Bible Doing

Bible Doing

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is from Bob Goff's book, Love Does, and the Scripture is James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

 

The first thing I did was quit going to what Christians call a "Bible Study."  A Bible study sounds like a wholesome thing to go to, and honestly, it is.  They can come in as many flavors as there are people leading them.  At the ones I went to, I learned a bunch of facts and information about Jesus.  We might be studying how a guy named Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.  The leader would open up a reference book and say something like, "The word dead means in the Greek .  .  ."  And then he'd say, "In the Hebrew the word means . . . "  Sometimes he'd get really into it and talk about the difference between the Greek version of dead and the Hebrew version.  Then he'd ask us a compelling question.    Something like, "When was the last time you felt dead?  Huh?  I asked myself.  Honestly, who really needs to hear a definition of dead?  And what difference did it make?  I wanted to talk about how I could do a better job following Jesus, how to practice kindness, and what might be possible to do with my faith before I'm the Greek or the Hebrew version of dead.

 

The guy's intentions were totally pure, so I don't mean to trash him or anything.  Most Wednesday nights, when I left the Bible study, I found I couldn't remember a single thing we'd talked about either.  But then I realized the reason I didn't remember anything was because, in the big scheme of things, it really didn't seem important to me.

 

So I started getting together with the same guys each week and instead of calling it a Bible study, we call it a "Bible doing."  We've been at it for fifteen years now, and I've found there's a big difference between the two.  At our Bible doing, we read what God has to say and then focus all of our attention on what we are going to do about it.  Just agreeing isn't enough.  I can't think of a single time where Jesus asked His friends to just agree with Him.

 

John 13:34-35 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining