What changes me? When I listen to preaching or I read the Bible, what do I need most? Practical how-to’s or a revelation of God? Not that we should divorce the two, but should either one outweigh the other? Is there a problem with a how-to based approach to transformation?
I think if the main way we change as Christians is bound up in the use of specific and engaging examples and immediate practical steps for growth in spiritual maturity then should expect the Bible to motivate us that way. But, is this in fact what we find? Or do we find the Bible to be preeminently concerned about the self-disclosure of God?
I believe the Bible fundamentally is used by God to devastate the soul by imparting to it a vision – and many subsequent visions! – of the greatness, the majesty, the holiness, the grace, the glory of God! Now, to be sure, this has profound ramifications for our everyday lives. It should impact our friendships, our ethics, our financial decisions, and many other applications for practical Christian living. But, it touches those things rather indirectly. Even the most practical, nitty-gritty books in Scripture don’t sound like ‘how-to’ books.
In our consumeristic, spoon feed me Christian culture, it is tremendously important that we remember that the Bible’s main concern is to give us nothing other than GOD Himself, and, to some degree, it leaves the rest to the workings of divine physics. That is, when God acts upon the human soul, revealing Himself to it, the soul does not remain “at rest”.
See Isaiah 6. It is no “4 steps to getting a heart for missions” manual. Now, without question, he does have a heart for missions when it’s over. But the “it” is an encounter with the living God – a beholding – and the rest, as they say, is history.
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