Bible Revival: Recommitting Ourselves to One Book

By Kenneth Berding

A passionate plea to make the Bible occupy the central place of a Christians life. It not only explores the current malady of not taking the Bible seriously, but it goes deeper to uncover its reasons.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. A Revival of Learning the Word: Confronting Distractions, Priorities, and the Pretext of Being Too Busy

2. A Revival of Valuing the Word: Confronting Haziness, Self-Sufficiency, and the Perception That the Bible Isnt Enough

3. A Revival of Understanding the Word: Confronting Superficiality, Superiority, and the Assumption That It Should Come Easily

4. A Revival of Applying the Word: Confronting Special Interests, Therapeutism, and a Lack of Dependence on the Spirit

5. A Revival of Obeying the Word: Confronting Sentimentality, Avoidance, and the Opinion That I Have the Right to Decide

6. A Revival of Speaking the Word: Confronting Fear, Excuses, and the Idea That Its the Responsibility of the Clergy

Appendix A: The Easiest Way to Memorize the Bible

Appendix B: A Method for Attaining Bible Fluency

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781683592037

Kenneth Berding

Kenneth Berding (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is associate professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology of Biola University. He is the author of "Polycarp and Paul, "What are Spiritual Gifts" and "Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Ken and his family reside in La Mirada, California.

Book preview

FLUENCY

PREFACE

In 1859 and then again in 1904 a deep and penetrating work of the Holy Spirit engulfed the country of Wales. Wales had already seen many other periods when God had moved in revival—perhaps more than any geographical location in the history of Christianity. But these two spiritual awakenings were two of the most significant. In both cases, the Holy Spirit produced a profound increase of love for God among professing Christians and moved in the hearts of tens of thousands of people who did not know Christ, bringing them to repentance and a relationship with God. But there was a striking difference between the two revivals.

Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge compared the two awakenings and commented about Evan Roberts, the best-known preacher of the second: Roberts, a gifted exhorter who led meetings filled with prayers, singing, and testimonies, did not prioritize Bible teaching. Compared to the 1859 revival, fewer Welsh preachers taught biblical doctrine. Instead, many new converts sought mystical experiences.1

The positive effects of the first revival both for the church and for society persisted for many years. The second revival, lacking an emphasis on the Bible, was gone as quickly as it came. Hansen and Woodbridge remarked about the second awakening: After several years, Wales returned to its previous state of religious indifference. The second revival was like a sparkler that spouted brilliant colors for a moment, sputtered, then grew suddenly dark.

The difference between the two revivals was the Bible.

God’s people today talk about the need for revival as they have at other times when love for God and passion for Christ has waned. I deeply long for it myself. In fact, when God grabbed hold of my heart as a teenager, one of my deepest yearnings, and the prayer from which God would not release me, was that God would do a work of revival during my lifetime. This past year I have been reinvigorated in my desire and prayer that God would do this. Who can question that we need a revival of the Holy Spirit? But it is my conviction that we will never see anything that lasts—that is, we will never see anything worth calling a revival of the Holy Spirit—unless we recommit ourselves to the Bible. We need a revival of the Bible.

I started writing this book during the planning stages for a six-week series on the Bible at the church where I serve as an overseer, Whittier Hills Baptist Church. The leaders of the church searched for a book that could augment the preaching and teaching ministry that would take place during the series. We thought that there would be no problem finding such a book; after all, there are scores of books written about the Bible. But it turns out that most of those books fall into one of three categories. They are either books about how to interpret the Bible, or about the doctrine of Scripture, or devotional books that somehow use the Bible. We looked in vain for an appropriate book about learning, living, and loving the Bible that would teach and stir the hearts of our people. Once we realized that such a book didn’t exist (or at least we were unable to find it), I became increasingly concerned and began to pray that God would allow me to write it myself. The result is the book before you.

This book can be used in a church context or as a way to draw in students who are taking an introductory college class on the Bible. It is ideal for use in small groups, women’s and men’s Bible studies, and for the individual who wants to be stirred and guided into a greater commitment to the Bible.

This book answers the question of why we need a revival of the Bible in our generation and what it will take to see it happen. Each chapter addresses one aspect of our present lack of engagement with the Bible. In chapter 1 I lay out how little we actually know about the Bible in our generation and why we will spiritually die if we don’t address this issue soon. In chapter 2 I describe where our underlying distrust of the Bible comes from and why we question its clarity and doubt that it can speak a message to our complex twenty-first century setting. In chapters 3 and 4 I explain why we struggle to understand and apply the Bible and sketch out a framework for how to interpret and apply the Bible well. In chapter 5 I tackle the sensitive subject of obedience to the Bible. Finally, in chapter 6 I issue a call for us to not only read, learn, and obey the Word but also to talk about it regularly with each other. The book closes with two appendices, one describing the easiest way to memorize the Bible and the second on a method for reaching Bible fluency.

What makes this book different from other books is that I make an effort to probe into the underlying spiritual causes of our present predicament. I don’t simply state that we need a revival of the Bible; I also try to uncover the hidden spiritual issues that brought us to this unfortunate place. Accordingly, the last large section of each chapter is called Digging Deeper. I will lovingly meddle a bit in your spiritual life with the goal of helping you become more God-honoring in your engagement with the Bible.

I pray that a recommitment to the Bible, God’s Holy Word, will lay the foundation for a true and lasting work of the Holy Spirit in our generation.

1

A REVIVAL OF LEARNING THE WORD

Confronting Distractions, Priorities,

and the Pretext of Being Too Busy

Stacey Irvine ate almost nothing but chicken nuggets for fifteen years. She never tasted fruits or vegetables. She occasionally supplemented her diet with french fries. One day her tongue started to swell and she couldn’t catch her breath. She was rushed to the hospital, her airway was forced open, and they stuck an IV in her arm to start pumping in the nutrients she needed. After saving her life, the medical staff sent her home, but not before they warned her that she needed to change her diet or prepare herself for an early death.

I’ve heard people call it a famine. A famine of knowing the Bible. During a famine people waste away for lack of sustenance. Some people die. Those who remain need nourishment; they often require someone from the outside to assist them in halting their downward spiral toward the point of no return. They need to be revived. And if they have any hope of remaining alive over time, their life situation has to change in conspicuous ways.

During normal famines people don’t have access to the food they need. But Stacey Irvine could have eaten anything she wanted. She had resources, opportunity, and presumably all the encouragement she needed to eat well. Can you imagine what would happen if all of us decided to follow her example and discontinued eating all but nonnutritious foodstuff? If we happened to beat the odds and live, we undoubtedly would suffer in the long run from nutrition-related chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Like Stacey Irvine, we’re killing ourselves. It’s surely not for lack of resources; nevertheless, we are in fact starving ourselves to death.

We applauded, prayed for, and sent money to support Brother Andrew when he began smuggling carloads of Bibles into countries hostile to God’s Word. We have searched out languages that have never been written down and have painstakingly reduced those languages to writing for the single purpose of introducing the Word of God to those who speak other languages. We’ve been zealous about people getting their hands on personal copies of the Bible ever since the fires of the Protestant Reformation were stoked by new translations. Martin Luther dedicated most of the later years of his life to translating the Bible into vernacular German. William Tyndale literally gave his life so people could read God’s Word in English. And all throughout the previous fifteen centuries scores of our predecessors spent countless hours, months, years, and sometimes lifetimes copying by hand thousands upon thousands of biblical manuscripts one line at a time. We Christians are ardent in our conviction that everyone should have access to the Word of God. A growing presence of online resources making the Word available in multiple formats is contemporary evidence of our commitment. So how is it that we’re living in the middle of a famine?

Christians used to be known as people of one book.1 Sure, they read, studied, and shared other books. But the book they cared about more than all others combined was the Bible. They memorized it, meditated on it, talked