Good and Not So Good Bible Devotionals

For many years, I have been looking for a good Bible devotional for daily reading. Aside from the fact that my own lack of discipline and my absolutely atrocious time management techniques has led to my not really having a consistent devotional life for a year or two now, my other problem is in the fact that I have not found a truly useful daily devotional tool. Now, if you're a regular Bible reader, I know what you're thinking - just read the Scriptures from start to finish, or for those who are really sponteneous, just flip the Bible to a different page per day and read from it. Or read a bit from beginning to end. The problem with this approach, for me anyway, is the fact that I just can't do readings of any sort without some structure or parameters. It would be nice to know when to quit, so that way you are not stopping in the middle of a passage and are left scratching your head. Or you read too much and your mind wanders. Or you read too little and do not feel engaged with the text. Besides, there are some books of the Bible that, although I acknowledge to be part of the Word of God, it is not on the top of my to-do reading list. The book of Psalms is one, and the book of Job is another. But more on those another time.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I tried (and I said tried, because we were not sucessful at completing the task) to use John MacArthur's study Bible (I am a reasonably keen fan of Pastor MacArthur's preaching and teaching, though I don't agree with some of his positions on certain issues). It was an aggressive endeavour, as we had planned to read the entire Bible from start to finish in one calendar year. This was also very ambitious of us, seeing as we had a relative newborn baby at the time who usurped much of our daily attention So in January of that year, we started our nightly Bible study time by reading a bit of Genesis, a bit of Matthew, and a bit of the Psalms/Proverbs, as the suggested study timeline indicated. Not only that, but we ended up reading MacArthur's notes and such. If you've ever tried to do one of these "read the Bible in a year" things, you'll know that you need to read a LOT per day in order to achieve this. The problem was, we ended up going through some pretty confusing passages in the enormous chunk we read every night, and the Psalms parts were difficult to digest, as they always are for me.

For me, a devotional guide not only provides a logical structure of what to read when, but it also follows a theme that provides you an overall picture of the Scriptures. A tremendous asset or selling point would be if the devotional included aspects of a commentary, providing important contextual, historic and language/culture input that people otherwise may not know. Let's face it - few few Bible readers are theologians, so any help is much appreciated. Besides, having commentary value enhances the passage in question, making it more alive and providing a thorough contexual examination of the passage's location in the book as well as in Scripture itself. Think about it: if I were just to look at a simple passage through the lens of normal reading, I would obviously (and perhaps unconsciously) read the passage through the filters of 2oth or 21st century images and word definitions. A commentary would help to unravel some of this and provide some linguistic help.

My point in writing this post is not to necessarily review a bunch of common devotional guides and critique them; rather, I'd like to share the fact that I have been looking for a good Bible devotional and it just so happened that a good friend of mine recently suggested that I consider the Tom Wright "Everyone" series. The "Everyone" series seems to be, at first glance, a Bible commentary. Each book more or less corresponds in a one-to-one fashion with the associated Scripture book. Thus "Matthew For Everyone" would be dedicated just to the book of Matthew (though in the "Everyone" series, Matthew is split up into two guides). The book of Luke is covered in "Luke For Everyone" and so forth. Anyhow, I managed to read through a good chunk of the book that my friend lent me to consider, and I think I will be buying the rest of the set. This is exactly what I'm looking for.

Tom Wright, if you don't know, is N.T. Wright, an Anglican dude from the U.K., and a theologian which the Christianity Today publication (on which my feelings are lukewarm) considers one of the top five contemporary Biblical theologians in the world today. Now, I've read a couple of Wright's books, including "Who Was Jesus?", in which I had some serious reservations, but when my friend, for whom I have a deep level of respect, encouraged me to consider perhaps using Wright's Bible study set as a daily devotional, I put my personal bias aside and decide to check it out.

Well, I am impressed. I can see how these books can be used as devotionals. For one, it has everything that I expected of a good devotional, and more. The entire book is broken down into much smaller sections, the text of which are included in the book (so you don't need to car a Bible and a devotional around - it's great for the traveller or the person who has limited desk space). In between each section of quoted text are the commentary sections - it discusses historical context, word meanings, and then proposes some application. This is very much like the Life Application Bible (which I really like) style of Bible reading, but instead of constantly flipping back and forth between the text and the small footnotes, the commentary part follows each text section. This way, after you read the passage section all the way through, it is fresh in your mind when it comes to dissecting it. And each reading is maybe 10-15 minutes or so, if not less, so there is no chance your attention span will wane.

The "Everyone" series is meant for exactly that: everyone. It is written from a non-academic, non-technical perspective - much of the theological nomenclature can be found in a supplemental glossary, so as a result, a well versed theological person does not have to wade through elementary definitions in order to continue reading, but the new Bible reader will similarly not have to worry about deciphering endless amounts of technical academic theological language. This makes the book more engaging, and your get right into the Biblical text. If it is for these reasons that I'd recommend that you consider this series if you are looking for a well-rounded Bible daily devotional tool. I don't think it's meant as a daily devotion per se, since it's not split up by days, but I think it's better this way since you aren't focusing so much tracking days rather than immersing yourself into the Word.

The Pivotal Question In Biblical Apologetics

I have a keen interest in Biblical Apologetics; that is, the practice of Biblical and Scriptural defence. I am hardly a Ravi Zacharias type, but I really find that aspect of my faith life to be one which is edifying and encouraging. That, coupled with my propensity to enjoy a good debate, has gotten me in my fair share of fruitful discussions. It has also, unfortunately, pulled me in arguments which were probably not the best venue for me to participate (only because I can be pretty opinionated, as you can probably tell by reading this here blog).

I would say that the area I will discuss all the time, without exception is Biblical study and viability. Lots of Christians over the years have said that the most important question for Christians to address with non-Christians is "did the resurrection really happen", or "did Jesus rise from the dead?" They say that the whole cornerstone of Christianity rests on that. I suppose that point can be made, but I feel (and this is just my opinion) that the most important question to address to non-believers is, "Is the Bible true?" or "Is the Bible reliable?" If the answer is yes, then that takes care of a lot of the questions with which we don't have answers or some parts of the Bible are tougher to understand. If I believe that the God of creation and the universe and the same God who created me and you, and sent Jesus to die on the cross, authored the Bible, I will be more than happy to yield to what He says in His Word, even if I don't fully understand it. I think that the fallacy of using the question of "did Jesus really rise from the dead?" as the central cornerstone question of Christianity, is that you are assuming that the non-believer accepts or assumes that the Biblical account of the life of Jesus and His subsequent death and resurrection, as told by the Bible. If they don't believe the Bible is accurate, true or authored by God Himself, guess what? It will matter little how you argue the resurrection point - which is why I believe that showing the Bible to be both a historically reliable document, but also showing that it is the Word of God (latter is harder) is the starting point in presenting the gospel message to the unbeliever. I got this sense more than a decade ago when I was doing some personal study of hermeneutics and one night in my bed, it dawned on me, "what is the point of using the Bible to argue points to a non-Christian when they don't believe in the Bible?" I agree - the Bible, as God's Word, can stand up to scrutiny and doesn't need our defending it - but from a logical perspective, I want to avoid the trap of referring to something that someone does not accept as a factual or reliable reference point.

Quick example, a few years back, a colleague of mine here at work, who also happens to be a strong Christian, is very knowledgeable on the Bible and would put me to shame often, in terms of what he can pull up. Well, we had an opportunity to discuss Christianity with a highly philosophical Jewish colleague (and a friend of mine). The Christian guy started to argue the finer points of the resurrection and about Christianity's distinctives. Guess what? The Jewish guy rejected all of the Christian's arguments, saying that they are all from the Bible and he does not accept the Bible as truth. I totally saw his point. The Christian man then totally shocked me by telling my Jewish friend "it doesn't matter whether you agree with it or not, it's still true." I thought that this was more of a defensive manoeuvre rather than an apologetic one - and it completely re-affirmed what I have thought the past decade or so. I took the conversation into a different realm, asking him what problems he has with the Bible, and that discussion went somewhere, where My Jewish friend told me he wasn't interested in talking with the Christian guy anymore. I'm not sure if I was able to convince him of anything, but at the very least, I was able to show that some of his arguments against the Bible's reliability had, at the very least, some flaws. I mean, i'm not Grant Jeffrey, so I can't argue that kind of stuff, but it does seem to indicate that being able to show the Bible as a reliable and trusted reference point is the first step. Which is why I am so gung-ho on Bible study. We can read listen to all the sermons on CD that we want, or read all the Christian books we want or listen to Christian music and attend Christian conferences and even go to Christian retreats - the problem is, if the Christian does not spend time in their Bibles, knowing God's Word - guess what? When they come across the intelligent and philosophical non-Christian who can easily deflect the standard circular arguments and worse, if they no longer can use the Bible as their point from which to make counterarguments, the Christian will be saddled with several problems in the debate.

There are a plethora of reasons to read one's Bible - to hear what God has to say to them personally, to better understand their relation to God, to know the history of their faith, and to capture guidelines and disciplines for living a life pleasing to God. But I think one of the more paramount reasons to read one's Bible is to be able to familiarize oneself with it, in the event the Christian has a witnessing opportunity. I think I can say most Christians would rather avoid having to debate the hard issues with non-Christians and I think this is sad, since that is neither the model nor the practice Jesus did Himself or expected from His followers.