How to Read the Bible

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00:00:00:12 – 00:00:27:27
Clint Loveall
Hey friends, welcome back to a Passenger Talk podcast episode. We have been kind of a changing format lately. The idea is that once a month or so we’ll do kind of a little shorter form discussion about something we hope is helpful in the faith or in the life of the church and the Christian family. Today. In some ways going right to the source, to the foundation as we embark on a conversation about the Bible.

00:00:27:32 – 00:01:01:19
Clint Loveall
I don’t think anyone in the Christian faith can escape the role that the Bible plays. If you go to church, then every week you hear Scripture proclaimed and read and sermonizing. You read it in studies, you study it in classes. We have an online Bible study that people participate in. It’s an inescapable reality of the faith. And yet for a lot of Christians, it’s also a mystery, a thing that they don’t fully understand.

00:01:01:24 – 00:01:19:48
Clint Loveall
They don’t know how we got it, where it came from, not exactly sure what to do with it. And it’s an interesting thing. Michael, I think you said this before we got started, that there’s nothing that’s been more deeply beneficial to the church. And in some ways it’s also the church’s greatest Achilles heel.

00:01:19:53 – 00:01:43:16
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, it very much is, because that phrase, you know, the Bible says has for so many people, for so many different times been the answer while the Bible says and therefore it is. But if you had spent any time digging into the Bible, letting the Bible be for you a place of growth, then you know, it’s never that simple.

00:01:43:21 – 00:02:16:09
Clint Loveall
As we interact with the Bible, as we get to know the Bible, we hear multiple voices. This is 66 books compiled into one book. It is a host of different authors, lived at different times and in some cases had different perspectives. So there are voices within the Scripture that are very pro-Israel and less so Judah. There are other voices that are very pro Judah and less so Israel.

00:02:16:13 – 00:02:56:55
Clint Loveall
There are voices that are deeply against the Assyrians and the Babylonians and other enemies of Israel. And then there are voices that praise those as God’s instrument of punishment against the Israelites. So imagine if you had your your extended family together and they began telling stories. They’re going to have different slant now that the common thread is all of these authors look to God as the one who is doing something and all of them try to discern and interpret what it is that that is that God is doing.

00:02:57:00 – 00:03:23:34
Clint Loveall
But they do so from a particular vantage point. And I think as we learn the scripture, one of the most important things we can do is to become sensitive of that vantage point because it helps us understand the bigger picture. And rather than being afraid of an apparent disagreement, we begin to appreciate the depth and breadth of the book that includes both perspectives.

00:03:23:34 – 00:03:34:52
Clint Loveall
And I think it’s actually I don’t think it’s a problem. You know, the idea is that it’s a problem that the Bible might have different perspectives. I don’t think it is. I actually think it’s a strength.

00:03:34:57 – 00:03:58:37
Michael Gewecke
So I think to illustrate this point, I often find this helpful and it’s often surprising for people. This is actually one of the core differences between Christian unity and our Bible and Islam and its Bible, the Koran is that the Christian Bible? And we often don’t even think about this as a thing. The Christian Bible has been translated into your language.

00:03:58:37 – 00:04:25:32
Michael Gewecke
It’s been translated into English, if you speak Dave, or Spanish, if you speak that or French or Italian or Latin or whatever. But what you almost by definition may not realize is that means that the Bible that you’re reading is not the Bible that the earliest Christians read it is been translated. It’s been put into a different context so that you can read and interact with it.

00:04:25:37 – 00:04:47:21
Michael Gewecke
In Islam and the Koran. That’s not the case that technically and theologically in that tradition, one cannot read the Koran, that you cannot read the Scriptures unless you read it in its original language. That’s their understanding of how that text is inspired, that that is the only proper way. That’s not to say that it hasn’t been translated, but that’s looked down upon.

00:04:47:25 – 00:05:11:27
Michael Gewecke
And for Christians, the Bible has been continuously translated throughout all of the thousands of years of the faith’s existence. The reason for that being is because we deeply believe that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is spoken to in the Scriptures. But it isn’t the Scriptures themselves. It’s not the original first text that makes the Bible authoritative.

00:05:11:40 – 00:05:39:03
Michael Gewecke
It’s the power of those text to lead you to the authoritative Lord who is Jesus Christ. And that’s a substantial difference. And it it reveals how perspective is built into our idea of scriptures themselves that that we are comfortable with this idea that it can be translated and that translation can be a valuable guide to Christian life. That is a theological conviction of what it means to be Christian.

00:05:39:03 – 00:05:40:48
Michael Gewecke
And we sometimes miss it.

00:05:40:53 – 00:06:16:24
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and I think the implication of that is that to really do justice to the Scripture, one has to become a student. It is never as simple as opening the Bible and reading a sentence and saying, God said this. We as Protestant Christians, we as reformed Christians, think the Bible is more complex than that. It needs context. We have to be the best interpreter of the scripture.

00:06:16:24 – 00:06:40:40
Clint Loveall
It is the rest of the Scripture. And so it pushes us to read the book, to study the book, to be aware of those rough spots and gaps, to try and understand the difference of a culture from two or three or 4000 years ago versus our own and the way that words have been used and the way that those meanings might have changed.

00:06:40:40 – 00:07:32:28
Clint Loveall
And I think it is the difference, Michael, between, you know, reading a children’s book and reading war and Peace. It one is is going to ask much more of you. It’s going to be more demanding and I think when we open ourselves to the complexity of the scripture, when we try to do justice, to the multitude of voices and the richness of the history and even the rough spots that are very difficult to follow and understand, I think what it does is allows us the opportunity to hear the voice of God in the text, which is ultimately the thing that Christians profess about the Bible.

00:07:32:33 – 00:08:00:34
Clint Loveall
Our branch of the faith is a little bit cautious about saying this is the verbatim word of God. We we tend to instead to say we trust the Bible to speak God’s word to us. And if that doesn’t sound different, I would say that it is slightly different because one is the words themselves and one is the act of God interacting with us as we encounter the word.

00:08:00:34 – 00:08:28:22
Clint Loveall
And that that’s where we come from in our particular branch of the faith. It is never as simple as, Oh, here’s a word, it’s what is this word? What did this word mean? Why just why does this word get said the way it does? What does it say to us and how do we understand It implies something for our faith in the here and now in our own context.

00:08:28:22 – 00:08:35:24
Clint Loveall
And that’s a much deeper and, I think, richer enterprise than simply trying to memorize everything that’s in this.

00:08:35:29 – 00:09:07:36
Michael Gewecke
So I think another way of saying that is that it is not the same to take the Bible literally and to necessarily take the Bible seriously. Both of us would say very clearly that the Bible needs to be taken incredibly seriously. In fact, we’ve given our entire professional lives to the idea of taking the Bible seriously. That is the core of what it means as a Christian to throw ourselves into the ones who would point us to Jesus Christ.

00:09:07:40 – 00:09:26:49
Michael Gewecke
But the difference between serious and literal is to your point once again, that we don’t just point at the page and say, Well, if we’re going to be serious about this book, we need to do what this thing literally says. And one of the dangers of that mentality is that we find ourselves making all of these kinds of ridiculous exceptions to things.

00:09:26:49 – 00:09:48:43
Michael Gewecke
Right? The Bible tells us literally to do this and this. But then when the Bible tells us to do other things that don’t meet our expectations, like, for instance, the Bible literally tells us that women shouldn’t speak in church or the Bible literally tells us the make up of our clothes and how much fiber should be in it, or exactly what we should eat.

00:09:48:43 – 00:10:20:10
Michael Gewecke
We say, Well, that’s Old Testament or this doesn’t apply for this reason or this doesn’t apply for this reason. That becomes this very complex kind of meta interpretive task to to find the stuff in the Bible that we’re going to actually take literally in the stuff that we’re not going to take literally. And I think a point I would want to offer early in the conversation is you don’t need to be bound to a literal reading of every word in its plain meaning right in front of you to to take the Bible seriously.

00:10:20:15 – 00:10:38:25
Michael Gewecke
There’s a long Christian tradition that that teaches us that the Bible should be the center of our Christian life and that it needs to be wrestled with and that we need to ask questions and that we need to show up and bring the best that we have and trust that the Spirit of God will help us to rightly interpret it.

00:10:38:25 – 00:10:54:38
Michael Gewecke
It’s a more difficult task, certainly, but in many ways I think it opens the book to even more dimensions and allows us and invites us into a more humble encounter with the scriptures, which always leads us to a more humble encounter with God.

00:10:54:43 – 00:11:29:00
Clint Loveall
I think it also then by implication, makes it more incumbent, more pressing upon Christians to know this book, to to put ourselves regularly in this book, and not to be too upset about the times that something doesn’t make sense, but to open ourselves. If this is God’s primary way of speaking to us and that’s what we say about it, by the way, that this is the most common right way, the most common method that God speaks to believers in Jesus Christ is when they’re in this book.

00:11:29:13 – 00:11:57:43
Clint Loveall
If we’re going to say that, then we have to be people who are regularly in the book. We we can’t then step back and say, Well, I’ll get to God in some other way at all. We can’t then say, Well, I’ll let pastor on Sunday. Tell me what this book means. This is an invitation from God to listen for what he says to us.

00:11:57:48 – 00:12:19:48
Clint Loveall
And if we understand that, I do think, Michael, I mean, this is an intimidating book, right? I mean, it’s it’s huge. It’s dated. There’s characters and stories. There’s places we don’t know and names that are hard to pronounce. But if this is an invitation to hear a word from God, we don’t have to be afraid of those things.

00:12:19:53 – 00:12:49:01
Clint Loveall
We might be surprised to find that in some of those things, the those are the very things that God might use to speak. And so I, I think what I appreciate about the way that we understand the Bible is that it’s not a relic, it’s not a good luck charm. It’s not some mystical incantation. It’s a collection of stories from our family of faith.

00:12:49:06 – 00:13:12:42
Clint Loveall
And God says, As you open and read this book, I’m going to show up and say something to you. Maybe not every time, maybe not literally in the text, but this is how I choose to convey my words and my wishes and my will to the people who sit with it and to the people who sit under it.

00:13:12:46 – 00:13:24:33
Clint Loveall
And that’s a beautiful claim we make about this book, Michael, But it’s also a commitment that we make to be people who give it a chance to speak to us.

00:13:24:37 – 00:14:09:05
Michael Gewecke
And I think we’re going to intentionally try to navigate this conversation in such a way that it is more invitation than it is maybe a challenge, but there is a challenge inherent in what you’re saying. I think it needs to be named clearly that if there’s going to be a critique named against folks who are in the mainline reform tradition, which is where we are positioned in the faith, one of the great critiques that should be leveled against our own fellowship is that we take Scripture in our tradition very seriously and our comprehension and study of the Scripture, especially in the most recent few generations, has been such that we’ve lost a great amount of

00:14:09:05 – 00:14:46:40
Michael Gewecke
knowledge of the treasure that sits at the right center of our understanding of the world, that we are people who have a high understanding of Scripture. And yet some of us don’t know the names of the prominent figures of the Old Testament. So some of us haven’t read all four gospel accounts of Jesus Christ in their entirety. We just consider that that we might make it our entire life being Christian and not read the authoritative accounts of who this person that we’re following was and what he said and what he taught, what he did, and how that all comes together to a coherent understanding of faith that is a stain on the mark of the

00:14:46:40 – 00:15:28:42
Michael Gewecke
church and it needs addressed. We need to be honest and confess where we failed to take Scripture seriously. We are called to be people who find in Scripture a witness, a pointing an encounter with the living Christ by the power of the Spirit. Friends, that is. I mean, if we are going to just slow down for a second and think about what those words mean to to think that we have been given a book filled with other people’s accounts throughout history of an encounter with a living God who wants to have a real encounter with us if we believe that at our core it would drive us into this book, we couldn’t help ourselves.

00:15:28:42 – 00:15:50:26
Michael Gewecke
This is more important than the news that comes on. This is more important than scrolling on that your favorite social media thing for the next thing that this is the most important thing. If that is true, if we take that seriously, it will change our behavior and where we failed to have our behavior change that that needs contrast and it invites us to a new way of being.

00:15:50:31 – 00:16:26:29
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I don’t mean this arrogantly because I’ve had the opportunity to study and go to school and paid a lot of attention to this book through different venues. But I once sat in a Bible study next to a man I knew was an elder in his church, and they the speaker asked us to turn to Ephesians and I notice that he was thumbing through the Old Testament and I thought to myself, this is this is inadequate live of a larger problem in the church that we have this book, but we don’t understand it.

00:16:26:29 – 00:17:04:53
Clint Loveall
We, we don’t use it enough. We don’t open it enough. And that that’s not to judge that man. He was a wonderful man and he had a deep faith, but he just simply not put enough time in the Bible to know even where things were. And that’s we have to do better than that if we’re going to take seriously our claims about this book speaking God’s word to us and being the ultimate revelation of Jesus Christ to us, then we have to do better than that.

00:17:04:53 – 00:17:31:30
Clint Loveall
We have to be more passionate. We have to be more studious. We just have to do better as we attempt again, not to learn that. But this is one of the things, Michael, I think I always want to see in these conversations. The point of reading the Bible isn’t to know more Bible. Knowing more Bible is great. The point of reading the Bible is to know more God, to know more of God.

00:17:31:35 – 00:17:57:33
Clint Loveall
It’s not to win Bible trivia contests and it’s not to, you know, pass tests or in case you get on Jeopardy or to argue with people who have a different favorite verse, it is to meet the living God and his son, Jesus Christ. That’s why this book exists. And if we understand that, then it’s less intimidating when some particular part doesn’t speak to us or when we read something.

00:17:57:33 – 00:18:17:45
Clint Loveall
You see that doesn’t I don’t know what that means. I’m going to flag that and talk to somebody else, but I’m going to go on and skip to the next part. All of that’s okay because this the test of this book is not how much you know about the particulars, but how much you know about the characters for particularly the characters.

00:18:17:45 – 00:18:42:54
Clint Loveall
It’s trying to introduce us to God and his son, Jesus Christ. And so we don’t read this book on our own. We’re guided by the Spirit, we’re guided by our community. And I think a lot of people have good intentions, but they’re intimidated by the book. And and I understand that. But if we understand it as converts ation rather than information, maybe that helps us a little.

00:18:42:59 – 00:19:02:36
Michael Gewecke
That’s where I wanted to lean in, Glenn, because I agree with you wholeheartedly. My experience, too, has been how overwhelming it can be to read the Bible. And let’s face it, there are some places where you open, even in the New Testament when. Matthew Yeah, you’re going to open up in Matthew and just get nailed by a genealogy, a whole list of people’s names.

00:19:02:36 – 00:19:26:15
Michael Gewecke
So you think, Whoa, here we go. Right? And that is intimidating. And so a word of encouragement for you. You know, if you think of the Bible as like a fiction book that you need to read through and that you’re looking for compelling characters and and and great personal insights and you’re looking for some kind of narrative that we’ve said all together, you’re likely to be discouraged in the Bible.

00:19:26:15 – 00:20:13:49
Michael Gewecke
And also, if you go into the Bible looking for I’m going to memorize all of these details like Bible trivia, Jeopardy type model, then you’re going to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content in this book. But on the other hand, if you think of the Bible as a place where you will encounter the people and the historic encounters and the high moments of encounters with a living God, that for you are not some historical thing that needs memorized and recorded in the museum of a church somewhere, but rather that every single one of these are lessons of ways in which humanity encounters this this divine overarching plan, this thing that has connected us

00:20:13:49 – 00:20:40:01
Michael Gewecke
for all of known time that if you read the Bible as, Hey, these are snapshots that have something to teach me about what God is doing in my own time, in my own life. Even then, the Bible becomes a very different kind of book. The Bible becomes less of a dated historical artifact, and it becomes a rich sort of anthology of these God encounters.

00:20:40:01 – 00:21:02:20
Michael Gewecke
And when we read the book that way, it invites us to find our self inside the book. You don’t have to be a scholar of the Bible to be a deeply biblical person, but yet you can study it for your entire life and you will never reach the end of the riches that are within it. That’s what makes it such an incredible location.

00:21:02:20 – 00:21:31:03
Michael Gewecke
Center of the church’s life is we have this gift that we’ve been given. And the question is, will this be close to us both physically? Will it not be opened in our lives, but also will it be close to our understanding and will it have no meaning to us? Because if the book does not take on that deep personal invitational meaning to encounter a living God, then Clint, there was no point in studying it in the first place because the book’s not done what it was intended to do.

00:21:31:08 – 00:22:14:53
Clint Loveall
Yeah, absolutely. Think of it. Think of it this way, Michael 66 books, so 66 times some number of people in a book like Psalms that could be, you know, dozens and dozens of people just in that book alone. But whatever number it was that added their voices to those 66 books 66 times, a person or persons attempted to tell something of their story with God, what God meant to them as a as an individual or a nation four times, maybe a fifth, if we include some of Paul’s story.

00:22:14:58 – 00:22:44:13
Clint Loveall
Four times people set out to just survey the Jesus story to say what they saw in him, what they saw him do, what they heard him say, what he when he argued with this person or when he told that story. And some of them wrote historically, they cared about details. If you get into, say, first, Kings First and Second Samuel, some of them cared a lot about a lot of details.

00:22:44:18 – 00:23:17:56
Clint Loveall
How many, you know, boards it took to build a temple and who carved a rock into it. But it was important to them. And it’s a snapshot of their experi audience trying to be faithful to God or or their experience of people being unfaithful to God. Some of them wrote in times of war or peace, some of them wrote under times of oppression, some of them wrote under times of rebuilding, some of them saying out loud with celebration and some of them cried, thinking, Life is unfair, why doesn’t God do something?

00:23:18:07 – 00:23:46:21
Clint Loveall
And we get access to their experiences. This is our family album. We get to listen in on their their life. We get to watch them struggle. We get to see them succeed. And as we do, we hear words for our life. We see moments of God’s action and activity in our own world. And this helps us shape our lenses.

00:23:46:26 – 00:24:17:49
Clint Loveall
You know, Calvin would sometimes refer to the the glasses of faith, the scriptures being the lens by which we could see what God was up to. And I just I, I like that imagery. Michael. I think it makes the book less intimidating. Again, if you asked 100 of your family members to write stories, some of them you’d love reading, some of them would be profound and poetic, some of them would have crazy details and you’d wonder what the point was.

00:24:17:54 – 00:24:53:47
Clint Loveall
It’s no different with our spiritual family and behind it all is a God who wants to know us and invites us to know him. And again, I think the boldest and most important promise we make about the Scripture is we think God shows up in it. We think God engages the reader in it, which is why in our tradition, Michael, we’ve translated the Bible into all those languages, that belief that people should get to read it, because in reading it, they have the best opportunity to meet the God who stands behind it.

00:24:53:47 – 00:25:24:50
Clint Loveall
And that’s been really important to us. The downside is sometimes we haven’t always we’ve given Bibles without giving the resources and tools to help understand. And so we find ourselves in a moment where a lot of Presbyterians don’t know this book. They don’t have the tools, they don’t carry the backpack full of of imagery and lessons from a lifetime of going back into this book over and over again.

00:25:25:04 – 00:25:43:42
Clint Loveall
But but that’s a pretty easy thing to remedy. I mean, that that doesn’t take a master’s degree, that that takes a commitment to spend 10 minutes a day. Yeah. In some part of the Bible. And as we do that, we increase our opportunities to understand who God is and know what God wants.

00:25:43:42 – 00:26:17:06
Michael Gewecke
It was one of the things that that leads me to want to share, Clint, is that any time that we read Scripture, I think a good goal for us is to trust the Scriptures even when we struggle with them. And, you know, there’s this tendency in some Christian traditions to come to the scriptures as if they were very fragile, like the idea that, you know, if there was to be about one difficult or incomprehensible thing in it or one thing that could be bore out in scientific proof that suddenly the whole of the scriptures would collapse.

00:26:17:06 – 00:26:52:24
Michael Gewecke
And I would just like to submit to you that I think we as Christians would all do well to have some real practical humility, to think that the Scriptures have not tumbled in 2000 years of people running into them. The Scriptures have not collapsed after that, literally for for hundreds and thousands of years, the world’s brightest minds studying them and then critiquing a linguistic point and trying to understand a detail that was not clear or obvious.

00:26:52:24 – 00:27:15:06
Michael Gewecke
And under all of that scrutiny, under all of the millions of pages printed and read throughout the history of humanity, the Scriptures still stand as a powerful witness. They are still a source of transformation in the midst of the lives of people. And since that is true, when you encounter the Scriptures, I hope that you will do so.

00:27:15:10 – 00:27:37:22
Michael Gewecke
Knowing that the God who has revealed through Scriptures in all of these years will continue to reveal to you that you don’t need a master’s degree to use that language. You don’t need to be a superior intellect, you don’t need to come to the scriptures with a a super piety or a kind of like a spiritual power. You don’t need that.

00:27:37:30 – 00:27:54:03
Michael Gewecke
What you need is the willingness to hear and you need to be able to counter that text with the knowledge and the confidence that they have something to teach. If we have the ears to hear. And if you come with that, God will do the rest and God has done the rest throughout all of time.

00:27:54:12 – 00:28:18:54
Clint Loveall
You know, the other part of that is because we’ve taken this book so seriously through the ages, because those people you mentioned who were some of in many cases, the best and brightest of their day, have spent their lifetimes trying to mine the depths of the Bible. We have a tremendous collection of resources. And so you’re not expected as a Christian to read the Bible and figure it out on your own.

00:28:18:59 – 00:28:42:46
Clint Loveall
It’s never been easier to have access to good information about the Scripture, and that is one of the blessings of our time. Now, that unfortunately means you have to be able to determine what’s helpful and what isn’t helpful. But there’s a lot of good stuff out there, and when you hit something, you don’t understand, you have tools available to you.

00:28:42:46 – 00:29:05:31
Clint Loveall
You don’t have to figure that on your own. You don’t have to go study Hebrew for five years so you can read one passage. Somebody else has done that. In fact, hundreds of people have done that, and some of them have done that exceedingly well and that they have given the gift to the rest of us to say, here’s what I found, here’s what I think is helpful to you.

00:29:05:31 – 00:29:30:47
Clint Loveall
And so, again, I don’t want to keep saying the same thing, Michael, but one need not be afraid of the Bible. If you hit something that seems rough, if you hit something that doesn’t make sense, it’s okay to take note of it. But you ought to let and don’t let it unnerve you, right? Because it’s a you’re not the first one to have those struggles.

00:29:30:52 – 00:29:54:47
Clint Loveall
And B, that ultimately isn’t the point of the scripture. The point of the scripture is, is there a word from God to me and it today, in this moment, what is it saying to us as we seek to be faithful and and ultimately, that’s the book. The book is a guide to what God would have us do and who God would have us be.

00:29:54:52 – 00:30:23:06
Clint Loveall
And it’s okay to open it and be turned off and not really hear much that given day, because another day is going to be rich and you’ll be blessed by a well, I would have never thought about that, that the pattern that has to be developed is to spend time with it and do so carefully. Do so with a listening heart that is willing to to be surprised by what we might find.

00:30:23:11 – 00:30:55:08
Michael Gewecke
So one really quick thing to say here, if you’ve made it this far in the video, Thank you. Thank you for not jumping down to the comments in the first 2 minutes and telling us, though, we don’t care about the Bible. I hope you’ve heard in the tone and tenor of this conversation how deeply we believe that we need the Bible to be a central and important voice in our life, that in fact, it is the Bible that our tradition tells us will be the witness to Jesus Christ.

00:30:55:08 – 00:31:20:11
Michael Gewecke
And so it is so important. And then that Clint leads me, I think, to the simple question If a person has made it this far in the video, we’re so glad that you have you know, if that person says, wow, I want this to be a part of my life, maybe I’ve had a book that I got at some kind of confirmation experience of my youth, or maybe a family Bible, But I’ll be honest, Clint, I’ve not read it, you know.

00:31:20:11 – 00:31:37:25
Michael Gewecke
What would you offer by way of first steps? There’s there’s lots of next steps beyond that. But but what would your counsel be? What’s a great first step to take for a person in the role of being putting the Bible at a more central place in their life? What’s the first thing they can do?

00:31:37:30 – 00:32:01:13
Clint Loveall
Well, I think there are two things that come to mind, Michael. The first is to get a Bible that you’re comfortable with. So find the Bible in your language. If there are questions about translation, again, there’s lots of information online. I think something like the Newton, you know, the new revised Standard or the Navy or the T and iv0 kind of a mainline.

00:32:01:13 – 00:32:24:03
Clint Loveall
If you go to a Christian store, they’re going to have Bibles. I think most of them. There’s some pluses and minuses to each kind of translation. I probably would tell you, don’t start with a living Bible or the message, though. I think those are both wonderful. I don’t think they’re great. Only Bibles. I think they’re great second Bibles, but not first Bibles.

00:32:24:03 – 00:32:47:36
Clint Loveall
And so find yourself a readable translation. Get some help from a pastor or a friend or the internet, or give us an email. Shoot us an email. The second thing I think, though, is is subtle and I think this is the one that most likely gets missed. Michael Find a community, find a church, find a Bible study, find a pastor, find a friend who you can talk about the Bible with.

00:32:47:36 – 00:33:15:00
Clint Loveall
The Bible is actually not meant to be read in isolation. We need the counsel of others because it’s very easy for when I read something to think that I’ve heard God’s Word and maybe I’ve missed it, particularly if I’m a new Bible reader or a fairly young Christian. I may not know that there’s other parts of the Bible that will challenge what I think I heard and actually convince me of something else.

00:33:15:05 – 00:33:47:08
Clint Loveall
So don’t don’t undertake that in isolation. You may read it by yourself. I don’t mean that, but make sure you have a community. Some somebody in the faith that you can relate to and trust who will have some of those conversations. Jump on an online Bible study, get a book, a commentary re a a low in not academic high in commentary, but a guide to reading and start with maybe something simple, starting with the gospel.

00:33:47:13 – 00:34:10:07
Clint Loveall
Start with a letter in the New Testament. I wouldn’t jump into Leviticus. I wouldn’t jump in. You know, some of those things are going to be less helpful. Stick with something that’s kind of devotional, but find somebody who can help guide that process, because without that, we’re more likely to get off track, I think, than on track in some cases.

00:34:10:11 – 00:34:34:21
Michael Gewecke
I agree completely. I would just add two things to that. And this is that sometimes folks struggle with the reading aspect of the Bible. And if that’s true, I think you should read this is giving you an out. But to say there are audio Bibles as well, if that looks like you going out for a run in the morning or you have a commute, that can be a wonderful time to engage with the words of Scripture.

00:34:34:21 – 00:34:54:18
Michael Gewecke
You can easily find an audio Bible on a smartphone or you could get CDs if that’s a thing that you still do there. There are lots of formats and the other thing I would add and you mention this, Clint, there’s just some of us sometimes need a little help breaking it down and maybe doing that on video is a helpful thing.

00:34:54:18 – 00:35:12:58
Michael Gewecke
So so if that’s you, I just want to show folks, we did a series called the 90 day New Testament, and this is a series you can find our website, our link at the description of this video where we go through the books of the New Testament and we talk about the different themes, the different things you want to pay attention to.

00:35:13:03 – 00:35:36:18
Michael Gewecke
Some people find it helpful, Clint, to set a goal to say, I’m going to read through all the New Testament, I’m going to do it 90 or 180 days or some pace that’s manageable for you. There’s resources that we’ve already laid out that would be a great partner for you if you wanted to do that. A link that in the description we also do a daily Bible study that you’re more than welcome to join as we go through different books.

00:35:36:26 – 00:36:02:07
Michael Gewecke
That’s a manageable chunk of time and a way to engage with the text. There are many. The point of this is simple whether you found that in our faith circle, whether you found that in another congregation that thanks be to God, the point is the Bible should be central of our in our Christian identity, because from it we discover the depths of the riches of our faith.

00:36:02:07 – 00:36:24:28
Michael Gewecke
And so, however, is going to help you in that first step conversation. I hope that this will not just be a philosophical good idea, but that this would be the kind of conversation that you would say, I’m going to do that. I’m going to get that, and I be Bible and I’m going to start reading or I’m going to go make that subscription and I’m going to start listening every week to that Bible or whatever it is.

00:36:24:28 – 00:36:35:24
Michael Gewecke
Start with that commitment and stick with it. And you will, I imagine, be shocked by what God is able to make of those small commitments.

00:36:35:29 – 00:37:01:59
Clint Loveall
You know, one word of caution, Michael. Every January 1st or so, people flock to the gym and they decide they’re going to run a marathon or lose £100 or whatever it is. And they have such a large goal that at some it becomes overwhelming. And so the thing that I would just temper for new Bible readers is don’t think you have to go crazy.

00:37:02:04 – 00:37:29:10
Clint Loveall
You don’t have to cover a chapter a day. You don’t have to read five. There will be days when a single verse in fact there. There may be a day when a single word gives you enough to think about for that entire day. And that’s. That’s point that there will be a time when you read a verse and you will hear God say something to you.

00:37:29:15 – 00:37:53:31
Clint Loveall
That’s when you’ve read enough. It’s not when you get to the end of this chapter or when you get to the end of that book, or when you get, you know, enough halfway through or when you finish everything. Now, don’t hear me wrong, I reading all of the Bible is great. Everyone should do it. But it’s okay to say I’ve I’ve heard God today.

00:37:53:33 – 00:38:16:54
Clint Loveall
I think I have a word. I’m going to chew on this. I’m going to talk to somebody about this and make sure that I that on the right track with it. I think I heard God speak to me and I want to explore that. And when that happens, that is the point that’s why we read the scripture and it won’t happen every day.

00:38:16:58 – 00:38:43:46
Clint Loveall
But but you can’t make it happen by reading ten chapters. Just open the scripture, listen as you read and when you’ve got the right thing, you’ll develop a sense of knowing I’ve got a word for today and God is working on me and it’s okay to be done that it’s it doesn’t have to be about the amount, it’s the quality.

00:38:43:46 – 00:38:54:38
Clint Loveall
It’s the moment that you learn something and that your faith is encouraged and that you’re better able to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. That that’s why we go to the book.

00:38:54:43 – 00:39:17:37
Michael Gewecke
And I think that’s a great summary to end on our client. It’s great to have you with us really grateful that you made this way through the video, and I hope that’s been inspiring and also challenging to all of us, myself included in this conversation, to always return to the Scriptures. May you find it central, may you find it something that brings life and meaning and joy as you sit under its teaching.

00:39:17:42 – 00:39:31:21
Michael Gewecke
And may that revealed to us supremely the grace and love of Jesus Christ. If you find it helpful like this video, subscribe for more like it and certainly subscribe if you’d like to stay connected with those daily Bible studies. Until next time, be blessed.

00:39:31:24 – 00:39:53:54
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast. We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have, lots of things you can listen to. We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing, and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.

00:39:54:09 – 00:40:13:01
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.

00:40:13:15 – 00:40:46:39
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you. If you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube.com slash PC Spirit Lake There you can comment and engage with us, or if you would prefer to do that without going to YouTube, you can actually just click the link in the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.

00:40:46:51 – 00:40:55:55
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.