your desire to know and do the will of God and your perceived progress in doing it. This increased tension can become discouraging and demotivating. The solution to this dilemma is to keep in mind that, in our standing before God, He sees us clothed in the perfect obedience of Christ. This standing never changes, regardless of whether we are having a good day or a bad day. In Him, we are always holy and blameless. In Him, we are always perfectly righteous as He was in His sinless Humanity.

"This is the way we should resolve the tension between what we desire to be and what we see of ourselves in our daily experience. We should look more at our standing before God in Christ than we do at our actual experience, and that continual looking to who we are in Him will motivate us to become more like Him in our experience. To do this, of course, means we must daily embrace the gospel."

Book Review: How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home

I recently read Derek Thomas's How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home (2011), a purchase I made through Ligonier Ministries $5 Fridays. If you have not availed yourself of their continually great offerings, you should.  I have many wonderful books in my library because of $5 Fridays.

Thomas's book is essentially an exposition of Romans 8. More precisely, it is a book about Romans 8 based upon a series of sermons that Thomas gave.  Switching from the spoken word to the written carries with it certain challenges and, I think, this book has done that reasonably well. 

Thomas builds upon the guilt-grace-gratitude chain that I had not previously heard, though interestingly, one of the next books I picked up, Transformed by the Gospel by Jerry Bridges also builds upon that notion.  Thomas sets out to show how salvation for the Christian is truly an unmerited gift, dependent only upon the blood of Christ. 

On page 12, he asks the question, "Can I still be in a right relationship with God (justified and adopted) and still sin as I do?"  He seems to come down on the side of suggesting that we will continue to sin, but that we cannot be satisfied to stop there.  He then moves on to address big topics like sanctification and mortification and prayer.

All in all, this is a good little book, certainly worth the $5 dollars I paid for it.  It encourages me to go again to Romans 8 as one of the golden gems of Paul's writing.   

Be Careful Little Eyes How You Study

I am big on Bible study. I think it is important, perhaps even essential to the Christian.  I do think it is important to use caution in how you approach studying it, however.  In part, there can be a danger in having an unbalanced view of God's word, or a tendency to know a few trees well, but miss the forest.  Doug Wilson was correct today in his post "As Somebody Somewhere Said..."

Wilson writes, "The only way to learn the Bible the way you should is to read and reread it. This brings us back to the point made earlier: proper Bible study must be preceded by reading. After you are familiar with the context of Scripture, you will be able to build on your knowledge through more specialized study methods. But until you have that familiarity, such study methods should be scrupulously avoided. Until you have the proper foundation, do not memorize any Bible verses. This may seem odd to some of you and sacrilegious to others. Does not the Bible say, 'I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you' (Ps. 119:11).

"Yes, we are to store God's word in our hearts. Yes, it will keep us from sin. But we are not instructed to cram His Word into our hearts sideways or upside down. God's Word cannot be properly hidden in our hearts when it is misunderstood. And it cannot be understood apart from context."

If you have never read your Bible through (perhaps even a few times), you may want to set to work on that task before you sign up for the next round of memory madness or read the next Christian living book. 

(EDIT: Based on an online conversation with my friend Amy, I think it may be more appropriate to stress both scripture memorization AND getting the grand story of scripture. So perhaps it is better to say "sign up for memory madness, but really seek to read through the whole Bible so you can see the big picture"). 

Why Churches Fail So Many

Rod Rosenblatt delivered a message, The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church, in 2010.  In this message, he looks at the tendency for churches to settle into law even if, for a season, they visited the gospel.  He traces the problem thus:

"We start to imagine that we need to be born again again. (And often the counsel from non-Reformation churches is that this intuition of ours is true.) Try going again to some evangelistic meeting, accept Christ again, surrender your will to His will again, sign the card, when the pastor gives the altar call, walk the aisle again. Maybe it didn’t “take” the first time, but it will the second time? And so forth.

"In a Christian context, the mechanism of this can be, I think, a very simple one:

1. You come to believe that you have been justified freely because of Christ’s shed blood.
2. Freely, for the sake of Jesus’ innocent sufferings and death, God has forgiven your sin, adopted you as a son or daughter, reconciled you to Himself, given you the Holy Spirit, and so on. Scripture promises these things.
3. Verses like, “Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” seem now—at first read—to finally be possible, now that you are equipped for it. Or you hear St. Paul as he writes, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Same thing.
4. You realize that you might have had some excuse for failure when you were a pagan. But that’s over. Now you have been made a part of God’s family, have become the recipient of a thousand of His free gifts.
5. And then, the unexpected. Sin continues to be a part of my life, stubbornly won’t allow me to eliminate it the way I expected.
6. Continuing sin on my part seems to be just evidence that I’m not really a believer at all. If I were really a believer, this thing would “work!”"

The realization of the impossibility of the task at hand, the understanding that we will never measure up weighs heavy and when Christians can't do it, they leave.  They cannot bear up under the weight.  

He goes on to say, "I hope that most of us would say that the shed blood of Christ is sufficient to save a sinner? All by itself, just Christ’s blood, 'nude faith' in it, 'sola fide,'  'faith without works,' 'a righteousness from God apart from law,' a cross by which 'God justifies wicked people,' etc. So far, so good, right?

"But is the blood of Christ enough to save a still-sinful-Christian? Or isn’t it? Does the Gospel still apply, even if you are a Christian? Or doesn’t it? It seems to me (1) that the category 'sinner' still applies to me, (2) that the category 'sinner' still applies to you, (3) that the category 'sinner' still applies to all Christians. (If you are a Wesleyan and have reached perfection, what I have to say here doesn’t, of course, apply to you.) But for the rest of us, it seems that what Luther said of the Christian being  'simultaneously sinful and yet justified before the holy God' is critical. Is what Luther said Biblical? Or isn’t it? Is it Biblical to say that a Christian is 'simul justus et peccator' or no? Are we Christians saved the same way we were when we were baptized into Christ, or when we came to acknowledge Christ’s shed blood and His righteousness as all we had in the face of God’s holy law? That all of our supposed 'virtue'—Christian or pagan—is just like so many old menstrual garments (to use the Bible phrase)? But that God imputes to those who trust Christ’s cross the true righteousness of Christ Himself? We are pretty sure that unbelievers who come to believe this are instantly justified in God’s sight, declared as if innocent, adopted as sons or daughters, forgiven of all sin, given eternal life, etc. But are Christians still saved that freely? Or are we not? We are pretty clear that imputed righteousness saves sinners. But can the imputed righteousness of Christ save a Christian? And can it save him or her all by itself? Or no?"

I confess that for me, this idea of grace is so radical, so unbelievable that I think to myself, that can't be right.  Surely there must be something I bring to the table.  Frankly, it leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable.  I desparately want to believe it and when I read God's word (particularly Galatians), I see it there, but the legalist inside of me insists that I must do more, that I should trust in my hard work rather than Christ's finished work, and so back to the cross I go again. 

Christian's Discourse with Prudence

I am working my way through John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress again.  If you haven't read this allegory, you should remedy that.  Today, I came upon Christian's discourse with Prudence.

PRUDENCE: Do you not think sometimes of the country from whence you came?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, but with much shame and detestation. Truly, if I had been mindful of that country from whence I came out, I might have had opportunity to have returned, but now I desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.

PRUDENCE: Do you not yet bear away with you some of the things that then you were conversant withal? 

CHRISTIAN: Yes, but greatly against my will; especially my inward and carnal cogitations, with which all my countrymen as well as myself were delighted. But, now, all those things are my grief, and might I but choose mine own things, I would choose never to think of those things more; but when I would be doing that which is best, that which is worst is with me. 

PRUDENCE: Do you not find sometimes as if those things were vanquished, which at other times are your perplexity?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, but that is seldom; but they are to me golden hours in which such things happen to me. 

PRUDENCE: Can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished? 

CHRISTIAN: Yes; when I think what I saw at the cross, that will do it; and when I look upon my broidered coat, that will do it; also when I look at the roll that I carry in my bosom, that will do it; and when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it.

PRUDENCE: And what is it that makes you so desirous to go to Mount Zion?

CHRISTIAN: Why, there I hope to see Him alive that did hang dead on the cross. There I hope to be rid of all those things that to this day are in me an annoyance to me. There they say there is no death. There I shall dwell with such company as I like best. For, to tell you the truth, I love Him because I was by Him eased of my burden; and I am weary of my inward sickness. I would fain be where I shall die no more, and with the company that shall continually cry, Holy, holy, holy. 

We are, each of us believers, though cleansed still reminded on a daily basis of sinfulness, ever with the draw to it. I echo the words of Christian who longs to be eternally freed from those daily annoyances.