Why The Bible ROCKS!

I'm off to Melbourne today to go to the Auzzie National Apostolic Conference. I will endeavor to keep posting daily... but if I don't quiet keep up, please do keep checking in. I'm sure I'll have lots of exciting things to share!

Today I wanted to share an exert from Rob Bell's book called Velvet Elvis (pg 59-60). Its a boomer of a book, and if you haven't already got a copy... go and get one!

So the exodus is the Israelites' story, but it is also our story. It happened then; it happens now.

In fact, in a Jewish synagogue to this day, you will probably hear kids taught the story of exodus as their story. A friend of mine recently heard a Jewish kid say, "We were slaves in Egypt and Moses led us out, and we complained in the wilderness."

This is why the Bible is still so powerful: These ancient stories are our stories. These stories are reflective of how things are.

And this is why the Bible loses its power for so many communities. They fall into the trap of thinking that the Bible is just about things that happened a long time ago.
But the Bible is about today.

These stories are our stories. They are alive and active and teaching us about our lives in our world, today.

The Rabbis spoke of the text being like a gem with seventy faces, and each time you turn the gem, the light refracts differently, giving you a reflection that you haven't seen before. And so we turn the text again and again because we keep seeing things we missed the time before.

I was talking to a pastor several years ago who was preparing a sermon, and I asked him if he was ready to give it. He said, "Oh yeah, I've got this passage nailed." How is that possible?

When you embrace the text as living and active, when you enter into its story, when you keep turning the gem, you never come to the end.

May you & I continually delight in God's Word with an ever increasing intensity as the days roll by!


I look forward to your comments!