Tag: read the Bible

The Bible Reminds Us of Our Heritage

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date December 18, 2016

Reading the Bible Helps Inform Us of Who We Are

I love reading the Bible. While the entire Bible is useful to teach us about God and inform our faith journey (2 Timothy 3:16), I particularly enjoy the stories about the people, our spiritual ancestors.

I like reading about Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Job, Joseph and his brothers, Moses, Joshua, those crazy judges and faithful prophets, Ruth and Boaz, David, Solomon, Hosea, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah in the Old Testament.

The New Testament tells about Jesus, the star of the Bible. I also like my namesake, Peter, along with Luke (especially Luke), Paul, Timothy, John, and Mary.

I enjoy lessor known characters, too—those obscure people who only show up in a verse or two, like Rhoda, Lydia, John Mark, Philemon, Onesimus, Jabez, and so on.

And let’s not forget about the angels. They’re in the Bible, too. All of these characters point us to Father God and reveal who he is.

Reading about these folks fills me with awe over their faith and dismay over their failures.

I shake my head in bewilderment over their bone-headed mistakes and fist pump enthusiasm over their triumphs. I work to avoid their errors and strive to emulate their successes.

These people give me a spiritual heritage, my anchor. Collectively they have formed me into who I am today as a person and as a follower of Jesus.

These biblical ancestors have become my ancestors, perhaps even more so than those in my biological family tree.

Spiritually they are my inheritance. I don’t have an affinity with a certain branch of Jesus’s church, connect with a denomination, or adhere to a particular theological bent.

My affinity resides in these amazing, flawed folks of the Bible, their faith, and the God they worship and serve.

As such, the Bible reminds me of my heritage, of who I am.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

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Tags biblical Christianity, read the Bible

Bible Insights

Choose With Care Whose Advice You Heed

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date November 29, 2016

King Rehoboam Made the Costly Mistake of Listening to His Friend’s Advice

Rehoboam succeeds his father, Solomon, as king. He inherits a sweet situation of a nation experiencing peace, enjoying power, and basking in wealth. It is his merely to maintain.

His detractor, Jeroboam, goes before him and asks for a reprieve for the people from the past burden of work and taxes. Rehoboam wisely says, check back with me in three days.

Then he asks his advisors, the same elders who served his father, what to do.

They tell him to back off a bit, be nice, and earn the people’s loyalty.

But Rehoboam didn’t like that recommendation, so he goes to his friends instead. They give him the opposite advice. He follows it, and most of the nation rebels against him to follow Jeroboam.

Rehoboam ends up with only one tribe willing to follow him, Judah. He listens to the wrong advice and loses big time.

This reminds me of kids. It’s common for small children to ask one parent a question, but not liking the answer, they check with the other parent for a more favorable response.

When they’re caught the results are never good. We do this as adults too.

Have you ever read a verse in the Bible that makes you cringe? I have. But instead of looking for ways to follow it, I look for a different verse that will let me draw a more favorable conclusion. I hold onto the second one and dismiss the first.

I shouldn’t need to wonder what God thinks about that, because as a parent I already know.

God gives us the Bible for a reason. We need to follow it. All of it.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is 2 Chronicles 10-12, and today’s post is on 2 Chronicles 10:3-15.]

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Tags obey God, read the Bible

Christian Living

How to Hear From God

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date June 26, 2016

Supernatural Conversations With the Divine Can Happen If We’re Ready to Listen

For much of my life I believed what well-meaning people taught me. They said I could talk to God through prayer, and he would talk to me through the Bible, but that I couldn’t directly hear from God.

Though both methods provided one-way communication, when paired they effected dialogue—sort of.

They were right but they didn’t mention actual supernatural communication, the kind that happens in the Bible.

While I believed this degree of interaction with the Almighty is possible and still happens today, I assumed it only materialized with select people and occurred in limited instances.

How I Learned to Hear from God

A friend who talks with God daily asked if I, too, wanted to hear directly from God on a regular basis.

I think it was a rhetorical question, but I said “yes” just to be sure. This is the advice he gave me to get started:

Block out an hour of time with no interruptions.
Ask God to speak to you and be ready to listen.
Jot a question on a piece a paper, and then verbally ask God that question.
Write down everything that comes to mind.

After thirty minutes I had three pages of notes and clear direction to deal with my question, but I wasn’t sure if those were God’s words or my thoughts.

I tried again a week later. This time I suspected some of what I wrote came directly from God. After more practice I was able to distinguish my thoughts from God’s words, which he places in my mind.

Though I occasionally hear a few words aloud, mostly God plants his words in my mind.

Over time we began having conversations. We’ve been doing this for the past several years. When I ask a question or share a thought, I generally hear from him right away—assuming I’m really ready to listen.

You Can Hear From God Too

This is my experience, while others who talk to God have other experiences, but the point is having regular, genuine communication with God. It is possible to hear from God, and it does happen today—even with ordinary followers of Jesus, like me.

Yes, God does speak to me through the Bible, but that’s not the only way.

Paul wrote to the Ephesian church that “the sword of the Spirit is the word of God,” Ephesians 6:17.

Christians who have a limited view of Holy Spirit power in our world today think Paul means the written Word of God—even though the New Testament didn’t exist when Paul wrote those words.

I think a better understanding is that the sword of the Spirit is the spoken word of God, courtesy of his Holy Spirit.

If you want to hear from God, just ask—and then listen, really listen.

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Tags Holy Spirit, pray, prayer, read the Bible, supernatural, Sword of the Spirit

Christian Living

The Bible Provides a Greater Authority for Faith and Spirituality

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date June 19, 2016

It’s critical to build our spiritual house on a strong foundation if it is to last

We live in a day where people make up their own religion. It seems silly to state our present spiritual climate in those terms, but that’s what people do, even those who say they are Christians.

For some this means looking at all religions using a personal pro and con analysis. They embrace the parts they like, adapt a few others, and reject the rest.

Their religious practice emerges as a smattering of Christian thought, Jewish practice, Hindu ideals, Muslim devotion, and Buddhist discipline. Their resulting practice may be self-satisfying, but its basis is simultaneously built on everything and nothing.

Others don’t directly consider world religions; they just do what feels right. They make a personal inventory of good behaviors and bad behaviors, with everyone’s list being different.

From this emerges a loose set of spiritual practices that makes them feel good and never confronts them.

Often they end up doing peculiar things in the name of their religion, which in reality is an excuse to behave however they want.

Next is the group that reads religious literature, including the Bible, with a highlighter in one hand and scissors in the other.

The result is a cut and paste religion, a spiritual collage of feel-good sentiment that merely reinforces their preconceived notions of whatever they want.

While each of these approaches is affirmed in today’s attitude of mystical permissiveness, they are based on nothing solid, nothing lasting, nothing of substance.

For truly meaningful spiritual significance that transcends ourselves, we must seek a reliable source that surpasses our own thoughts, preferences, and preconceived ideals. We need a greater authority.

For me that greater authority rests in the Bible, which reflects the Godhead who inspired it. I read and study the Bible, not to articulate a systematic theology but to pursue the God behind its words.

To me the Bible isn’t a rulebook or even a manual. It’s a narrative resource that points me to God. I will daily strive to understand the Bible more fully, while knowing I will never achieve this lifelong goal.

The Bible is the basis for my faith, a greater authority that transcends my limited intellect and keeps me from making up my own religion and deluding myself in the process.

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Tags Bible, biblical Christianity, read the Bible, spiritual growth

Bible Insights

The Bible Uses a Third Person Omniscient Point of View

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date May 29, 2016

Knowing the Writing Style of the Bible Will Help Us Avoid Confusion When We Read It

Since my days as a teenager, I’ve spent time most every day to read and study the Bible. I’m also a writer who writes every day. I like to share what I’ve learned about both subjects. Here goes:

I don’t want to trigger unwelcome flashbacks to junior high and high school, but here’s a brief reminder about point of view in writing: When we tell stories of what we did, we use first person (as in “I drove…”).

When we tell stories about others, we use third person (as in “she drove…”).

And there are two variations of third person perspective

limited (restricted to what only one character can see or know) and
omniscient (knowing everything, like God).

In days of old, writers used third-person omniscient. Nowadays, third-person limited is all the rage, with the industry turning up its snobbish nose at third person omniscient writing.

The books I read in third person are always third person limited. In this I’m restricted to one person’s perspective per scene, just like a movie camera.

Reading, “he thought the idea was silly, but she was thinking the opposite,” is jarring because we hop from one person’s head to another in the same sentence. This is verboten in today’s writing style, third person limited.

Yet the Bible does this all the time.

For example, how was Jonah aware that the seas calmed down after the sailors tossed him into the water (Jonah 1:15)? Or when Philip left the Ethiopian eunuch, how did he know the eunuch went on his way (Acts 8:39)?

With today’s writing style, they can’t. We see things from Jonah and Philip‘s point of view and, according to the rules of third person limited writing, we can’t be privy to what happens when they aren’t present.

Yet most of the Bible uses the third person omniscient point of view, not third person limited. Therefore, consistent with this writing style, we can know these things.

Given that God is omniscient and inspired the words of the Bible, it’s completely logical that the Bible would align with his omniscient point of view.

It took me way too long to figure this out.

Over the years I’ve heard people criticize the Bible’s accuracy because of these passages about Jonah and Philip, as well as scores of others. They assumed the Bible should obey the rules of today’s in vogue writing style of third person limited.

Yet third person omniscient is the style of older literature, including the Bible.

God is omniscient, so it follows that his book would be mostly omniscient too.

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Tags read the Bible, writing

Christian Living

How to Learn about the Bible

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date May 8, 2016

Don’t study books about the Bible, study the Bible.

In college I was excited to take a class on C.S. Lewis. My enthusiasm, however, didn’t last long. I wrongly assumed we would study the writings of Lewis. Instead we focused on what scholars said about what he wrote.

Yes, we did read one of C.S. Lewis’s books in the class, but the rest of the syllabus had us merely examining books about him. My interaction with Lewis was filtered through intermediaries.

This approach disappointed me. It left me frustrated. With so much we could have learned, we were diverted to secondary sources.

Many people wrongly take this same approach with the Bible.

Instead of reading the Bible, they read books about the Bible. Instead of studying the Word of God, they study what scholars say about it. What if the experts are wrong? What if our authoritarian sources lead us astray?

After all, theologians stand in stark opposition to one another on what the Bible means, so we have a very real chance of picking up the wrong book to teach us about the Bible.

If we want to know what the Bible says we need to simply read it and not scour some secondary source.

I extend this same errant thinking to Sunday morning where trained clergy teach us about the Bible, spending the majority of their lecture sharing what they think the Bible says (and what other people think the Bible says).

Why not just read the Bible together to learn what is in it?

In the past, when the laity was illiterate and didn’t have access to the scriptures in their language, it made practical sense for the clergy to teach what the Bible said.

Never mind that throughout history trained ministers have consistently led their people astray.

If you disagree with this assessment, then why are there 42,000 Protestant denominations in the world today? Why did we need the Protestant Reformation?

We needed it to correct wrong teaching. Surely there is much disagreement among our learned leaders over what the Bible says.

Today we are literate. We have access to the Bible in multiple versions, both in print and online. And if we follow Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us as we study the Bible.

We don’t need a human guide to tell us about God; we have God and his Word to tell us about God.

Yet I write about God and the Bible. Do I consider myself an exception? Certainly not.

My goal in writing about the Bible is to encourage others to delve into it themselves, to read it, study it, and seek Holy Spirit guidance as to what the Bible means. (My website ABibleADay.com focuses on this.)

I seldom cite secondary sources. I don’t hold myself up to be an expert. I share my journey and encourage others to do the same.

Paul affirmed the Jews in Berea as having noble character, for they studied the Bible daily to make sure that what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11). We must do the same.

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Tags C. S. Lewis, Paul, Protestant Reformation, read the Bible

Christian Living

Why Do I Love God and Hate Theology?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date October 18, 2015

A simple definition of theology is studying God. Since I love God so much and love reading about him in the Bible you’d think I’d love theology, too. Right? Well I don’t.

Learning about God and contemplating him through his word excites me. I look forward to it every day. Yet theology leaves me cold.

Start explaining the essential elements of a particular theological perspective and my eyes will glaze over. I’ll either get angry or yawn. Why is this?

Theologians Make God Boring

It’s understandable. Theologians are academics, and if anyone can squeeze the life out of something it’s academia.

While working on my PhD I took a class on C. S. Lewis. I was so excited—until I read the syllabus. Though we would read one book Lewis wrote, the majority of the class would focus on books other people wrote about Lewis.

Instead of reading Lewis we would read people who had read Lewis. While we could have studied Lewis firsthand, the professor inserted a degree of separation, and we studied Lewis secondhand.

Theologians do the same thing. They insert a degree of separation between us and God. While we can read God’s word directly, they effectively insert a middleman who interprets the Bible for us.

This made sense 500 years ago when no one had a copy of the Bible and most people couldn’t read anyway. But now we have our own copies of the Bible, and we can read it ourselves. So why do we need someone else to explain it? We don’t.

Yet I will go to church today and listen to someone explain the Bible.

Something’s wrong with this. It dates back to the middle ages when illiterate, uneducated people filled the pews. Things are different today. We can read and think for ourselves. We don’t need someone else to do it for us.

Why can’t we cut out the middleman and learn about God through his word, without a theologian or preacher who forces the Bible’s words to fit into a particular theological package?

I love God. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t stick my neck out to encourage everyone to remove all human filters and read about him firsthand.

Read the Bible. Cut out the middleman. Let’s start a revolution.

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Tags C. S. Lewis, church attendance, minister, read the Bible

Christian Living

Do You Believe in Unicorns? Maybe it’s Time to Start

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date September 6, 2015

Let’s say a friend is reading a book. The opening draws him in. The characters are compelling. A fascinating plot unfolds. This is a great read, but then a unicorn walks into the scene.

What? A unicorn? Unicorns don’t exist. They’re pretend, right? He’s never seen one and doesn’t know anyone who claims to. He reads the unicorn passages with suspicion.

Another friend reads the same book. She believes in unicorns. She’s seen glimpses of them for years and knows several people who interact with them regularly. Reading about a unicorn is not fantasy to her, it’s normal. She reads in anticipation.

Why do these friends react so differently? They read using the lens of their experiences. The one having no involvement with unicorns dismisses the sections about them.

The one familiar with unicorns accepts their appearance without alarm. Their personal experiences inform how they read the book.

The same is true with the Bible. We understand its words through the lens of our experiences. For example, if we regularly encounter the power of the Holy Spirit, then we see him throughout the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

The accounts of him are normal to us, and the Bible reinforces our experience as being applicable today.

However, if we have no experience with the Holy Spirit’s power, then reports of him in the Bible seem nonsensical. We either dismiss him or explain him away as we skip to the next section.

Our experience or lack of experience with the Holy Spirit influences how we read the Bible and the conclusions we make.

Part of my life I went to traditional churches that diminished the Holy Spirit. Yes, he was in their creed but not their lives. We treated him like that eccentric relative most of us have, the one we try to ignore and talk about in embarrassed whispers.

I also went to evangelical churches that had much the same perspective. They sought to explain away the Holy Spirit.

They acknowledged that Holy Spirit power existed in the early church but claimed that once the disciples died, most of his power ended.

They understood scripture through the lens of their experience. Then they concocted a theology to support their experience, irrespective of what the Bible said.

I remember one preacher mocking Christians who supernaturally spoke in other languages, healed others through God’s power, and moved in faith at the Holy Spirit’s prompting. He laughed at their claims and called them deluded.

Another preacher labeled all charismatics as heretics. These men vilified what they didn’t understand because their experiences limited what they could see in the Bible. They forgot that God doesn’t change and is all-powerful.

Though I have never seen a unicorn, I have seen the power of the Holy Spirit. I like reading about him in the Bible and experiencing his presence.

I believe in the Holy Spirit. I hope you do, too. However, if your experiences have pushed the Holy Spirit aside or you’ve been taught to diminish him, please ask God to open your mind to new possibilities.

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Tags believe, early church, Holy Spirit, minister, read the Bible, supernatural

Christian Living

Are You a Christian Pharisee?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date January 22, 2015
2 Comments on Are You a Christian Pharisee?

Whenever I come across the word Pharisee in the Bible, my first thought is, I’m glad I’m not a Pharisee. Then I rush on to read the next verse.

Pharisees comprised a sect of Judaism. A religious bunch, they received the bulk of Jesus’ criticism over their conceited behavior and self-righteous attitudes.

Though Jesus accepted most people as they were, loving them in spite of themselves, he was quick to censure the Pharisees for their legalistic approach to living life. They were the bad guys of the New Testament. I’m glad I’m not a Pharisee.

However, when I come across the word Pharisee in the Bible, I now no longer breeze past it with smug self-assurance. I now substitute the word Christian for it, which gives me the opportunity to consider if I do, at times, act like a Pharisee.

Though this switch obscures the original meaning, it also makes it more personal, allowing for better self-examination.

There are, of course, other words that might work even better for some people, such as Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. Perhaps using evangelical or charismatic might make these verses more personal.

Or insert your particular denomination, such as Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Pentecostal, and so forth. Pick the term you most identify with, use it to replace Pharisee, and let God speak to you. Then be sure to listen.

Though it’s an uncomfortable thought, I wonder if we Christians are more like Pharisees then we care to admit.

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Tags Christian Pharisee, evangelical, Jesus, read the Bible

Peter DeHaan News

What’s the Focus of Your Bible Reading?

Post author By Peter DeHaan
Post date January 8, 2015

Study God’s Holy Scripture

I spent all of last year studying women in the Bible. As the year progressed, my initial list of thirty kept getting longer. By yearend, I had found over seventy-five, and I wrote blog posts for about half of them.

Although I don’t plan on blogging about the rest, I am working on a book on the subject, Women in the Bible. The first draft is almost done, and I’m about ready for some beta readers to review it. When the book is finished, I’ll post a notice here.

For this year, I’m reading the New Testament, starting with the writings of Dr. Luke.

Although we’re a week into the new year, it’s not too late to start a Bible reading plan:

The New Testament Bible reading plan.
The Old Testament Bible reading plan.
Read the Entire Bible in a year
Check out our monthly Bible reading plans.

Learn about other biblical women in Women of the Bible, available in e-book, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

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Tags Bible Reading, read the Bible