Reading With Our Heads

Any conversation about hearing God has to include the Bible. It’s our guide, and, as Paul says in 2 Timothy, thoroughly equips us in every good work - including the good work of hearing God’s voice.

‘There are two particular skills that every single Christian needs to develop in order to hear God in and through holy Scripture. First, we must learn to read the Bible with our heads, in order to understand what is actually, objectively, being said. And second, we must learn to read it with our hearts, in order to experience God’s voice through its pages.’

‘There are two Greek terms you may find helpful when seeking to make sense of the Bible… The first is exegesis (from the Greek exegeisthai meaning to ‘lead’ or ‘guide out’). Exegesis is the art of explaining, interpreting and applying Scripture. It’s what a preacher does when he or she unpacks the meaning of a particular Bible passage. Exegesis asks what the author of each book was intending when they first wrote it, and indeed what God was intending when he first inspired it.

Exegesis also recognizes that different parts of the Bible need to be understood in different ways according to their literary genre. For example, the Song of Songs is a terrific erotic poem and a profound metaphor about the relationship between God and humanity, but we should not expect it to be a helpful teaching manual on how to run a church. That is not why it was written.’

‘Context changes everything. You probably know the story about the man who decided to let his Bible fall open randomly and then to take the first words he read as God’s specific guidance. Closing his eyes, he allowed his finger to fall on a page: ‘[Judas] went away and hanged himself’ (Matt. 27:5). Fortunately, this wasn’t the direction the man was seeking, and so, needing clarification, he tried again. This time his finger fell upon Luke 10:37: ‘Go and do likewise.’

The problem with this approach is first, God is not a fortune cookie, and second, God’s Word in the Bible is the Bible itself – not just isolated words picked at random from within its text.'

Lord, I’m sorry for the times I’ve treated you and your word like some kind of fortune cookie. I am not in a hurry to get something from you. Today, I renew my commitment to read carefully, searching for your meaning in the Bible.

Amen.