Why to read the Bible?

the goal of Bible Reading is the realization of Col. 3:16.

that the word of Christ would dwell in us richly to the equipping of our minds to teach and admonish one another with all Spiritual Wisdom...

there are a LOT of people who read a whole lot of Bible, yet lack spiritual wisdom.

these are the scriptures that are able to make us wise unto salvation... We see that salvation is something that is

work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to act (want and to do) according to His purpose...
worked out in the daily, and that

Hebrews 10-12
we can let go of that hope without holding on to it with intensity in our daily life...

So, in the Church it is God's purpose that the teaching of the word by the traveling teachers, resident Elders and Overseers, and Apostolic workers be accompanied by the ministry of the saints to one another in admonishing and teaching, by the wisdom of the holy Spirit in each other by the Word of Christ's rich indwelling...

You see, Bible Reading is no goal, in itself. It has a goal. It isn't a goal.

It is best to read the bible out of a sense of Spiritual appetite. Bookishness and box-checking devotional life are to be eschewed. Often the Scriptures fall flat to us because our inner man isn't joined in the willingness to OBEY them...

We must put behind us the days of dallying with sin, and living an unchallenged, unyeilded life. WE must deeply suffer the surrender of the Soul to the will of God so that our minds may be transformed, aand the Word will be formed in us by the Holy Spirit....

Rom 12: offer yourself. then transformation. then understanding...
Honestly, many Christians are completely missing the point of the existence of a Scriptural Witness in the church. We have the scriptures to bear witness to the Word, who is Jesus, abiding in the surrendered soul. Without thorough and ruthless surrender, the Bible becomes an idol, confusing the reader into a sense of achievement...

the letter brings death

the spirit brings life...

Possibility:
the scriptures are bringing death to many who put their confidence in their own reading/knowledge/discipline...
John 5:39-40

many who approach the Scriptures as source are wrong and are dead where they stand, their confidence wrongly placed in their knowledge and disciplinary, academic acheivements... they are lost.

to some, there is a degree to which they misplace their confidence that results in loss in the Life of Christ. They will suffer loss in the judgment.

Let's make it our goal to Connect deeply with Christ, in surrender to His will and confidence in His ability to lead us. Let us enter deeply into the reality of Potter/Clay, Shepherd/Sheep relationship with Jesus, and embody the reality of John 3, that as the wind so shall we be, who live not by letter, nor by best intentions, nor the thoughts of our own minds or best ideas, but are blown by the Spirit...

Let's move into a Mature use of the Scripture as the describer of the life of the Church, in the Spirit, and enter into the Spiritual life of Christ, that we may be fruit-bearing disciples...
These very scriptures will indicate to us that the fruit is good, affirming us as we are led by Him in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Then it will be true among us that "It's all about Jesus".

Church: a communion

church is a communion...
it is a communion in the heavenly realms--with JESUS. We are seated with Him in the heavenly realms. everything else will pass away. period.

church is a communion of saints. That's in that one creed thingy, right? We believe in that, right?

now, a communion like this transcends boundaries of race and nationality, space and time, gender and age... This is a communion with Jesus. He is the link between each of us as we gather around HIM. He is the SINGLE connecting point in the whole gob of us.

the church has meetings, but that's not the church.
we meet as a manifestation of what we are: a communion...

a communion means that we have one common union: JESUS

buried in winter? Coffee!!!

Posting has been hard. and you know you're not in the right place to write when you blog about blogging. It's just that the "rut" of daily life began to run away from daily thoughts, writing, regular stuff like that...

and so here i am.

this morning, it's all about the coffee. it is a rainy, cloudy day. I just took the boys to school and got home. it has been winter, so that's cold, youknow? and i never wear enough clothing for that. Usually i wear a knit hat and a hoodie over a teeshirt. I have discovered that, like my youngest son, i hate wearing clothes. Makes me wonder if heaven is nudist. i think it's not, b/c angels always have stuff on... but at least i'll have just a tee shirt and jeans or shorts on... you know?

anyway today is all abotu the coffee. Judy's been on the warpath about my coffee drinking. I'm giving up at least half of my public coffee times to offset some home expenses, but we brew the finest, here and i drink a lot of it. like 10 cups a day, in toto...

10 cups isn't actually ten cups of coffee, but rather around 10 8 ounce servings. 80 ounces a day doesn't seem like a lot when you sit around talking to people a lot. or writing or skateboarding, and it's cold outside and dark and you didn't sleep well...
some sleep problems are simply logistical.

but today it isn't about beds or noise or bruised consciences keeping me up. it's about the coffee.

aaaaah.
the warmth.
the bitter.
the brown.
aaaaaah.
a little cream to take the edge off and she's smoothe as chocolate.
coffee.
perfect breakfast and perker-upper...

is coffee a drug?
is it just food?

i don't know, but sitting here this morning, the day after Thursday night bible study, I'm happy to have a nice cup here. Judy's here, too. She's working and i'm blogging. Got Chris Tomlin and stuff playing on Pandora.com... and some coffee...

I know. You were sure it was all about jesus, and it is. just this morning, the coffee is all about jesus, because it's about the coffee.

Good Technology.

More than a Month?!!

amazing... i made a shift a while back to writing on paper more often. in 4 weeks I filled an entire "Moleskine". some of it is good enough... it might actually help someone. someday... probably after i'm dead...

sitting at the big table with a cup of coffee and some donuts. Saturday morning. Yesterday was a snowday. There was sledding. Miserable, rainy, whiny sledding, and a visit to Bobby and Melissa up north in West Chester...

i've started helping a friend of mine with his skatepark design firm. yeah, i just called it a firm. i like that tirm.

you should taste this coffee. no. really. you should. you should come to cincinnati and stay a few days and see what beauty there is in a small communion of saints who live like this.

Last night, Judy and I had dinner at the Trues' house. Baby Isaac is an incredible little dude. He seems to like my speaking voice. That's nice.

We have a Brazilian Exchange student living with us. His name is Marcelo. He's great! We hold out to the end of the season and only host if necessary, with all the increases in activity around here. marcelo came in January. He'll stay 11 months.

We just finished the week-long stay of a Kuwaiti student. He was great! an avid and passionate rollerblader, looks like we may design a park for them, over there. Funny thing, I'm in contact with a Saudi dude about a park over there, too...

Well, i trolled a bit of news and had a bit of reggae on Pandora and now it's time to get moving...

thanks to all who read here. I'll try to be back soon.

enough whining about the weather. I've got a lot of great stuff going on around me. From Judy's work with foreign exchange, which keeps us in contact with people around the world, to my kids' school and daily skateboarding and stuff like that... to Sam, who lives on our 3rd floor and lights up this house with so much love. thanks for allt he dishes you do, bro.

this winterr has been so much different from so many that came before. I'm not sick, thanks be to God, for the first January in forever. I really do think it was the wisdom teeth, afterr all. I got out my last 2 last march, and I gotta say, that really hurt for a long time, but feelign is almost back in my tongue on that side, and I'm not sick and dragging all the time.

I'm getting more and more involved in efforts to get skateparks built in our city, too. I've been talking with a lot o fpeople lately and I see a coalescence of people who would like there to be good spots set aside for skateboarding in the cityscape. Why aren't there quality provisions for skateboarding within the reach of our metro routes? There should be, and hopefully will be, soon.

working on the Northside Park will be a start, I hope.

Well, I hope you're all okay. really. Peace.

this snowy morning

this morning, the kids went back to school. what a crime. 7:25 wake up for a 6-yrs. old of a kid. i can't wait. that's just one more small thing that won't be going on in the kingdom of Jesus...

holy cold, Batman!!! like 8 degrees with snow coming down sideways in the wind... and the driving? INSANE! What an insanity that people would drive on these frozen roads! Yet drive we did, and there were tons of accidents on the traffic report this morning.

Growing up in New York, we had a thing we called a "delay" that we'd use on days like this to let the roads get warmed up, so the frozen chemicals and water could get thawed... working folks also used a technique called the "personal day", and also "coming in late" to fend off the risk of roadway death and whatnot...

I think Ohio should make a discovery of the use of this "delay" thing. That should help our nation become great. I have also heard that in lands far away there is something called the "snow day". I'm not sure I believe it, it sounds so fantastical, but people tell me that when the roads are so dangerous that people's lives are risked in daily transit, many institutions--especially schools--actually close for the day.

These are foreign ideas, I know, but that's what makes great cultural understandings in U.S. and A.