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Is God's Word Living and Active?

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Romans 8.1This is going to be a very personal and transparent post.

Today I had such a meaningful time with God that I wanted to share it with you to encourage you.

Every once in a while I like to read through large chunks of Scripture in one sitting. This week I had two separate conversations about that practice with friends. In addition to that already being on my mind, this morning I had such a hunger for the Word of God that I sat down and began reading.

I’m currently reading in the gospels but I feel God led me to Romans to read today. I read the first eight chapters in one sitting. I can’t describe to you the joy and amazement I felt as I spent that time worshiping God. I wasn’t just meditating or reading, I was worshiping. His Word came alive in a fresh way.

WHY DID GOD’S WORD COME ALIVE?

Because it was the Word of God.
Obviously, God Himself is the One who makes His Word come alive. The words aren’t the objects of our worship but they are inspired words because they cause me to worship the living God. Not only do the words persuade me to worship but God’s Spirit opens my heart and mind to understand what God is saying to me. Today, my spirit was renewed, my mind was informed, and my heart was softened simply because it was the Word of God and I was reading it.

I love reading books and sometimes an author makes a point that grips my heart or encourages me to live out my faith in a fresh way. Those are good books, but nothing compels me to worship God like the Bible.

Because I was alone with God.
As if God’s Word alone wasn’t enough, there were a few other things that really made my personal time of worship special. Solitude is something we often miss. I can have a great time of worship while reading the Bible at a coffee shop, but what if His Word causes me to jump for joy, weep, or sing? I’m just not that public with my emotions so even if I am moved by the Spirit I might just sit there in silence.

Today there were too places that I broke down and wept/gave thanks to God. After 64 verses of God’s wrath being “revealed from heaven against all godlessness and and unrighteousness” I came to “But now…” How inspiring and captivating are those words:

But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed – attested by the Law and the Prophets – that is, God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:21-24)

Reading Romans 5:1-8 brought the same kind of joyful and tearful response from my spirit:

For while we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person – though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us! Romans 5:6-8)

I’ve heard these sections of Scripture quoted aloud in front of an audience and people shouted and applauded to hear God’s Word. Listening and meditating on God’s Word prompts a response. When we are in seclusion we can be free to respond with joy, laughter, tears, sorrow, or spontaneous eruptions of gratitude. It’s a bit harder to do that at Starbuck’s or even at home if your not alone in a closed door meeting with God.

Because I was reading aloud.
I heard God speak today. God’s Words came to my ears and I heard them. We can’t always read aloud but when we do it adds something. The benefit of reading aloud is that more of your senses are activated to really understand that God is speaking to you. I wasn’t just thinking in my head, I was hearing God speak. He used my voice and His words to speak Truth to my heart.

Again, not something you can really do at Starbuck’s.

Because I matched the tone of my voice to the mood of the passage.
I would encourage you, when you read God’s Word aloud, try to get a feel for the mood of the passage. When I was reading, “This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions…” or “There is no one righteous, not even one” I read it with a heavy heart. Those 64 verses of God’s wrath shouldn’t be read with a big smile on the face.

On the other hand, how would you read this: “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I read that section more rapidly with excitement, not to be dramatic as if it were a performance, but because that’s how I felt.

Reading the Bible aloud while matching my tone to the mood helped me to really hear God’s intended message to my heart. I can really grasp the passion or the emotion of a verse in its context.

For example, we all know that Romans 3:23 is bad news when quoted by itself: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But when you realize that this verse is in the context of God revealing His righteousness to those who believe, the mood has changed. Romans 3:23 becomes a part of the good news because we realize that God knows our condition (we are sinful) and that He has taken steps to change that (those who are sinners and who fall short of God’s glory “are justified freely by His grace…”)

This is a cause for celebration! When you read aloud the context, and match your tone to the mood, insights like that spring out of the text and into your heart. God’s Word is alive if we let Him speak to us.

Because of my choice in translation.
Okay, so this one is more preferential than the others. Some enjoy the beauty of the old King James language and that causes the Word to come alive. Others really like the readability of the NIV or the NLT. Still others are appreciative of the accuracy of the NASB or the ESV.

Since I’m describing my own personal experience, I can share that the Holman Christian Standard Bible removes a lot of barriers that might keep my devotions from being more inspirational. I’m not tripping over the grammar or stumbling over “thees” and “thous” but at the same time, the HCSB is also very accurate and less theologically motivated than other translations.

So, all of that to say, find a good translation that you are comfortable with and allow God to speak to you. I’ve found the HCSB to be a reliable choice but my point here is simply that you should find a translation for yourself that allows you to hear the Word of God.

How many chapters are there in the Bible?
What really struck me today after I was finished reading and after sitting there quietly for a few moments was that I had only read eight chapters. If I read that many chapters each day it would take me 5 months to read the entire Bible. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible and I was overwhelmed after only reading 8! There are 1,181 MORE chapters just waiting for me to turn to them and feast on them. And I had read those chapters before and had been inspired and encouraged by them. The feast is always in front of us. I have the rest of my life in front of me to either squander by ignoring God’s Word, or to spend wisely by listening to and meditating on the very thoughts and will of God.

Is God’s Word really living and active? I can’t say that it always feels that way, but on days like today I’m reminded of the power of God and the truth of His Word.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they will be filled. (Mt 5:6)

What are the practices you have when spending time alone with God that makes those moments rich and inspiring?

ChurchETHOS Link Love

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Today I thought I would check through the stats of ChurchETHOS to determine what is of most interest to my readers and who is sending me the most visitors. Listing my top 10 posts for the past month will not only give a good indication of what has been interesting to you, but it will also give a good indication of what this blog is about. Hopefully, listing my top referrers will also give my reader a sense of other people who like my content and I hope you will visit their pages and subscribe to their feeds.

In fact, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my feed now so you don’t miss any of the action!

Top 10 Posts from the past month

1. One God, Two Gods, Three Gods, No God is a post I wrote to show the dangers of believing that all religions are equally true and valid. In fact, all religions cannot be true because they make competing and contradictory truth claims. There cannot be one God while at the same time there are two or more gods, while at the same time there are no gods.

2. My Top Concerns for the Local Church is my most recent post and is probably the best representation this past month of what ChurchETHOS is all about. In this post I explore the most difficult and pervasive problems of the church.

3. Why I Chose the HCSB Over the ESV is both an apologetic for the use of the Holman Christian Standard version of the Bible but it also expresses my frustration with the obvious bias towards the ESV for the following main reasons: 1. The ESV has a theological slant towards the Reformed tradition and 2. Paul and Apollos (I mean Piper and Driscoll) use the ESV.

4. HCSB vs. ESV Update reflects the new data that puts the HCSB as the second most popular version of the Bible up from 6th most popular when I wrote “Why I Chose the HCSB Over the ESV”. In fact, the rise in sales is due to it’s readability (like the NIV), it’s accuracy (like the NASB and ESV), and from the attention it has received from blogs and viral marketing from HCSB users who recognize it’s readability and accuracy.

5. The Trinity Lives in a Shack? This is my reaction to the fictional book by William Paul Young called  “The Shack”. This book explores the Trinity from an unorthodox and harmful perspective. I felt like this was worthy to talk about on my blog because it reveals the habit of some Christians to derive their theology from fiction (or even nonfiction) rather than from the Bible.

6. Did Jesus Claim to be God? This is a theological and exegetical post based primarily on John’s view of the deity of Christ. The implications? Since Jesus claimed to be God, He can’t be respected as merely a great prophet or teacher. He either is the Son of God, or He is a liar and everything He has said must be distrusted. (Or he’s a lunatic but that doesn’t really fit with everything else He did does it?)

7. Tithing Ethos: The Habit of Giving in the Church is a post exploring the theological truths of stewardship. Tithing today is more of a minimum standard and we need to increase our understanding of what God requires of ALL of the resources, time, money, etc. that He has entrusted to us.

8. About – Well, I’m happy that some of you want to know about the author of ChurchETHOS. Please feel free to comment and introduce yourselves. I really want this blog to be more of a dialogue that is not only helpful to me in sounding out my own thoughts on the church, God, culture, etc. but also helpful to you and is a place where you can explore these topics as well.

9. The Case for Community is a theology of fellowship. This post explores from Biblical perspective how Christians are meant to live together. I would say this and “My Top Concerns for the Local Church” above are best representative of what ChurchETHOS is about.

10. What is ChurchETHOS? – Okay, maybe this post is MOST representative of what my blog is about simply because that’s the purpose of the post.

** Bonus Post from the Archives – My Top Ten Christian Books isn’t in the top ten for the past month but it is historically a pretty popular post that you might be interested in if you enjoy this blog.

Top Referrers to ChurchETHOS

I want to give some link love to those people who have sent visitors my way. As I mentioned above, I think this will also give you a sense of the people who enjoy ChurchETHOS. Thanks for sending people my way!

1. Tim Challies from challies.com

2. Matt Privett from themattrix.com

3. Tim Fenton from theefaulted.blogspot.com

4. Joseph McBee from josephmcbee.wordpress.com

5. Bobby Grow from theologyofbobby.wordpress.com

** Honorable Mention – Breezy Neon from breezyneon.wordpress.com

Note: These wonderful people are being mentioned here because they have either linked to me on their sidebar or in a conversation from one of their posts. If I do a recap post like this in the future I would love to share with you some of the limelight. Simply post to my blog or to a specific post and I will also do my best to send some visitors your way.

HCSB vs. ESV Update

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HCSB Study Bible[Update #2 - 4.28.09] There’s a rumor floating around that the 2nd edition of the Holman Christian Standard Bible will be coming out in September of this year. However, I got an email from Jim Baird, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, informing me that it won’t be coming out until 2010.

[Update #1 3.31.09] I recently wrote a post about why I love the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. Will at Anwoth tipped me off to the updated data that the HCSB has now surpassed the English Standard Version on the Christian Bookseller’s Association Best Seller List. You can find their bestseller lists here.

Last month when I wrote my previous post about the HCSB and the ESV, the NIV was #1, the ESV was #5, and the HCSB was #6. Now, the NIV is #1, the HCSB is #2, and the ESV takes sixth place. I predict that we will see the HCSB as the #1 Bible translation of choice within the next year.

Will does a great job of attributing the success of the HCSB to 3 factors:

1. It is readable and appeals to all English speaking Christians.

2. But it is very accurate, not willing to succumb to tradition or doctrinal biases in the translational choices. This appeals to the scholars.

3. Finally, though the marketing from the publisher hasn’t been particularly effective, the viral marketing has been very effective.

I think the ESV appeals to a lot of extremely reformed individuals and has been talked about by their champions (Piper, Driscoll, etc.) But, the HCSB is far superior as a translation because it seems to supercede the calvinism vs. arminianism debate. All translations have a slight bias but the HCSB may be the most unbiased translation ever to be produced in the history of Bible translations. So when I say that I really like it as a translation, I don’t think that’s a biased opinion. :)

You can buy the new Holman Christian Standard Bible here.

Why I Chose the HCSB over the ESV

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Be sure to read this 3/31/09 update!d231828fd7a04b0a79a15110l

I think I’m tired of hearing about the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible. Let me be clear, I’m grateful we English speakers have so many versions of the Bible to choose from, but when a version is elevated to cult like status something’s wrong. I skim through a lot of blogs and people are always writing posts saying “Mark Driscoll said ‘x’” and “John Piper said ‘y’”. Since they are ESV users, all the Christian bloggers seem to jump at the chance to be like their hero.

The ESV-Only Crowd

I like Mark Driscoll and I like John Piper and I’m grateful for the ESV. However, I don’t think it’s the best English version of the Bible out there today and the only reason it is outselling the others is because of its cult-like following. I’m afraid that in 100 years when it’s time to move on to a fresher translation people are going to be “ESV-only” fanatics. People will be saying, “Don’t you know that when Moses received the Ten Commandments, they were written in ESV English?”

To be honest, the ESV is a “formal equivalence” or word-for-word translation that is too rigid and literal. I don’t see how ESV lovers see a difference in the ESV and the NASB (again, I like the NASB as much as I like the ESV – I just think they are too literal and hard to read). The only thing I’ve heard that is different about the ESV is that it seems to use less words to say the same thing as the NASB, so it is a simpler translation by comparison and therefore seems easier to understand.

That’s What I Thought!

On the opposite end you have the NIV. The NIV is a “dynamic equivalence” or thought-for-thought translation. The NIV is very readable but it looses a lot of the precision of a word-for-word translation. They both have their problems. One is too literal and rigid for an idiomatic language such as Greek. The other is too loose with its interpretations of the thought of the original author. Sometimes the NIV makes a decision about what the author intended that other scholars disagree with. But when you commit to a thought-for-thought you have to claim to know the exact thought the author intended.

Optimizing the Translation

Enter the only “optimal equivalence” translation – the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). Now, before I sound like other bloggers who think the ESV was handed straight to them while they were hiking up Mount Sinai one day, let me say that the HCSB also has its theological slants just like all translations. I’ve done lots of comparisons on a verse-by-verse basis between the Greek text, the HCSB, the NIV, and the ESV (especially in the New Testament) and I can tell you that there are some translations that will occasionally translate a verse better (in my opinion) than the HCSB. But time and time again I think the HCSB puts the verbage in a way that is both more precise than the ESV and more readable than the NIV.

Basically, “optimal equivalence” is a marriage between formal and dynamic equivalence translation. It’s the best of the ESV AND the NIV styles. The HCSB approaches translation with a word-for-word mentality, but when that just doesn’t quite get the essence of the meaning the translators used the phrase-for-phrase method. If there is something idiomatic in the text, the HCSB translators have the freedom to deviate from a literal interpretation and capture the sense of the author’s intent.

HCSB + ESL = A OK

The HCSB is the best English translation for both the understanding of the author’s original meaning and for modern English speakers. It is a bridge between the ancient world and the modern world. It is the translation of choice when I give a Bible to an international student who might be learning English.

Let me conclude by saying, I’m not in love with a translation. However, I felt it wise to push back against the cult-like following of the ESV and say that there are other options for people who don’t do everything Driscoll and Piper tell them to do. Our translations will always have a minor problem here or there and we should always strive for the best but let’s not get involved in translation wars. Whatever you’ve chosen as your translation (remember, The Message is not a translation) spend time in it, hide it in your heart, let it draw you closer to God. For those of you who are ESV users I’m grateful that you’ve found it helpful and understandable.

Note: Here is a great information source that includes video and history of the HCSB translation.

Update: The Christian Booksellers Association lists the HCSB as the 6th most popular Bible as of March 2009. The ESV is #5 and the NIV is #1.

You can buy the new Holman Christian Standard Bible here.