Missional Discipleship Practices, 4: Scripture

It’s just sort of a given that if you’re going to be a follower of Jesus, you’re going to spend at least some time reading the Bible.

This can be a little daunting. Especially if you’re just finding your way into Scripture. It’s a big book, and it isn’t always the easiest of reads. Furthermore, people can’t agree about it. They argue about where it came from, how to read it, whether or not it’s still applicable to life today. But I would say this: yes, reading the Bible can be daunting, but it’s important…one of the most important disciplines of anyone who’d follow Jesus…and it is absolutely applicable today, with as much to say to you and me as at any time since the words were committed to scrolls. That’s because Scripture, first and foremost, tells us about Jesus—do we need Jesus any less now than anyone has in the past?

My purpose in this post is not to provide a plan for reading Scripture (you can find one here). But I do have a couple of things to say.

First, it’s important to read the Bible not just for content, for what the words say. It’s important to read the Bible because it’s through the words of Scripture that the Holy Spirit so often speaks to us. Hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to you through Scripture doesn’t require Biblical expertise, that you know the Bible cover-to-cover and understand all it says (no one can rightly claim that). It simply requires a willingness to engage what you find with heart and mind open. Reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord.

Second, it’s important to read the Bible in community. This doesn’t mean reading solo is a bad idea. There is much to be gained from time spent, alone, with Scripture. But if reading the Bible opens a line of communication with the Lord, what the Lord may be saying is probably best discerned corporately. It’s too easy to confuse your own agenda with the voice of the Lord if you’re the only one listening.

Third, it’s important to read the Bible as a discipline but not necessarily in the sense of I-must-read-three-chapters-a-day-or-I’m-letting-Jesus-down. The Lord is not, after all, limited to speaking to us only through Scripture. The Lord can speak to us through art, through music, through experience. In fact, because silence itself can often speak volumes, the Lord can communicate to us by saying nothing at all. Reading the Bible should be a discipline in the sense that it is part—indeed, the biggest, most important part—of an ongoing, consistent, intentional effort to listen to what the Lord is telling you, however the Lord is telling you, every day.

Finally, it’s important to read the Bible as God’s message to a missional people. God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-9) is the call to go forth and be a blessing to all the nations—a call that, one way or another, resonates throughout the entire Scriptural narrative, from King David to the Prophets to Jesus himself to Paul and the development of the early church. And it’s still the call God places on our lives today as followers of Jesus: go forth, live the Good News, and be a blessing to those around us. Understanding that the Bible is God’s message to a missional people (that’s you and me) is critically important because it reminds us that we are to listen to what the Lord tells us through Scripture missionally. Which is to say that we hear it not as being just about our own personal, individual salvation, but as being about the role each of us plays in helping grow the Kingdom.

Some Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
                            Acts 1:6-11