By Jonathan David Faulkner
Before I arrived at college I had a problem, I was a legalist, and if you’ve read this past God’s Heart For Those then you read I had some very Liberal views such as hatred of Religion and hatred of being called religious. These things formed a barrier if you will in my relationship with God because if you don’t believe in religion you read the bible as a list of rules and therefore you either don’t read the bible or don’t read it for all its worth.
During that time I also included C.S Lewis and other Christian Authors into my quiet time so the challenge became how fast could I read through Scripture to get to the extra biblical test. This of course was right after I had left the church that abused and eventually ran me out, the church that made me a legalist. Sure Lewis taught me a lot about grace, about the idea of grace, but my mind found a way to twist it to its legalistic will. It wasn’t till that night of Illumination that God actually started being able to work that grace into my life, I didn’t allow it, only certain people deserved it and it wasn’t anyone I knew. This attitude created a barrier in my spiritual walk, a wall that only God was going to be able to tear down, a wall that infected everything, especially my study of the gospel.
But then that night happened and I started to actually think about these ideals that I had clung to, created an identity out of and made my own for so long. As I sat there, revealed for what I was by a friend who later admitted that the only reason she stopped me was because she was stressed and I sounded really stupid, thoughts started to move. God had used this stressed out friend to break the walls of my attitudes toward his word, to show love, though tough, to crack the shell I used as a protective cover. Slowly I started to read Scripture, I fell in at a church that preached the gospel in a way that I could think about and understand, God started to show up in my bible studies, slowly I began to apply scripture. Hermenuetics became important and Exegesis (pulling the original meaning from the text) took priority, yes the Gospel was changing my life.
How Scripture Changed My Life
I said the change was gradual, and at first it really was, it took me about a year to really work through the pain and hurt that the abuse had caused and to get over my legalist tendencies. Then over the summer I had another moment of illumination. I had really been struggling with the community I was living in and so, like someone good at discernment, my advisor told me take myself out of the equation. To literally be silent the entire week and to study scripture and observe the community without me imputing something into everything conversation, dear friends it was the hardest week of my life. However during that time we walked a Labyrinth and I really got to listen to God and hear His voice, in the stillness of that week I quieted my soul and really heard God.
Psalms 131 says “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
(Psalm 131:1-2 ESV)
Before that week of quiet I was just the opposite of this psalm, my eyes were lifted up, my soul was far from calm and quiet and I had a hard time waiting on the Lord (psalm 130). Now I will say this scripture is one that I came across later in my time in Denver after my good friend JKP pointed it out to me, but it applied none the less.
So I began to read the Epistles, really read the epistles and I began to realize there was a lot I missed. Paul exhorts us to walk by faith and live rightly, Peter encourages us to be holy while John spurs on to love and good works, all the epistles do these and so much more. Then I began to think, how could these people have known what to write if they didn’t listen! So I bagn to really listen to God’s words, to quiet my soul and allow God to speak through scripture, I finally stopped inserting my own meanings and interpretations and really listened. Suddenly the wall was gone, God was speaking loud and clear.
The Problem with Going Deep.
So here’s the problem, we live in a culture that preaches a skin deep Christianity. Billy Graham once said “Christianity is twenty miles wide and an inch deep.” There isn’t the depth or focus on spiritual formation that there was in the time of the great Evangelists, guys who would argue for the gospel and by the time they were done you were converted. Culture has taught us that it is better to stand here with our toes in the water, to hold to an initial experience rather than dive in and drink in God’s word and love. We’ve been given a Jesus that looks so different from the Jesus we find in the bible that I don’t think He would know who He was if He came back today, we certainly wouldn’t recognize Him. You might say “that’s harsh” but next time you hear a sermon of Jesus listen to how He is portrayed.
When we really begin to study Scripture though we find that Hebrews 4:12 is correct, it says “ For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (ESV) Going deep starts to shake our foundations and in a world that preaches comfort, nobody likes to have their foundations shook. Like me, nobody wants to think through these things, they let others do it for them and that can be very dangerous. We forget that the experience of God goes beyond the initial change and deep into the study of Scripture where he draws us close and does the work or sanctification.
A Whole New World
So what does Scripture open to us when we approach it with quiet spirits and different attitudes? It opens a whole new world of understanding in theology, community and life. The bible taken as a whole is very dangerous, even certain areas of the bible when broken down and approached with humility and seeking can impact us.
For example: I recently started doing a weekly bible study with my friend and brother David here at the school, the book was Romans. We just reached chapter five which is where Paul switches from talking about Righteousness by Faith (1:17-4:25) to Hope as a result of Righteousness by Faith.(5:1-8:39). After reading and gaining a limited understanding of what God had done so that we might be saved I commented to my older sister “After reading this far into Romans I don’t see how I was ever a legalist.”
Because of this time, as well as my quiet time the Lord has opened up Scripture to me in a way I never thought possible. I praise God daily for its involvement in my daily life. Like my teacher and friend Pastor Joel Wood said one day “You need to be in it everyday, it’s like Manna, you could only go out and get it for one day and what was left spoiled.”
The Point:
It’s time to get back to Scripture, enough skin deep, twenty mile wide Christianity, let’s get back to the Bible on a regular basis. Let’s study it daily, both by ourselves in our quiet time and with friends and really start to discover scripture and what God is saying to us. We may find that we are all wrong, that God’s word isn’t what we thought it was. We need to let it build relationship between us and God and one another.
We need to do this, so future generations can have scripture and know how to rightly divide it.
Related Posts from 10:31 Life Ministries
Hawthorne VS Christianity by Rev. David Faulkner
Devoured, Withered, Choked and...Alive? by Angel Edwards
That One A.M Feeling by Amy Faulkner
Also Available from Jonathan Faulkner
The Bible
Why I Used to Hate Religion but Still Love Jesus
A Disquieting Invitation
Email 10:31 Life ministries at hi1031.ministries@yahoo.com
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