Five Unhelpful Ways to Study/Read the Bible

Here are some common unhelpful ways to read and study God's Word:

• The Xanax Approach. Feel anxious? Read Philippians 4:6. Feel tired? Read Matthew 11:28. The Xanax Approach treats the Bible as if it exists to make us feel better. Bible study is about finding comfort for my issues. The problem with this approach is that I ask how the Bible can serve me, rather than how I can serve the God it proclaims.
  

Your Time in the Sun/Son

There is an app that calculates your sunburn risk. You fill in your region, enter your skin type, and say whether you are wearing sunscreen or not. The ...

Study: People Prefer Electrocution to Quiet Time

We all crave a "little peace and quiet," from time to time, but a study sheds (ahem) shocking light on how hard it actually is for us to deal ...

Our Greatest Need—to Behold God

Perhaps the greatest thing we can do as a Christian community is to behold. Behold our God. Behold his creation. The church has exiled beauty from its ...

Jewish Story about Resting on God's Heart

According to an old Jewish story, once upon a time there was a four-year-old boy named Mortakai who refused to attend school and study Hebrew. Whenever ...

The Lost Treasure of 'Purposeless Walking'

A BBC article bemoans the death of "purposeless walking," that ambulatory habit of thinkers and creatives since time immemorial. In wheel-transit ...

Subconscious Triggers Shape Our Behavior

Most of us would like to assume that we're the masters of our own thoughts. But marketing professor Jonah Berger argues that we're influenced ...

Death Row Inmate on the Bible's Power

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. writes in “Reading for Preaching”:

I was visiting on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. I asked ...

The Man behind the Designated Driver Campaign

In the 1980s, Jay Winsten, a professor at Harvard, had learned about a program in Scandinavian countries called the "designated driver." At ...

Farmers Need to Pause and Sharpen Their Blades

Gordon MacDonald writes in "Cut and Sharpen”:

Once, when my wife, Gail, and I were hiking the high meadows of the Swiss Alps, we saw two farmers ...