IBS Rocked My Word Part 2

Mar 282008

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IBS Rocked My World
IBS Rocked My Word Part 2

So what specifically changed within me? Well it is difficult to describe but it was like a thick veil had been lifted from my eyes. I was now seeing the scriptures like I had never seen them before. I had “new eyes” for reading the Bible and it would never be the same. Sure I had read and studied the Bible for years but now it was FUN! Imagine that! And I couldn’t get enough of it. At points in that year, I was attending 5 Inductive Bible studies a week. It was like I had been starved all my Christian life and finally was being fed. Yet in reflection, I’m not sure that I knew I was starving because I only knew what I knew. It was a year of Bible saturation for sure.

What was so special about the Inductive Method? Well since learning the Inductive Method, my time in the Bible has been consistently transformational. Was it before? Somewhat. But not consistently. The Inductive Method gave me a systematic toolset to study the Bible and now I am confident in what I am doing.

Now I freely admit that this is not some great new discovery. It’s not like I discovered something ground breaking that no one has ever done or experienced before. But for me it was like being re-birthed.

For me, the process has been very much like Neo in the Matrix. Now I may lose some of you with this example if you are not a Matrix fan but hear me out. The character Morpheus gave Neo two choices: Take the blue pill and you go back to your life and because you only know what you know, you won’t have a clue that there is anything else out there. You get to go home and take a nap. End of story. Take the red pill though, and your life changes. You find out some of the things that you held to all your life are not true. You find out that the things you have been taught are not necessarily 100% correct and that things have been left out and worse, things have been made up to fit someone’s stereotype. Take the red pill and you wake up. You wake up to find out there is so much more that God wants for your life. That’s how it was for me. Like I finally woke up. Sorta like this video.

Now were there other things happening in my life that added to my experience with IBS? Sure God used a few things that year to get my attention. But the foundation to it all was great Bible studies and transforming experiences with the scriptures.

What about you? How has your time been with the Bible? Are you being transformed into the image of Christ? Or are you just filling up with knowledge? You too can experience a re-birthing with the Inductive Method. Give it a try.

If you would like to learn more about the Inductive Method, check out Thirstytree.org which is a non-profit project that I am involved in. There you will find the method explained and also podcasts of Bible studies that you can listen to and experience the Bible in a whole new way.

God bless you as you dig for the deepr things in his Word.

Previous in series

IBS Rocked My World

Bible, IBS 1 Response »

Mar 282008

Posts in this series...

IBS Rocked My World
IBS Rocked My Word Part 2

Inductive Bible Study Method. Ever heard of it? Before the year 2006, I hadn’t. I changed jobs that February and the first day at my new position I found out there was a Bible study held there on campus. The guy who was training me was actually the one who led the study. I was very interested and so I got him to invite me. That Thursday of my first week on the job, I attended my first Inductive Bible study. Actually it was my first Bible study ever. Anywhere.

Now I was raised in a Christian home and if you have read some of my other posts, you know it was a strict Baptist upbringing. I had been going to church 4 times a week for most of my life but I had never ever attended a formal Bible study in my life.

So on that Thursday I attended that first study and they were in Colossians. Green, blue, red, yellow, purple…all the colors of the rainbow were there. Pencils that is. Colored pencils. I was told to grab some pencils to mark up the “manuscript“. As I said, in my previous 30 years of existence, I had never been to a Bible study before much less one with people from different denominations. I wasn’t really sure I was comfortable with that idea but I went anyway. I really had no idea what to expect but I wanted to be there and was willing to take a chance that I wouldn’t like it. I mean, how bad could it really be? I had done other things that stretched my traditional Baptist thinking so why not?

That first Bible study session was on Colossians and though I don’t remember which chapter we studied, I remember walking away thinking that I liked it though I was not 100% comfortable with it yet

I remember sitting there in the small room that first Thursday looking around the room and, having more than a little arrogance, I was sure I knew more about the Bible than most. But at the same time as I sat there I was feeling unsure of myself and tried to just take it all in. There were guys from different denominations there and while that didn’t freak me out, it was strange for me. Can you study the Bible with people outside of your denomination? I had never done it. As I looked down at my manuscript, I couldn’t help but take a peak at others to see what they were doing. What exactly was this all about?

I went back the next week and then every week after that. I was hooked.

That day set off a chain of events in my life that I will never forget. The Inductive Method of studying the Bible has changed my life. I can’t say that I was changed that first Thursday. I can’t say that I changed that month. I do know that I liked it enough to introduce it to some other guys at my church that summer and more that fall. I didn’t really know what I was doing except that God had given me a red hot passion to study the scriptures and I wanted to experience studying with as many people as possible.

Next in series

Where’s Your Snowman?

Blurbs 1 Response »

Mar 242008

I have been trying to build a snowman for a couple of months now. Every time it snowed, the snow just wasn’t good for rolling. When it snowed the other day here in Michigan, I was hating it but then it got real sunny and made for perfect snowman-making snow! Here is me putting the arms on. And yes that is a pink scarf. My daughters touch.

Robots that walk (video)

Favorites, Videos No Responses »

Mar 192008

And you thought this was just science fiction. This is freaky real. Makes me think of Skynet…

Colossians 3 & Teaching the What without the Why

Bible, Bible Reading, Blurbs 1 Response »

Mar 172008

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to teach on Colossians chapter 3. I would normally prefer to take a much smaller passage and camp on it, but I elected do go through verse 17. Hopefully this post does some justice to the time we spent in this text. My foremost reason for going to this text is that it is a common passage that is taught in a way that leaves out the why. I have heard this taught too many times as a list of do’s and don’ts and the why to those things is left out. So that is one of my main thrusts-that we should never look at the Bible as a list of do’s and don’ts apart from the person of Jesus. Especially when the why is saturated in the text like it is in this chapter. I was thinking about how to get this point across and I was coming up with all kinds of clever ideas and well some of them just seemed too clever. So instead of doing something clever, we just went through the text and dug it out. Teaching the what without the why is and has done immeasurable damage to individual lives and to the church as a whole. I recently heard a podcast on this topic and it hit me to the core. So I think that Paul wanted to make sure we didn’t teach the what without the why and that is why he writes like he does. It has been our modern day era that takes incomplete passages or parts of verses and does crazy things from them. If the why was an issue that Paul was thinking about for the church at Colossae, then I think it is an issue that we should be concerned with today. So I am begging you, learn the why to the things in this chapter, and don’t just learn the what.

One more thing: I never like to do one verse things because it leads to crazy applications with the Bible. Instead, I would suggest that we look for chunks of scripture to look at as a whole. This allows us to get the main idea of what the writer, in this case Paul, is trying to get across. We don’t want to miss the individual nuggets but without the main thought of the chunk, the nuggets don’t have much weight or authority.

In the class I taught we went through the different chunks and I asked a lot of questions so that we did good observation. In place of that here in this post, take some time and read through Colossians chapter 3 verses 1-17. Read it again. Read it again and look for Jesus.

Now answer the following questions:

How does the chapter start out in verses 1-4?
How does the second chunk of text 5-11 end?
Sprinkled in the middle (13) of the next section of 12-17, who is put in focus?
Most translations say “peace of Christ” in verse 15.
How does this last chunk end?

So do you notice Jesus coming out time and time again? What if we took the following approach instead and only used verses 5-10, 12-14. What would we be doing to the text? What is left out? What are we left with? If we did that, we strip out Jesus and all the authority his name has.

Does this passage speak to non-Christians? NO! Look at the first 4 verses. Can I take this list and beat my unsaved friends up with it? Why not? Don’t they need to know that they are sinning and of their need to repent? I beg you, don’t do it. You will do more damage than good.

Here is where I get a little preachy. For me, without the why, my head puffs up and my heart shrivels (this idea comes from Matt Chandler while speaking at this year’s Resurgence Conference). When my heart shrivels I put the focus on me and not Jesus and I then leave out grace, love, and mercy. I mean, without the emphasis being on Jesus, I am putting things off and on for MY glory, not his. I am doing it in MY name not Jesus’ name. I am doing things to lift me up above others. A list of things to do or not to do has no weight or authority behind it if there is no why. Now we all know God wants us to be good moral people and to help others. But without Jesus, I can be a monk or a hermit somewhere. Without the heavy emphasis of Jesus, it all is very light and fluffy. Once we turn it all around and put the emphasis back on Christ as the text is written, suddenly the weighty nuggets of this chapter come out and stick with us. Suddenly this turns into something transformational instead of me forgetting it on the way out to my car, or worse, on my way to the bathroom when the lesson is over. Because in the end, if we are not listening and studying scripture for it to be transforming, we have the wrong idea of what God intended for his Holy Word. If we leave out the why when we teach and study the scriptures, we turn into cold, mechanical people. We can become very legalistic. I have seen that done time and time again and it is not helpful in any way. We can start worshipping the list of things instead of worshiping Jesus. Paul thought it was important for the early church. It is important for us too.

Always look for the why. Always look for Jesus. Always.

Woman sits on boyfriend’s toilet for 2 years

News of the Weird No Responses »

Mar 132008

Now this is totaly unbelievable…

Woman sits on boyfriend’s toilet for 2 years

Girlfriend was physically stuck to the seat — her skin had grown around it

NESS CITY, Kan. – Deputies said a woman in western Kansas sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years, and they’re investigating whether she was mistreated.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said a man called his office last month to report that something was wrong with his girlfriend.

Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Read the rest here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23595533/

Why I Switched (KJV->ESV)

Bible, IBS 5 Responses »

Mar 132008

Two years ago God worked on me really hard. That first year was a year to remember and one of the many things that happened is that I switched over to using the ESV. For almost 30 years I had been reading, studying, and memorizing the KJV. It was really the only thing I knew. I can remember thinking evil thoughts about people who read from the NIV. Thoughts like “they don’t have a real Bible” and “they are not as good as me because I have a better Bible” and “they sound like they are reading from a kids Bible”. I am disgusted and ashamed of those thoughts now. I pray I never vocalized them to anyone. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV Bible Moving on…

Now to many, using a different translation is not an issue and would be surprised that anyone cares. I am in that camp now but only recently.

So what led me to making the switch? As I previously said, God was kicking me with many things a while back and consistently getting deep into my Bible was foremost. As I was studying more and attending and leading Bible studies, the thought occurred to me that the KJV’s language was a little out of date. It sounds funny for me to even write that.

So why the ESV? Well I had never heard of it before until I heard John Piper preach from it. I had been recently introduced to him and to the world of podcasting. One day as I was listening to him, I got online at biblegateway.com and tried to figure out what version of the Bible he was using. It was then that I discovered the ESV. I then went over to esv.org and read the introduction for it. I liked what I read. I found out how it was different from other translations and then went on to read all about the translation philosophy and then compared it to other philosophies. I learned all about manuscripts and heard and read a lot of debate about which ones are supposedly good or bad. From there I read The Word of God in English which is a pretty scholarly read. I also found that the translation was specifically targeting KJV users as they pointed out the heritage of the ESV. I watched the videos and read the reviews.

Now mind you this happened over a period of a few months. I was trying to digest everything in my head as much of this I had never heard of nor been exposed to. So where did I turn to next? Well Google of course.

What did I find? Well reasons why Piper, Driscoll, and others us it and their reasons just made sense to me. I also found plenty of hate speech from the KJV-only crowd along with some honest critics and some people who just prefer another translation for various reasons.

So what was a legalistic, KJV only, fundamental, Bible believing, independent Baptist to do? Well I took the plunge and bought an ESV Scofield Study Bible. I loved it! A few months later I bought another one for my wife. She was already using an NIV study Bible so switching for her wasn’t as big a deal. Her background is in the Catholic Church so she doesn’t have all the baggage I do. I wanted us to be using the same words when we studied scripture so I thought the investment a worthy one. I do have to tell you that it was strange for me to put my old KJV Scofield Bible on the shelf. There was a part of me that still clung to it. But not for long.

And what exactly do I like about the ESV translation? Well I won’t go into great detail here as others that I have stated above do a much better job. Here is short list:

Word for word translation
Plain English
I can spend my time wrestling with the meaning, not the words.
Keeps words that have been the foundation of Christian beliefs like propitiation, justification, and sanctification.
Published by Crossway (they have their faults but overall seem like a great company)

Anyway, I have not looked back. I haven’t studied out of the KJV in forever. I even have a hard time listening to people read out of it and can now get lost in it if I’m not paying close attention. It didn’t take long to lose the ability to easily understand the King’s English. I have often thought about people who are not churched and if they think the same thing. That thought has driven me even farther from the KJV. I do owe many years to the KJV and through it I learned so many things. My Christian foundation was built on it. I do not want to discount that fact and so let me be clear that the KJV is God’s Holy Word and is to be respected as such. It is simply not the version that I or my family will use to read, study or memorize from. We will be using the ESV.

So what’s the point of this post? Well something that it’s not is to get involved in some crazy debate about which version is better than another or if one version is inspired and others are not. It is simply to chronicle one man’s journey and with a hope that it might help someone else. In the end, I really don’t care which version you read as the message of Jesus is in almost all of them and that is what is important. Regardless of which version you use, read, study and apply the scriptures so as to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Oh, and do it using IBS.

Grooming the Hairy Beast

Blurbs No Responses »

Mar 102008

There is a chapter in this book called “Grooming the hairy Beast”. It is very fitting. Cyrus our 8 year old Bouvier was well over due for his grooming and bath appointment. I usually try to give him a bath when it is warmer out so we can do it outside but it just couldn’t wait any longer. I spent a long time cleaning him up on Saturday and then some more today before I washed him up. The winter months have not been nice to his coat let me tell you.

So on to the bath. Unfortuantly for me, our only bathtub is on the second floor. And we have hardwood stairs. You guessed it, he doesn’t climb the stairs. No amount of coaxing would get him to go up by himself. He has gone up by himself but only a few times and only when he was terrified by a thunderstorm. Anyway, have you ever tried to carry a 100+lb dog up a flight of stairs?!?!?!??! I about pulled something. But I made it. It’s not his favorite thing (being carried) but he tolerates me doing it. I don’t think he would let anyone else do it though.

So I got him washed and he washed me. Don’t understand? Well then you have never washed a dog, let alone a Bouvier. Then I brushed him out with the help of a blow dryer. Thankfully I got him to walk down the stairs by himself. It is the funniest thing. He wimpers and whines and SLOWLY walks down the stairs, one step at a time. I should have gotten some video.

Sound like work? Yep. Don’t buy Bouvier unless you know what you are getting into.

I got a new Bible….

Bible No Responses »

Mar 092008

I have been looking forward to the new ESV Personal Size Reference Bibles for a couple of months now. I was looking forward to them for several reasons but my fear was that this size would be too small. I had been carrying my Scofield ESV to church and events but it is just so big and bulky. Try carrying a diaper bag, a two year old, Sunday school papers from your 5 and 3 year old kids and then a big ‘ole black Bible! It is just painful.

So anyway, when I saw these new Reference Bibles on the ESV Bible page, I got excited! They have a single column, paragraph format which I think God will one day tell us is the inspired format. ) The every verse on a separate line format invites people to do crazy things with verses..but, that is for another post. This is a reference Bible so I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to see the hundreds of reference indicators but after looking at the sample format, I fell in love with it. Here are the specs straight from gncpb.org:

Personal Size Reference Bibles

7.4-point type

5,900-entry concordance

Words of Christ in black

Size: 5″ x 7.25″

Over 80,000 cross-references on the inside margin

Single-column, paragraph format

Introductions to each book

Not thumb-indexed

This black TruTone is the one I got though I coudn’t wait to get it from Amazon so I stopped at Baker Books. I have heard that the all leather one is sewn-bound but I didn’t really care for the traditional leather look it has. The TruTone is extermely soft feeling with just a hint of rubberiness to it. For me, it is the perfect match between features and size. While the text is small, it works for me. It does not have a lot of space for note taking but I’m not one to write things in my Bible these days anyway. This is a Bible that I can take anywhere and not feel like I have a brick in my hand. Together with the aforementioned preferred page layout, it is a real winner for me!

Ninja Warrior (G4 TV)

TV No Responses »

Mar 082008

So Brayden loves this show and while I am not a fan of most of the things on G4, Ninja Warrior is pretty safe even for a 5 year old. It is hilarious to see him watch it and laugh at all the people failing to make the course.

Check it out: