“When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to Himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than He loves his Son! …God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that He loves us.”

–Sinclair Ferguson

“If I were asked the secret of the attractive power of the crucified Savior, I should answer that it is invincible love. If all the rivers of human love did run together, they could not fill such another ocean of love as was in the heart of Jesus the Savior. That it is—the unique, unrivaled love—that draws men to Jesus.”

–Charles Spurgeon

Nehemiah unveils his new management strategy, "Sword + Shovel: The Secure & Productive Workplace." (Nehemiah 4)

Note: Links to scripture in this post point to the ESV Online Study Bible, which is currently offering a free trial for the month of March. I wrote briefly about the ESV Study Bible back around Christmas and only recommend it more heartily now. 

This month, I read the “return from exile” block (Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther) for the first time and enjoyed it very much. The literary styles, mixing first person narratives and non-linear chronology, make it a neat and unique portion of scripture. I plan to revisit Esther because of its rich storytelling, but I particularly dug Nehemiah. The character of godly servanthood and how it fits into God-centered spiritual revival is something that the book particularly exemplifies, and those are themes that have been bouncing around in my head and heart for some time now. Revival is a broad topic that I’m just beginning to learn about and get into, but fully living for God in all aspects of my life is something that’s been in the forefront of my thought since I was born again. In this short series of posts, I want to reflect on a few key aspects of Nehemiah’s example as a godly servant that really spoke to me.

True to the literary flair employed in all three books, Nehemiah starts dramatically, quickly moving along to the scene of Nehemiah’s entreating of King Artaxerxes and his approval that sets everything else in motion. But there is a lot of information that gives perspective when looking at this key moment. Nehemiah only had the audience of the king of Persia because of his office as cupbearer. It didn’t sound like that difficult or shiny a job to me at first, but apparently the cupbearer also functioned as a coordinator of the king’s security. He wasn’t just a servant whose head the king balanced his drink on for kicks. They had a close enough relationship that ol’ Xerxes noticed his long face and was moved to inquire about it. Nehemiah was trusted, valued, and favored. He must have possessed exceptional character, capability and education to have risen through the ranks to achieve this honored position. All of this played into not only Nehemiah’s leadership acumen to rebuild Jerusalem, but in creating the opportunity for the task itself.

Nehemiah’s spiritual preparation is revealed alongside his professional preparation. In his reaction and despair at the news of Jerusalem’s state, and in the content of his prayer, we can see that Nehemiah knew God deeply in His word and in prayer. He knew the majesty of the Lord, thus he understood the severity of wickedness of the people of Israel. He did not spare himself or his father’s house in this indictment. But he also knew the Lord’s promises and His ways. And so from the very bottom of his heart, Nehemiah cried out to the Lord in prayer, asking Him to remember His promise, to deliver His people, to make His name dwell among them again. Nehemiah mourned and fasted at this for months. This was no passing burden that bummed him out for a week, this was a prolonged period of spiritual torment and nakedness. This is important to remember when we come across the actual moment of his asking, which passes in just a short paragraph of scripture. There is a line that the first-person recounting really adds weight to; when Artaxerxes asks what’s troubling him, Nehemiah tells us that he was very much afraid. Though he’d been praying and seeking and begging the Lord day after day for this exact chance for months, he was scared. What he was asking could be perceived as disloyalty and might bring him harm. In this moment of truth, Nehemiah lifted up a prayer in the space of a breath–“So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king…”– and found the courage to present his request. Would he have found the courage if he had been praying for only 1 month, or 3 weeks, or 5 days? We don’t know. But we know that he prayed for months, and when the time came his faith and trust in God stood firm, and his request was granted. 

Despite the many other difficult situations that Nehemiah would come to encounter, there are no other instances of him revealing his fear apart from this. But I find this sole and early instance a very personally comforting and applicable insight. I used to feel a constant and deep sense of inadequacy in serving the Lord because of fear. Fear of failing, fear of not measuring up, fear of not doing things “the right way” (i.e. perfectly) and fear of not being prepared or equipped in comparison to others.  It was paralzying, and it made serving very tough at times, even in minor tasks. I believed that if God wanted me to do something, He would give me some kind of magic confirmation, a big sign in the sky or a text message, and that I’d have no doubts and no uncertainties and do it perfectly, the first time, every time. When I did not receive such a confirmation (and I never did, though He may have sent a text when my phone was on the fritz back in January), I’d begin to doubt if what I was getting involved in was really the right decision, despite a host of other indicators and evidence that the Lord was indeed blessing what I was doing. That fear and anxiety would build on itself, and I would inevitably begin to condemn myself for not having the courage to make the perfect choice in whatever situation I was worrying about.

I still see this pattern in my life, particularly in considering a future in ministry. Fear and anxiety fester where faith and trust do not yet reach. But the Lord leads us there, shining His light brighter and deeper in our hearts, so we can remember the truth that fear tries to make us forget; I may not have the courage, I may not have the capabilities, but I do have Christ. And as I know Him more, I trust Him more, and that trust manifests itself not in perfect capability, but in obedience. That is when my courage is found. Nehemiah’s faith bore courage in the face of  the most powerful man in the world, when the danger of harm was clear and present, a moment when fear of man was most intense and justified. Will not the courage to step out in faith be available in our key moments, as uncomfortable or uncertain as we may be, if only we know and love and trust the Lord enough to say yes to the callings He lays on our hearts? In business, they say success is when preparation meets opportunity, but for the servant of God, success is when preparation and opportunity meet trust and obedience.

“Page CXVI is a project started with the idea of making hymns accessible and known again. They are some of the richest, most meaningful, and moving pieces of music ever written.”

I enjoy many different forms of worship in song, but rearranged hymns with a more contemporary style are probably my favorite. Give them a listen and spread the word!

Update: I just read that “Page CXVI” refers to the point in The Magician’s Nephew when Aslan sings Narnia into creation. That raises this band 10 notches on the awesome-meter in my book.

“As Aslan sang Nothing into Narnia, the sky suddenly blazed with innumerable stars, which seemed to be singing triumphantly. He sang ‘Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.’”

HARRY:
“You are beautiful.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.
You’re my dream.”

These romantically charged lines bear deeply tragic connotation in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, one of the most harrowing and affecting movies I’ve ever seen.  I’m very selective in recommending it, and I only do so with some very heavy caveats. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby, jr., the film has some extremely graphic scenes and is unsparing in its portrayal of drug use and its effects. But beyond that, I feel some people simply will not understand the movie.  It’s not a junkie movie, nor is it strictly an anti-drug movie. Both labels are convenient but much too narrow to convey the film’s message and weight. Ultimately, Requiem for a Dream is not about drugs. It is about sin. Sin is the protagonist, a deliberate and relentless force that is progressively revealed through the narrative and the lives and relationships of the film’s characters until its face, so to speak, is fully visible.

Requiem is told in two parallel narratives centered around four principle characters, structured in three acts that correspond to the seasons. In Summer, the opening act, we meet Harry Goldfarb, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone, all habitual drug users in their mid-late twenties. Harry and Marion are in love, and are looking to escape their situations and build their dream life together. Through a drug-dealing scheme with Tyrone, Harry plans to buy Marion a store where she can sell her clothing designs. As the plan begins to bear fruit and they quickly find themselves with money, independence and the power to influence and change their lives, they fall deeper in love, investing more of themselves in the other. A wonderful future awaits them, their dreams seemingly in reach of their outstretched fingers.

The parallel secondary narrative follows Sara Goldfarb, Harry’s widowed mother. Sara lives alone in an apartment and spends her days watching game shows on television and eating chocolate. Her only contact with Harry is when he comes by to steal and pawn her television set for drug money, which apparently he has been doing for years. When Sara is asked by the pawnshop owner why she doesn’t contact the police to put a stop to it, she says that she “couldn’t do that– Harry’s my only child. He’s all I have.” One day, Sara receives a junk phone call informing her that she’s “won” a chance to be on her favorite game show. Her hope and excitement get the best of her, and she frets about wearing her favorite red dress on the show. Obsessed with losing weight but unable to deal with her appetite and cravings, she turns to a doctor who prescribes her a heavy regiment of diet pills (amphetamines).

In Fall, circumstances begin to take a turn for the worse. The local drug supply depletes and as Harry and Marion battle withdrawal, their hope is no longer for  love and fulfilmment, but simply getting back to the glow of Summer, when their dreams felt so close. Having to deal with reality is not something they are used to, and soon it proves too painful for them. We watch as their relationship begins to bitterly and steadily erode. Eventually, their desperation becomes so dire that Harry sacrifices Marion in a profound and vile way to get the funds for a big drug score. In the same way that the progression of addiction plays out among the trio of junkies, Sara’s addiction to the glow from the pills and the hope from her dream of being on television takes hold of her and she descends into psychosis. When Winter finally arrives, we know that any hope is long gone for all of them, and we must watch as they finally arrive at the destination their choices have brought them to– destruction. The depths of depravity and degradation that their collective and individual fates bring them to are portrayed explicitly and unforgettably. 

Now that we’ve surveyed the plot, next time we’ll begin to explore the major aspects of sin that Requiem so effectively portrays, starting with how the lines quoted at the top of the post show one of sin’s most immediate and ultimate consequences– isolation.

Michael Liu’s
ELECTRIC NANCYLAND

1. Breakout (feat. Benny Sin)

2. The Seed 3.0 (feat. Marvin Lee)

3. Get Outta Here (feat. Van Morrison)

4. Beat You Foo (feat. Dr. Dre)

5. Get Outta Here Before I Beat You Foo Cuz I’m Rad (feat. Eric Clapton)

6. In Christ Alone (feat. Ann Hsiao)

7. Nancy Loves Me, I Win (feat. your melted face and Nancy’s melted heart)

No, we did not actually see Danica Patrick at the NASCAR race. But she's the only driver I know by name, so I feel justified in attaching this picture.

I went to Fontana to watch a NASCAR race on Sunday.

I’ve never watched NASCAR on TV or been remotely interested in doing so. The closest I’ve come to experiencing the sport came from watching the Ricky Bobby movie. But when some comped tickets became available, I figured why not?

Well, now I know why not– because NASCAR is boring and I don’t enjoy it. It’s hours of watching cars go around a track very quickly, many times. That’s pretty much it. At first, I figured it might be like watching a baseball game, in that part of the appeal is getting together with friends and family to sit around consuming food that’s bad for you and chatting. But the cars are so loud that you can’t really carry a conversation; it’s like having a picnic next to a blast furnace. The cars zoom by you every few seconds so the sound never really lets up. The cars themselves are initially impressive in how fast they’re going, roaring by at over 175 mph. But this eventually gets old, i.e. after the first 2 or 3 laps.

The more interesting experience was sampling the NASCAR fan culture. Mullets, faux-NASCAR driver jackets covered in sponsor patches, flannel and TAPOUT were prominently on display. I felt like I was walking around a dream that compressed my entire downtown Riverside Home Depot work experience, or in the “909 Land” section of some Americana-themed amusement park.

We only watched the race for about 30 minutes before sparing our ears and heading down to check out the exhibit areas. But a dad and his son in front of me provided the best moment of the day. It looked like it was the kid’s first time because dad was busily pointing things out and explaining things to him as the cars lined up. Once the race started, he hoisted up junior (who couldn’t have been older than 6) on his shoulders and encouraged him to cheer as the cars zipped by, which junior did first with a single finger in the air and eventually yelling with both arms raised. I watched as he took in the race before being lowered down, told dad how much fun he was having, and then returned to his perch to keep cheering and waving. That kid probably went to bed that night thinking NASCAR is the coolest thing in the world, that he’s going to be the fastest race car driver ever when he grows up, and most importantly, that he has the coolest dad in the world. Who cares if someone like me scoffs at it? To him, NASCAR is now part of why he loves his father and how he knows his father loves him, part of being an American, and part of being a man that nobody is ever going to take away from him. Seeing that, I couldn’t help but reflect on God’s design for the relationship and role of the family unit and how life, identity and culture are cultivated, shared and perpetuated within that framework.

It also makes me feel like I just wrote a pitch for one of those “This is Our Country” truck commercials.

Somewhere in here is my autographed copy of The Babysitter's Club: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.

I signed up on PaperBackSwap.com and I think it might have been one of the best decisions I’ve made this year.

PaperBackSwap is an online service that connects you with other readers to trade unwanted books by mail. It works on a point system. Each member lists the books they have up for trade; after you list 10 books, you get 2 starting points that you can use to request books from other members at the rate of 1 point per book. Once you’ve requested a book from a member, PaperBackSwap will notify and provide them with a mailing label to print out and send that book to you. All you pay is postage for the books that other members request from you. You get a point for each book you mail out.

I’m a book hoarder; I kept almost all of my books from college because “perhaps they will come in handy one day.” And the majority of them certainly have, if your definition of handy is “sitting on the shelves cluttering up space and collecting dust, never to be opened again.” Despite the fact that I never touched most of them, I still liked having them on the shelf. It gave me a vague sense of “learnedness” (I suspect that it’s this same feeling which keeps me from fully embracing libraries; I just like owning my books). But eventually, feeling good about myself no longer justified the amount of useful space they were taking up. Earlier this year I shucked all my unread material into a big box with the intent of eventually cataloging and then sealing them up for storage. Even in this burst of pragmatism, I couldn’t quite bring myself to donate or discard them.

Then I found PaperBackSwap. Over the weekend, I listed about 20 unwanted books and a dozen of them have already been requested and mailed out, and I have 4 “new” books coming my way. The service lets you set up watch lists of books that aren’t currently listed and will notify you as soon as a member puts a copy up for request. At last, my shelf can be rid of those infernal Bronte sisters and their “boxing of ears,” and I can replace them with literature that has true significance like Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack: A Triple Helping of Classic Garfield Humor: Garfield’s Survival of the Fattest, Garfield Beefs Up and Garfield Thinks Big.

Update: You can keep abreast of the books I’m currently offering to the PBS community here. If you see something you’d like, just let me know and I’ll give it to you personally if it hasn’t been requested of me yet. After talking with an aspiring librarian friend who has a more generous, share-centric view of owning books, I feel bad that I haven’t previously made my books available to friends. I still have a ton of books to offer up, so keep an eye on that URL and just holler if you want a book.

On a whim, I picked up an old college short story anthology and read “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton the other night. If you’ve got 10 mintutes and would like to be dazzled, give it a read; the full text is available.

Masterful, isn’t it? Reading it reminded me of why I originally wanted to be a writer in college and why I love the medium of the short story so much. It’s a perfectly tuned and timed piece, with exacting and effective word choice and every sentence in its proper place, all of which comes together with a bang in the space of one concluding line.

I miss reading fiction. I realized that even though I’m actually reading more now than I ever have before and have more books “in queue,” I haven’t read any new fiction since finishing college. How dull. My college self would have truly considered my present situation “selling out.”

Before I start, you should really listen to, read or watch the video of Sinclair Ferguson’s sermon, “The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An Exposition of James 3:1-12” from the 2008 Desiring God National Conference. Even if the topic of profanity doesn’t apply to you, you still should check it out, it rocks. In fact, if you are going to choose between the two you should just close this blog right now and go there instead. I won’t mind, and it’ll be much better for you.

I wrote the last post yesterday and meant to get a second one out during the weekend. But just a couple of hours after posting it, I went to my bible study methods class at LABTS and the chapel message was on, lo and behold, James 3:1-12. All of the ideas that I’ve been thinking and reading about in the past couple of weeks were dropped right on my head again. So here I am.

I’m a bit uneasy over writing about the F-word as a post topic on a blog that has my name attached to it. I have no control over who might read this or in what context they will see or hear about it. But I hope that anyone who reads this understands where I am coming from. I am not writing about it for shock value or to be flippant. I want to talk about it honestly, and I want to talk about it intelligently. The word itself is a stark representation of negative speech, so it makes for an appropriate starting point before looking into more subtle and complex issues of speech and communication. Finally, I’m writing about the F-word because it’s more than an academic issue to me; it’s something I’ve personally dealt with in my life and still deal with in some form, and that is something I want to change. As James Baldwin said, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing is changed until it is faced.

If that’s okay with you, go ahead and hit “Read More.” If not, I still encourage you to check out the sermons I linked to in the introduction of this post.

The biblical truth Ferguson so eloquently reminds us of is that true change in character and conduct in regards to righteousness only comes from the indwelling and transforming work of God in the heart of the believer. This work begins once the believer accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as savior and Lord and continues for the duration of his mortal life. There is no other way that we can hope to defeat the pull of our sinful desires and habits. I mentioned before how I came to experience this in the area of speech upon coming to know Jesus Christ and having Him take control of my life. But deeper than just the choice of words I spoke in, the very thoughts and meanings I could feel and see in language itself underwent a transformation. Words like “love” and “joy” and “family” and “peace” that I had spoken through my lips before now carried wonderful and tremendous significance. It truly felt like I was speaking them for the first time, that they were really flowing directly from my heart when I uttered them because I was actually experiencing them for what they are and whom they are from. Conversely, the pollution of negativity that had so freely poured out of my mouth before I was saved just wasn’t there anymore. I no longer thought or felt them. I don’t mean to say I didn’t have negative thoughts or feelings, I still did and I certainly do today. But they were no longer who I was or am. I remember in the early weeks of my Christian life, just thinking of the ideas my old speech represented and how they so tellingly reflected the person I was before I was saved literally made me feel sick.

But though the heart is changed, the habits of ungodliness linger. And bad habits die hard. Sadly, the F-word has been the hardest word to excise from the recesses of my mental vocabulary. Paradoxically, the fact that it is the worst word I know makes it much more difficult to completely eliminate than other profane words. Most other common profane words are vulgar/extreme expressions of another word or idea that can be freely expressed with language that does not offend. But the F-word doesn’t “slot into”/replace a single word or idea as neatly. It has a stated definition of the act of sexual intercourse and is sometimes used as such. But it’s also used to describe any unfortunate situation perpetrated on an unwilling subject, as in being cheated or ripped off (“I got F’d by that shady salesman,” etc). It’s the strongest form of verbal attack one can lay on another (“F you”). It’s also a deeply pervasive and popular word despite, or perhaps because of, its offensive status. Overhearing enough conversations or even a direct Google search for the word will return a very wide range of uses and contexts that give the word wholly distinct meanings. Researching the word’s etymology, evolution and social progression is actually pretty interesting, but more so for the different theories and thoughts surrounding the word. There’s not much definitive agreement to be found in any of it, whether in the topics of its origin or social definition.

But until recently, its absolute definition was irrelevant to me. It was simply the most powerful and versatile word I had in my vocabulary to describe a negative situation or attach a negative connotation. And it still is. When I’m at my angriest, when I’m most frustrated and bitter, it’s the special bullet that my mind pulls out and loads into the mental chamber, to be fired out by the tongue at who or whatever I believe is the cause of my present negative circumstance. The word may never actually leave my lips but it’s still almost a mental reflex to summon it in to the forefront of my mind in the worst of situations.

But just because I, or society at large, do not assign it a meaning does not mean that it doesn’t have one. I can blindly say that it’s just a word that represents negativity, and that it’s only because society considers it offensive that I shouldn’t use it– it’s not a big deal. It sounds pretty convincing when you’re telling yourself this to appease a guilty conscience or put off the arduous and unpleasant task of changing. But the fact is that it does mean something, even if its definition is inferred from its context in popular use and never directly stated by an authoritative source like a dictionary. And that definition is actually quite simple and clear: the F-word is the antonym of love. Where love represents the utmost of happiness, pleasure and joy, F implies extreme negativity in the form of pain, hate and frustration. To love involves sharing, giving, humbling, sacrificing; to F is to take, to exert upon for ones own gain, to violate. Love connotes longevity, development and commitment; F is very much the here-and-now. Love is attachment, bonding, joining; F is repulsion, destruction, violence. Love is peace, F is conflict. The F-word is the worst word we have because it is the word that represents the deepest ideas our minds can generate or comprehend that are most disparate from love. Love, which finds its origin and ultimate expression in the character, nature and example of the Lord Jesus Christ. So beyond our society’s promotion of it, or its expression both tacit and explicit, the F-words very existence is a dishonor to God. And as a man who follows the Lord Jesus Christ, it is not a word that should leave my lips, run through my mind, or represent what’s in my heart.

So that’s why I want to change. Now, how?

So something that I’ve found increasingly confusing and disturbing is an inability to completely eradicate all traces of it from my communication and internal thinking. In periods of heavy stress and irritation, there are words that go through my mind and stop just short of my mouth. In some instances of unexpected pain or frustration, the words jump right off my tongue before I’m even conscious that they’re coming. Initially, I dismissed these instances as residue of bad habits or practiced sin that had ingrained itself. It bothered me, but I didn’t see any direct way of dealing with it the way you’d go about dealing with other bad habits. I knew that deepening my relationship and walk with the Lord was what had originally broken the primacy of profanity in my life, so I knew that would be the most effective and important element in solving this particular habit of sin, as it is with all other forms and instances. But after listening to several messages focusing on the importance and implication of words and language, I’m convicted that not only is it possible to directly target the area of words and profanity in my life, but that it’s necessary and it’s something I’ve put off for too long. This includes much more than just the kind of words I want to cut out. But I feel working to excise obviously negative language from my external and internal vocabulary is an important first step.

This brings up a question that often comes up in discussions of profanity. Why is profanity bad? What makes using certain words sin? The first layer of this discussion is usually the issue of “social acceptance.” But it goes way beyond that. If you do a Google search for the f-word (and I’m not saying you should) or its common phrases, you’ll find a wide variety of usage across personal blogs, discussion forums, essays, and even visual art. You’ll hear the word almost everywhere you go, from a high school campus to the halls of white-collar corporations. It’s becoming increasingly present and permissible in entertainment, not just in usage but in permissiveness in official regulation. The word itself is hard to pin down. It’s amorphous in its meaning depending on the context; it’s commonly used simply as an intensifier or even punctuation. Social acceptance is a surface issue and a surface question. What exactly makes it bad in the eyes of the Lord?

Questions like this are what’s on my mind right now and what I’m looking into through my own experience, other peoples’ discussions and thoughts, and of course the Word. As the rusty wheels of my mind continue to churn and grind, hopefully it’ll start spitting something out that’s coherent and legible for next time.

This tome of the Word of God will truly "divide joints and marrow"-- if you drop it on your foot. Oof!

The bible itself is MASSIVE. I got the hardcover edition which makes it even bigger. It’s over 2,700 pages and it’s packed with all kinds of notes, diagrams, timelines, tables, full-color illustrations, detailed maps and cross-references. The introductory articles and outlines (PDF link) for each book are pretty in-depth. Purchasing it also gives you access to the online version, where cross-references are hyperlinked for convenient study; a nice bonus that I’m looking forward to using.

Looking at my NKJ MacArthur study bible that my parents gave me as a birthday gift when I turned 16, I cringe at some of the margin notes and passage highlight choices I made in high school. I have no idea what I was thinking or feeling in calling out some of these choice passages. For some unfathomable reason I found it necessary to highlight about 60% of the first half of the book of Joshua (only the first half, as apparently I didn’t finish the second half). Seriously, it looks like someone splashed yellow paint on these pages. In other examples, I remember only too well what I was thinking and it makes me cringe even more. I was apparently quite keen on finding ways to self-righteously reproach and rebuke my friends; I highlighted Christ’s prescription for dealing with a sinning brother in Matthew 18 without touching anything else in the chapter. This included Christ’s prescription to become as little children to enter the Kingdom, His adamant words against allowing sin to the degree of plucking out an eye or lopping off a hand, and His brief and beautiful parable of the lost sheep and the shepherd’s joy to rescue it. Most ironically, and shamefully, Peter’s question regarding forgiveness and the parable of the unforgiving servant which just so happens to be the very next passage also stands untouched. Yeah, yeah, Jesus, I’ve heard all that stuff before, I know it– just tell me how I can go tell so-and-so how he offended me and how to get other people on my side, too.

Thankfully, my methods have developed somewhat from those mysteriously highlighter-happy days, and learning to study the bible is an adventure that the Lord guides me through every day (okay, not every day, but I’m trying). It’s still a rather fuzzy science, though, and I’m always looking for new practices to maximize the effectiveness of my time in the Word. Here are some methods that I’ve found to be quite helpful (and some not so helpful):

1. Colors!

I bought a 4-color + .05mm pen/pencil to use with my planner and it’s actually become my most valuable bible study tool. Early on, I was loathe to sully the pages of my bible but I’ve since shed that attitude and mark up my bible with vigor. As I read through a book I’ll underline passages depending on what personal category they fall into.

Blue: default color for call-out. I like to circle the first time a person’s name shows up, except for genealogies. In that case I just circle names that I recognize.

Green: personally memorable, touching or convicting passages. Devotional or reflective margin notes.

Red: passages that clearly point to the main theme of the bible, Jesus Christ and the gospel. Key doctrinal passages or monumental moments in the history of God’s revelation to us, prophecies pointing to the cross, God’s divine purpose of grace. So far this is working out really well, though books like Romans and John have pages that look like they’re bleeding.

Black: cross-reference summaries, misc notes. This is why I’m looking forward to using the digital version with linked cross-references; looking them up manually really eats up time but is so necessary.

Pencil: Questions, hopefully to be answered later in black.

2. Outlining

When I first started studying the bible I would focus chapter-by-chapter but found I was coming away with very little grasp on the big picture of books. This was especially frustrating given some of the seemingly random placement of chapter breaks in some books. Can someone explain to me why that is, again?

Reading through the book and outlining on the first pass before going back and digging into each chapter has been very helpful. I haven’t been able to try it on any of the OT books yet and am still deciding how to go about it (e.g. Exodus seems to outline fine, until you get to oh, the last 20 chapters).

3. The “Bible Rolodex”

This was an idea that sounded awesome on paper but didn’t work out that way. When I was studying English at UC Riverside I would find it helpful to write character sheets documenting the plot arc and development of each character in a novel as I read through it. This paid off big when writing papers. I wanted to do the same for the bible and keep a “bible rolodex” that would document and chart the developments of each and every person mentioned in the bible that I could look up any time. In addition to the study benefits, I figured when I bump into some of them in Heaven I’ll at least be able to jump start conversation and not have to greet them with an awkward, “So what was it like to know David? Oh uh, sorry, you were one of the people exiled in the Babylonian captivity? Never mind.”

Since our Sunday bible study class was embarking on a 2.5 year trek through the bible starting with Genesis at the time, I figured I was ideally positioned to start the rolodex and update it as we went along. Unfortunately, this ambitious and naive endeavor pretty met its end rather quickly. Starting with the genealogies, there were just way too many names that I had a strong feeling I’d never see in the bible again. This led to inconsistent use and trying to “guess” or retroactively update characters after they proved to be recurring, if I even remembered their first appearance or bothered to write it in. In the end, my rolodex project was counted among the poor souls who met their miserable end wandering in the wilderness in Numbers, never to see the Promised Land (which in retrospect was a good thing; there’s a ton more names in Joshua).

4. Not Reading the Commentaries

This is a skill and area of discernment I still struggle in developing and employing. My pastor recommended it to me early on as general bible study advice. Wrestle with the text first, he said, and allow yourself to ask questions and to not know what other people have answered with yet. Yeah, okay, that sounds good, except for one important detail– I don’t like not knowing. The first impulse is still to immediately glance down and see what so-and-so theologian has to say about it.

It took time, and the purchase of a standard bible with no notes or commentary to use side-by-side when the temptation was too great, but it was very valuable advice. Wondering what the heck God means in a given passage and waiting for Him to answer through the book itself or through cross-references is incalculably more rewarding, enriching and equipping–but sometimes frustrating–a method. It’s frustrating because sometimes I just don’t find the answer or can’t find it in the manner I want to get it– NOW! But those sublime moments of stumbling onto a cross reference that suddenly snaps two floating pieces of the puzzle in your mind together– those are what I’m cheating myself out of by cutting corners, I try to tell myself. As Dr. Mohler puts it, “A first principle of interpreting the Bible is to interpret the Bible by the Bible. In other words, to allow the Bible to interpret itself text by text.”

5. Bible School

Not surprisingly, taking classes at the Los Angeles Bible Training School is probably the single biggest source of the development of my bible study methods. My two professors really pounded “the sufficiency of the Word” into our heads. Just as enriching as the actual class curriculums is the underlying education by practice/osmosis of how to better study the bible. Hopefully that means my next class, Bible Study Methods, will give a double helping of improved understanding in absorbing the Word.

I’ve always had something of a free-flowing, inner-dialoguing mind with interests and humor that many would describe as offbeat and random (though I prefer the term “esoterically erudite”). A personal website seemed the ideal creative outlet. I put my first website up in the summer of 2001, a simple and unattractive space to dump text. I wrote about misadventures at my first job working in a computer parts wholesale warehouse (highlighted by the infamous “nay shut up!” incident), my reaction to 9/11 as it was happening, my feelings of embarking on the much-anticipated adventure of college. Looking back on it, that was really the best website I ever had because it was pure; I really just wrote what I thought and felt and enjoyed doing it very much.

A curious pattern emerged in the following years as I became more ambitious in expanding my vision for what I wanted my website to be. I began spending a disproportionate amount of time on the layout and design of my websites while the actual content being produced sputtered in frequency, quality, and most importantly, honesty. Paralleling my phase in college when I pursued a career as a writer and became more focused on maintaining that phantasmal image rather than actually honing the craft, blogging became an exercise in disingenuity, to the audience and ultimately to myself.

I’m resolving for this one to be different. I don’t exactly know why or how. I don’t have a grand vision for what I want this blog to be. I just want it to be honest– honestly Jonathan Goay. That’s enough for me, and I hope it’ll be enough for you.