What is an experience that you tend to tell people about? Maybe it’s that restaurant that you just love, or the excitement you feel over the Noles playing football, or maybe it’s the book you read, or the musical artist you listen to. It’s not the same thing for every person, but I think every person has at least one thing that if you get them talking about it, you will see their passion for it rise – and you may have a problem getting them to shut up about it once you get them talking.
Reading Scripture is kind of like that. But the problem is that we think that the exciting thing is “reading Scripture”. Unfortunately, that’s a little too abstract. It’s like saying “I love eating food.” This is true and all. I do love eating food significantly more than not eating food. But it’s hard for me to tell you about the great experiences I’ve had “eating food”. Instead, I need to get more concrete and tell you about the meal I cooked this weekend, or the meal that I had at a restaurant last week, or the meal that I had while at a neighbor’s house. Those things are concrete enough I can get excited about them.
Likewise, you can’t get real excited about “reading Scripture” but you can get excited about what you just read in Hebrews, or James, or Proverbs. That excitement has to come from the specifics of what you’ve read, the intricacies of the text – the layers of meaning that you recognized – or the way that the Spirit seemed to speak directly into your life through the text.
I think that internally, we have this feeling that we should be excited about our faith. But this also is difficult in the abstract. Reading the Bible – picking a book, a chapter, a verse – that is something to get excited about. It is palpable. It’s experienceable. It’s something we can talk about. After all, it is God’s Spirit at work in our lives through those texts – what wouldn’t be exciting about that?