People need the word of God. If they won't read it on their own, if they won't come to church and hear it, if they go to churches where the word is not preached and heard and lived, then we must bring the word to them. Perhaps some of them would hear it, if they knew it was there. Just read it, don't just tell them about it. The word is strong, but we are weak. Give the word a voice, your voice.
Take the word of God with you wherever you go. Read it in the street, on the bus or train, in the lunch room or during a break on the loading dock. God gives us so much free time. Why let our minds wander after fantasies. All His word needs is a voice. Read it out loud, give the gift of faith to one who needs it, for faith comes by hearing. One of the Church fathers writes…
Let us allow Christ to speak through us. He desires it more than we do. For He made this instrument and wouldn’t want it to be useless and idle. He always wants to keep it in His hands. Why, then, don’t you make it useful for the Maker’s hand? Why do you allow your soul to be unstrung, relaxed through luxury, and allow the whole harp to be useless to Him? One should keep all its parts completely stretched, well strung and reinforced with spiritual salt. For if Christ sees your soul tuned this way, He will make His music through it. When this has taken place, you will see angels leaping for joy—archangels and the cherubim, too. So then, let us become worthy of His spotless hands. Let us invite Him to strike our hearts.
— John Chrysostom
6 comments:
Good words. I've never engaged in public oral reading of the word; suspect that it would be easier when done as a team, so that there's a listener. Probably public oral recitation from memory would be even more effective.
When I have gone out to read the bible in public, it is always with another person, in this case, Brock, my best friend and co-laborer, never alone. This is when reading in public aloud. When I am just somewhere out in public and have to wait, I read my small pocket New Testament silently but the book is visible. Even that has caused people to stop and talk to me, and then I can witness by answering their questions.
But when reading publicly, it should always be with one other person. That way, the other is always there listening, even when passers-by aren't, and we also take turns reading. I have written about this is many posts in the 2006 and 2007 issue of this blog, explaining what we did and what happened.
I believe that reading a whole gospel and one other book, usually Revelation, is best, and to read with animation, something you can only do, I think, if you have the bible memorized as one memorizes a piece of music, by becoming very, very familiar with it.
I don't think standing in public and reciting bible verses from memory is quite the same thing, because that still has an element of one's personality in it, that reading an entire book does not. People know it's not your opinions or your message that you are trying to push on them, when you're reading an entire bible book, but that you are doing what I have suggested in this post, simply giving the Word a voice. Then, it's up to everyone who passes to hear the Word, or to shut it out, regardless of what passage it is that's being read when they pass by.
This is quite different from something I saw this morning on the internet, a picture of about half a dozen people reading from black bibles and another half dozen just standing between them with black blindfolds on their eyes (to symbolize "see no evil"), everyone of them lined up on the sidewalk in front of a stretch of bare wall of a downtown strip club. The passers-by knew what their object was, to point out the evil of the strip joint by reading the bible there. It didn't stop people from going in. Most people simply walked past and ignored the readers, because they knew they were reading condemnation.
But the very fact of the strip joint being there is obvious to everyone that evil is present, and that each individual passing has a choice to go in and participate in evil or keep walking past (as I do) and rejecting it. The existence of the strip joint on that corner speaks volumes, and volumes respond. To read the bible publicly in a sin-neutral zone (at a bus stop, in front of a public library or, as Brock and I did, in a public square in front of no one and nothing in particular) is the same thing as the existence of the strip joint, only in reverse. People know what we stand for, what we are into, without us pushing it any more than the strip joint pushes sensuality and fantasy.
Just to be what we are, in our case, was to read the bible publicly, doing in public what we also regularly do in private, in effect erasing the boundary between our public and private lives, by taking the Word of God out from the confines of the "little church" (our homes) to the "big church" (the world).
Wherever we are, Christ also is, because we go wherever He goes.
In addition to praying to God each day, we also need to read the Bible and other religious literature. It also is a good idea to take with us a pocket New Testament to read when we leave our homes.
I love the quote from St.John Chrysostom above... and how beautiful it is to know and to share, to confess and to witness our faith in Christ by proclaiming the good news in Holy Scripture.
The scripture is full of references to the effect that if you seek Him you will find Him.
I found Jesus delights in revealing Himself through the Scripture. I believe this is the hook . . . meaning, one wants more and more...and will continue to read and interact with His Holy Spirit to know more about Him.
One of the best missionary organizations I was tied into was the Gideons. It was such a blessing to give out New Testaments to children in Grade 5.
I also believe we need to stress that it is a relationship with Jesus and not a relationship with doctrine via the scriptures.
I have enjoyed your postings...thank you
'You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts'. St Paul
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