Of making many Bible reading plans there is no end.  And I say, the more the merrier.  Exalted right up there beside God’s name is his word (Psalm 138:2).  So without further ado, let me tell you a little bit about the Your-Plan, Your-Pace Bible Reading Record.  Much is familiar about this plan in comparison with other plans, such as microscopic font and scores of tiny boxes to check.  Three things, however, make this plan somewhat unique in Bible reading plandom.

First, it’s not so much a plan (singular) as it is a choice of plans (plural).  You can choose to read straight through the Bible; or read from the Law on Mondays, the Prophets on Tuesdays, the Writings on Wednesdays, the Gospels on Thursdays, Acts/Letters on Fridays; or skip around from book to book; etc.  The point is that with this plan the reader has flexibility to customize his or her reading agenda according to good sense and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Second, by disconnecting the plan from the calendar, the reader can go at his or her own pace.  Read through the Bible in a year, twice in a year, once in two years, or whatever.  The goal isn’t to careen through the Scriptures checking boxes as fast as possible.  The goal is to commune with the triune God, and to become like him through faith and obedience.  If moving slowly through the Bible awakens your mind and heart for God, by all means slow down your pace.  And don’t feel guilty about it!  If, on the other hand, you begin to see the glory of God only after burying yourself under piles and piles of paragraphs, then adopt a pace that will move you quickly through the Bible.  George Muller commended reading large volumes of Scripture; Spurgeon, short passages with lots of meditation.  Either way, choose the pace at which you most frequently find yourself enjoying the living God.

Third, the Old Testament arrangement follows the Hebrew Bible rather than the English Bible.  Quirky though it may be, I wanted to encourage people to know the Old Testament the same way Jesus himself most likely knew it.  Furthermore, there seems to be an intentional narrative design behind the Hebrew arrangement of books.  If that’s so, there are fresh insights awaiting us as we read the Old Testament in the Hebrew order rather than the English order.

As you peruse reading plans for 2012, check this one out.  And whether you use this particular plan or not, don’t forget what they say about failing to plan.

Your-Plan, Your-Pace Bible Reading Record

I know you never know what tomorrow is going to bring, so it’s not like we’ve arrived or anything like that.  But we have played well lately, and we’ve won lately, so that’s a big deal.  Quite frankly, I love the game of football.  I love my job.  I love Georgia.  But what I do is not who I am.  I’ve said that before.  I think sometimes if we become what we do, and then things aren’t going just right, then all of a sudden our entire world falls apart.  I’ve got a faith in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I know that God loves me and is going to take care of me.  I just truly believe that.  When all the games are done and all the life is lived, I know where I’ll be for eternity.  Not to say I don’t care about what happens in this world, because that’s not true.  Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily as unto the Lord,” so that’s what I was doing on a daily basis.  I was doing my job as best I could and trying to do it for his glory, and try not to worry about anything else.  That’s kind of how I navigated that time, and there will be more tough times I’m sure.  That’s the way life is.

Is Richt saying that nothing is more important than trusting Jesus for eternal life?  That our justification isn’t found in being successful?  That we should work hard as unto the Lord and leave the results to him?  That’s exactly what he’s saying.  And it’s enough to make me say, “Go, Dawgs!”

Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.  (Revelation 17:1b-2)

You adulterous people!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  (James 4:4)

The Greek words behind “adultery” and “sexual immorality” are different, the former being specific to marital infidelity and the latter a broader term for all forms of sexual transgression.  It is no surprise, then, that the worldliness of believers and unbelievers is distinguished.  When believers give themselves to the world, they aren’t just screwing around like unmarried people, as destructive as that is.  They’re betraying their Husband.

between his temporary residence beneath the deep blue sea . . . and his permanent abode in the frying pan.

(Quoted in Mounce, Revelation, NICNT, 362, n. 9)

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.

Those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.

The unmarried…is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.

I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

So then he who marries…does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

(1 Corinthians 7:8, 28, 32, 35, 38)

With all the needed emphasis on marriage in our day, we may be in danger of overlooking another good gift from God: intentional singleness for the sake of Christ.  I’ve nodded at this gift in the past and quickly moved on; my sense is that most of us have done the same.  But surely this option should be held out to the unmarried in our churches.  It should be spoken of in our pulpits and classrooms and around our kitchen tables.  It should be commended as a God-glorifying possibility to be weighed carefully by anyone who is unmarried.

In pondering intentional singleness in 1 Corinthians 7, it feels like God has broken open the side of my doctrinal house and added a new room.  More square footage, more windows, more space to move, more sunlight to give warmth — I’m certain the Lord actually means for some people to enter and enjoy.

Here's one of my advanced swimming techniques. Maybe I'm missing something.

I love being in water. At the gym, in the ocean, even the shower. Water is great. And I really enjoy swimming, but I have a confession. I’m terrible at swimming. Sure, I can move through the water at a good pace, but I’m horribly inefficient and my arms end up doing all the work. I hear that swimming is a whole body exercise, but I’m okay with my purely functional windmill stroke. After all, I’m in the water, I enjoy it immensely, and I’m content.

But what if, in my Bible reading, I discovered passages that described particular techniques for to enhance my swimming. I wouldn’t have to do them all, especially not all at once, but shouldn’t I want to look into these strokes and see if it helped my swimming? That’s one way of looking at the biblical examples of outward expression in worship. What does the Bible say about how God’s people express themselves in worship?

This is a good time to insert one consideration about outward expression – it is not the most important thing. It’s not a litmus test to measure if someone is really worshiping or just treading water. God is concerned first with the engaged heart and mind. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” This helps us avoid two pitfalls. First, we can’t assume that the lack of physical expression means that nothing is going on in the heart. Second, we must remember that the presence of expressiveness doesn’t necessarily indicate a strong, faith centered worshiper.  Jesus and Isaiah took a stand against heartless worship: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me…” Matt 15:8-9  Clearly, any physical expression must be connected to an inward reality. We’ll come back to that later.

So if physical expression isn’t important, why spend time talking about it at all?

Wait a minute! Who said anything about physical expression not being important? On the contrary, the primary words the Jews and the early church used for worship were connected to particular ideas about posture and expression. Allow me to drop the very small amount of Hebrew and Greek I retained from seminary on you. I’ll be gentle.

Shachad  is translated “worship” 81 times in the Old Testament. It means “to bend down low, to prostrate oneself.” As in, to put your nose to the ground low. That’s one way the Hebrews understood and related to God. But the word yadah (used 90 times) has a different connotation, meaning “to throw out the hand.” The very word encourages the worshiper to raise their hands, whether as a sign of joy, desperation, exaltation, or need. Additionally, the Hebrews sometimes used ‘abodah, meaning “to serve or work.” The Old Testament’s physical understanding of worship is carried into the New Testament by the word proskuneo. Used 51 times, this word combines pro (“to turn toward”) with kuneo (“to kiss”). Proskuneo contains the same humility as the Hebrew shachad, but with an added intimacy and closeness. Clearly, the people of God have historically understood a connection between inward and outward action in the very words they chose to speak of worship.

The Bible doesn’t just use gesture-related words to refer to worship. It also has a lot to say about our bodily expressions in worship. The Psalms alone are full of a huge variety of gestures and postures. What physical expressions do you find in these passages?

• I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. Ps 34:1
• And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,
  and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy Ps 27:6
• Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! Ps 95:6
• My flesh trembles in fear of you; I stand in awe of your laws. Ps 119:120
• “Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp.” Ps 149:3
• “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.” Ps 47:1
• “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” Ps. 63:4
• “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands.” 1 Tim 2:8
• And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Neh 8:6

It’s quite a list – standing, speaking, singing, playing instruments, bowing down, dancing, raising hands, shouting, and that’s not all. It turns out that biblical worship, like swimming, is often a full body exercise. Some of these physical expressions are more common in our weekly gatherings, but others are rare or unheard of. However, none of them are foreign to our culture. These expressions are downright common at many moments of joy and celebration -  weddings, reunions, births, football games, concerts, and graduations. Watch the footage of any SEC game and you’ll see people using physical expression to demonstrate their inward emotion. It’s a great picture of worship, declaring the worth of something or someone. Great celebrations and times of joy normally create outward expressions of worship. Yet we are reluctant to bring some of them into our most profound celebration, our gathering around our great joy in Christ, the one who is most worthy of our most profound worship. The Bible has suggested several “strokes” for us to try as we worship. They all aren’t appropriate or necessary all the time, but aren’t they worth considering?

Some might immediately dismiss half of this list as categorically irreverent or improper for gathered worship, but that would be very premature. Each of these gestures and postures were part of biblical worship, were birthed out of reverence and awe, and were well received by the Father when they were accompanied by pure hearts of worship. So there’s not a simple answer as to why we are reluctant to be more expressive in our worship. The truth of why we aren’t more physical in worship is a tangle of our culture, our fears, our our expectations and traditions, a lack of teaching and encouragement, and possibly a measure of coldness towards God in our worship. We’ll start there on the next post.

Read part one of this series.

Like a multiple-car pile up on Turn 4, thoughts rattle and crash in one’s head while listening to this prayer. The internet was abuzz yesterday with Christians wondering whether Pastor Joe Nelms took the Lord’s name in vain, whether in seeking to be “all things to all people” he went too far, whether he feels that the laughter he elicted around the track that day was a good reward. These are worthy discussions, provided they lead not to hypocritical condemnation (as if none of us ever seeks our own glory in prayer, preaching, blogging, tweeting, etc.) but to more sincere ministry by us all.

Although many of us would agree that the prayer deserved the yellow flag if not the red flag, there was one aspect of the prayer over which I want to wave the green flag: the pastor’s passionate and detailed thanksgiving for Nascar. I don’t even watch Nascar, and Pastor Joe fired me up as he thanked God, among other things, for the “mighty machines that you’ve brought before us; for the Dodges…Toyotos…Fords; for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power we see before us tonight; for GM Performance Technology and the  ro7 engines; …for Sunoco Racing Fuel and Goodyear Tires that bring performance and power to the track.” And when Pastor Joe asked God to “bless the drivers and use them tonight” that they may “put on a performance worthy of this great track,” a hearty “Yes!” rose in my heart — and I don’t have a clue who those drivers are or what track they were racing on! (Not to mention that the race was already over when I heard the prayer.)

The reason I’m waving the green flag here is that this aspect of Pastor Joe’s prayer utterly thrashes the notion that God has little to do with the common parts of our lives. Ask any church-going evangelical whether God cares about all that we do, and the answer will be that of course he does. But press this same evangelical on details and you’re likely to hear some waffling: “Well, God doesn’t really care about this football game…. No, he’s probably not too concerned with how I do on this quiz in school…. No, watching a movie isn’t part of my worship.”

And therein is revealed a poverty in our faith.  Most of us in theory acknowledge God’s sovereign care over all things — down to sparrows falling to the ground and having the hairs of our heads numbered — but in practice we compartmentalize God’s involvement in our lives.  We have one box in our minds labeled “Spiritual Stuff” and another box labeled “Common Stuff.”  Things like reading the Bible and going to church and feeding the poor and engaging unreached people groups belong in the spiritual box.  Everything else goes in the common box, especially things like Nascar.  Consequently, when somebody jumbles up the contents of our boxes, it confuses us.  And as we’re scrambling to get each of the pieces back into the right box, we’re indignant because we think that the spiritual has been trivialized or that the common has been spiritualized.

There is such a thing as the trivialization of faith. Pastor Joe’s prayer, taken as a whole, is an example of that. I could add a couple of personal examples from my own ministry. But I deny that it was trivializing when Pastor Joe prayed with detailed passion for the Nascar event itself. On the contrary, for those with faith, the prayer transformed a common event into one in which God could be glorified. With so much that is common about our lives, we should not find this strange at all. Rather, it should be our regular practice. “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5).

If we can’t thank God for something, we ought not do it. On the other hand, if we can thank God for something, because it’s not sinful in itself, then we ought to thank him wholeheartedly. Certainly God is worthy of our passionately detailed thanksgivings.

So, what’s in your box of “Common Stuff” that needs to be dumped out, reevaluated, and turned into an act of joyful worship? Whether we eat or drink or enjoy Nascar, or whatever we do, let us learn to do it all with our engine running wide open under the green flag of God’s glory.

For further reading:

• John Piper on “How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God”
• Kevin DeYoung on “Something to Think About”
• N. D. Wilson’s Notes from The Tilt-A-Whirl (book) (trailer)

Luther was no friend of Islam.  To the contrary, his eagerness to see the Qur’an published stemmed solely from his unshakable confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Luther believed that if the Qur’an could be read in its entirety, the error of Islam would be plain.  Consequently, the teachings of Muhammad would be more sharply refuted and dismantled, some might be rescued out of Islam, and Christians would be fortified in the truth.

The objection to Luther’s argument is that some Christians themselves might be led astray by the Qur’an.  Luther was aware of this objection and responded with his characteristic flair.  We should read his response with the awareness that Islam is growing in the United States; that Muslims are becoming our neighbors; that the teachings of Muhammad will in time become familiar even to the person who has never had a comparative religions course.  In other words, what was for Luther a practical concern rather than merely a theoretical one is the same for us.  May his 470-year-old response strengthen us today:

Given the fact, however, that some persons fear that by reading such a book weak minds might be corrupted as it were by an infection and turned from Christ, to such persons I respond in this way. May there be none so infirm in the church of God that they do not have this conviction fixed in their mind, that, as certain as they know that they are alive as long as their senses and bodily motor functions are still vital, as certain as they know that it is day, as long as they see the sun passing above the earth in the middle of the sky, so certain should they be that it is patently impossible that any religion or doctrine about the worship or invocation of God be true that utterly rejects the prophetic and apostolic writings.

(“Martin Luther — Translations of Two Prefaces on Islam,” 266)

Is the Bible the word of God, or is it not?  May there be none in the church so infirm as to hesitate on this point.

By the time we got to the second song, I was feeling quite awkward. I didn’t know why. There was nothing about the service that was distracting, but I struggled to stay engaged. After spending a few moments in self examination, I settled on by problem. It was… my hands. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I tried letting them hang, sticking them in my pockets, and crossing my arms, but I just felt awkward.

To put this in my unique context, I must explain a little more. For the last 11 years, I’ve been leading worship every week. Every week, I seek to sing to God and invite others to join me with a microphone in one hand and a collection of gestures and cues in the other. About twice a year, I get to worship in the congregation empty handed. It is always a treat. But as you can imagine, leading worship for over 1,200 services creates strong muscle memory.

Muscle memory is the term used to describe the culmination of doing something over and over until the body doesn’t have to consciously do the task. The muscle kind of remembers what to do, and how to react. Soldiers drill to gain muscle memory. Athletes practice serves or routes or swings until they become second nature. They hope to gain that clarity of mind, but for me, muscle memory became a source of distraction.

I was suddenly very aware of my posture as we sang. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Because I couldn’t grab a mic and start signaling the pianist, my body was unsure of what to do while we sang. As soon as I recognized my problem, I knew what I needed. I smiled and thanked God for His nudge. I needed to remember and rehearse what God has told us about our posture in worship. God primarily wants our hearts engaged in worship, but He is far from silent regarding our outer posture when we gather for worship. I set my heart on God and adjusted my stance to reflect it. And suddenly, I was free. I fought for focus and self forgetfulness through the rest of the service, and I was rewarded my a beautiful time of worship. As we sat down and prepared to hear from the Word, another thought crossed my mind. We need to talk more about our posture in worship, both internal and external. I need to blog a bit.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll post some thoughts and reflections on how the Bible speaks of our posture in worship. I’ll look at several verses and encourage you to work through them with me. I hope you will find it surprising, helpful, and ultimately freeing as we meet to worship our triune God together.

P.S. What do you think I did with my hands? The answer probably isn’t what you’d expect. Maybe I’ll answer that in the next post.

The meanest man in grey fields gone
Behind the set of sun,
Heareth between star and other star,
Through the door of darkness fallen ajar,
The council, eldest of things that are,
The talk of the Three in One.

(from G. K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse, quoted in Fred Sanders’ The Deep Things of God, 80)