Encountering Jesus Through the Scripture, Pt. 1
Why Read the Scripture?
Today, people are being pulled in various directions. They are pressured by pictures and promises of what they could or should be on social media; they are pushed around by ideologies that promise change, purpose, or just a better life. At the same time, the statistics of loneliness and isolation continue to increase at a staggering rate, leaving many people longing for something richer or something thicker than the thin life they’re experiencing. Christians, too, have fallen prey to the fast undercurrent of technology and culture, dragging them forward into a seemingly more efficient way of life yet leaving many of their relationships shallow.
There are so many who long for a “with God” life, a life that’s vibrant and deep. Yet, the rapid pace of life conditions us to a frenetic tempo where many seem to lose sight of the proverbial “forest for the trees,” caught up in an unsustainable sprint, longing for something more of God. What are we longing for? We long for God’s word to us, the inbreaking of His voice, and the transformation of our souls. There is hope, yet it will require a reorientation of our hearts and a re-direction of our focus, a focus back to practicing His presence, back to practicing daily scripture reading, prayer, and community. Our first focus is to learn to slow down and encounter Jesus through the daily reading of the Scripture.
Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Material things alone do not satisfy. It might be said that there is a “spiritual hunger” we were created for, which can only be satisfied by something spiritual– it can only be satisfied by Jesus. When we read the Bible, we’re not just reading words on a page. We are inviting the Holy Spirit to make the living word come alive in our lives. Through the Scripture, we are invited to get to know Jesus better. We are to engage all of it– even the parts that we like and the parts that we don’t like. However, when we engage the scripture, we want to remember that we read it to know Jesus better. We want to ask and learn to attune our ears to God’s voice, letting his word dwell within us (Col. 3:16). We want to apply it to our lives in such a way that it becomes lived so that the Holy Spirit can shape us and form us into the image of Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18).
Where Are We Heading?
Sometimes we can experience a gap between what we know and what we do. The story that we live in is the story that we live out. We long to have a rhythm of hearing God’s voice through the Scripture. We long to discover more of who God is and who we are in Christ. The Scripture shows that we were made to love the God who made and loves us–our hearts find rest when our love is rightly ordered. St Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.” In our fastpaced, power-obsessed culture, we are surrounded with narratives that compete for our affections, narratives that compete for our hearts. As followers of Jesus, we believe that God’s unfolding story is the one that leads to true life. Through the practice of reading Scripture, we seek to encounter Jesus and further root our lives in his Word. As a scripturereading community, the church was transformed by Jesus and the Spirit into a multi-ethnic family charged with a mission to the whole world.
The Bible is a very large book that is made up of the Old and New Testaments, which are made up of many books themselves. The Scripture contains many genres, such as history, poetry, and letters, which have been written over the span of fifteen hundred years. While the Bible is a diverse set of literature, it ultimately presents itself as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Once you understand the storyline and how each book fits together, you will be able to pick up the Bible at any point and know right where you are and what’s going on.
“While the Bible is a diverse set of literature, it ultimately presents itself as a unified story that leads to Jesus.”