"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."  Acts 17:11

I guess everyone looks for a starting point in just about everthing they do - so it doesn't surprise me that I get asked all the time by people who are new to faith what they should do first.  I guess there could be a plethora of answers (and probably there are a plethora of answers given to someone new to faith in Jesus), but I think what I suggest almost always is that someone starts by getting to know God in the Bible.

Why this and not something else?  Why not start praying first?  Why not start worshipping first?  Well, I guess those could be options too, but the reason I tell people to get to know God in the Bible is because it helps to know who you are praying to and worshipping.  What is God's character like?  How does God respond to stuff?  What does God say about the world?  About me?  The Bible speaks to all of these things.  So of course, you can read the Bible, pray, and worship to start out, but it is the Bible that informs and clarifies the worship and praying, not the other way around (keep in mind this is not the establishment of priorities, i.e.- that the Bible is more important than worship or prayer.  That is not what I am saying at all - I am simply noting that without our understanding of God as revealed in the Bible He gave us, we don't really know the manner and heart in which we are to pray and worship).

Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, the Bible is to be a tool to get to know God - it is God's revelation of Himself to us in words and stories.  And it is, outside of Jesus who was/is God in a body, the most specific revelation we have about God and what He is like.  That is why I think it is the starting point - it is He that we long to know, love and worship, so we need to understand as much as we can about Who He is.

I'll tell you what else it does too.  It keeps us from falling headlong into errors and deceptions.  When we are new to faith in Christ, we can easily succumb to anything that has some "God" label on it.  Be assured, not everything that has a "God" label is really from God anymore than those "Rolex" watches you can pick up from a dude on Times Square are really Rolex watches.  Of course, we can't get to know the contents of the Bible in a short reading.  Even in a short year.  Shoot, it seems that in our short lifetime we will never fully grasp the depth and breadth of the revelation of God in the Bible.  That's ok.  God did it that way and He knows why.  Besides, you don't really get to know someone after just the briefest of introductions do you?  It takes time.........lots of it - so, too, with our time getting to know God through the vehicle of the Bible.

I hope you spend time with God in His Word.  It is His Word to you, yes, but it is, maybe more importantly, His Word to us.  We need to be getting to know God together so that we know, together, how to show God to the world we live in.  I've been at this a little while, and I am still making discoveries of God on a routine basis as I get to know Him.  And I am not worried about ever running out of material on God.  I've got a whole Bible full of stories, poems, songs, and letters to discover and rediscover as they teach me, as they teach us, about the One we love and worship.

"You diligently study the Scripture because you think that by them you possess eternal life.  These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life."  John 5:39-40

God is bigger than the Bible.

Go ahead, catch your breath a moment.........ok, all better?  Now, turn off your "heresy police scanner" and give me at least a listen on this point.

For some, the blatantly obvious facets of this statment get lost in all of the theological webs that they have built (or have been built into them possibly).  From just sheer logic, the Bible originated with God, through the vehicle of human authors; therefore, God must both be first and of greater significance for Him to accomplish the compilation of such a document about Himself.  As well, since God put together a book that testifies of Him, then it stands to reason that He needed to condescend to us for us to understand some of His nature.  In other words, while the Bible reveals all that God intended that we need to know about Him, no words on a page could possibly fully describe the infinitely indescribable God it seems to me.

(As a brief aside, please know that my position on the Scriptures is consistent with orthodox Christian faith through the ages - that I believe it to be the very word of God, infallible in its original condition, and everything we need for life and godliness in this world).

Sometimes, because we are so firmly committed to the Scriptures (and rightly so btw), we can, at times, lose our perspective.  We can, if left unattended, fall prey to the idea that our knowledge of the Scripture is of paramount importance.  It is important.  Very important.  But it is not paramount.  Our knowledge of God, and our experience of Him, is what the Scriptures are supposed to facilitate - they are not to be an end to themselves.

The Pharisees of Jesus' day (conservative religious leaders in the Jewish culture) fell prey to this very thing.  They saw their salvation in their knowledge of the Scripture, so much so that there was a saying among some of the Rabbis that "Study [of the Torah] is the highest form of worship."  Now, I don't think that good Jews started out that way.........anymore than good Christians start out that way.  When we come into a relationship with God through His Son, Jesus, we want to know Him more deeply and love Him more passionately.  But there comes a point, at different times along our pilgrimage, that we may lose our way because we look at God as words on a page rather than a living, mind-numbing, personal reality.  Jesus says to us that our salvation is not in knowing words on a page - but in knowing the God that those words help reveal.

The reason I bring this up is because it really does happen.  Granted, there are some that try to form their idea of God outside the Bible - this can't be anything but futile because God has chosen to give us a record that He initiated of Himself.  How ridiculous of us to think that we would know Him better outside of that, than within it.  But, more often than not in the life of a committed follower of Jesus, our relationship gets sucked into the lifelessness of simply knowing the right things.  Jesus says "No."  It is not in the knowledge of words through your intellect that you find salvation - it is in knowing Jesus - the One whom those words reveal.

So, next time you open your Bible to read it, don't just try to come up with some more information.  Know that the Bible is written to reveal God to you.  He will be present when you read it next time, so why don't you ask Him to reveal Himself to you through what you read.

Maybe then you and I will start a journey toward understanding that God is bigger than the words on a page.  Even if that page is in the Bible.

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."  1 Peter 2:9

I am a Protestant, so I am told.

In reality, I much prefer the term "disciple" or "follower of Jesus" rather than Protestant.  I'm not really protesting anything, so I think it just sounds weird.  I realize where it came from historically, but right now I am not protesting anything....sort of.

Martin Luther, this cool German who was tapped as the leader of the Protestant Reformation, was definitely protesting some stuff.  I won't enumerate all that he was protesting (and probably could not, though I could read his 95 Theses that got plastered to the Wittenburg Castle Gate in October, 1517), but just know it was more than one thing under protest.  Big theological issues related to the Catholic Church were at the center of this heated exchange (stuff like the selling of indulgences, purgatory, and probably most notably, justification by faith alone).

One subset of that great controversy was the idea of the priesthood of all believers.  This was simply a Biblical rethinking of the idea that the "priest" was the only one who could broker deals between people and God (this is way too general, and does not do justice to the actual doctrine of the Catholic position of that time, but for time I weaned it down, and dumbed it down).  This was worth arguing about because the NT saw a different role than that of just a few priests - it seemed to indicate that all the people of God are a royal priesthood (as noted above).

So, Protestants have valued this doctrine dearly, and rightly so.  But, unfortunately, I think that the doctrine itself is in need of some fundamental rethinking again.  It seems that many of us Westerners (term used globally) have culturized this doctrine to mean something less than it does.  Here is how it goes:  Westerners believe so strongly in the idea of the priesthood of the believer, and have married it to the rugged individualism inherent in our culture, that we now have somewhat of a Lone Ranger for Jesus mentality.  "All I need is just me and Jesus", "Jesus plus me makes a majority" and all of those other ridiculously shallow excuses for auto art are what we end up with.  I somehow don't think that is what Mr. Luther had in mind.

As a good Protestant, then, I feel the need to protest about this (actually, I'm not protesting....I'm just typing stuff into my computer; and, I am not a good Protestant........I don't even like that word.......I think it sounds stupid, kinda like Worstershire sauce).  What I think we miss is WHY we are a royal priesthood.   Not that I have it completely figured out, but here are two offerings:

1.  We are a royal priesthood so that we can have access to grow in Christlikeness unhindered.  If you and I "practiced our priesthood" we would be growing in our knowledge and application of the Scripture, and would thus be more conformed to the image of Christ.  A very good thing, eh?

2.  We are a royal priesthood so that we can be priests for one another.  This idea is simply the backlash to the idea that we are lone ranger priests.  If we are growing in Christlikeness (see #1 if you have already forgotten), then we will be ministering to, encouraging, challenging, and praying for one another.  In other words, I can act as a priest for you, and you for me.  It is WE who are a royal priesthood, not simply I.

So there you go.  Protest complete.  I will put my sign away now that says (in sweet, nectar filled Napolean Dynamite intonation),    "Your mom sells indulgences."