Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge...Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge.

Pages: 374-387

Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge...Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge. Proverbs 22:17, 23:12

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-seven: Querying the Text About Paradoxes, Pleasures, and a Transformed Life.  Here, in this final chapter of the book, Piper gives us final encouragements about natural reading of the Bible; he urges "aggressive attentiveness", to look, look and look and to ask questions and seek answers.  He recommends arcing as a mechanism or device to structure our approach.  He then describes how we are to seek not just the "meaning" of the text in terms of the author's intent, but also the "significance" or application.  Looking for significance or application "often sheds light back on the meaning of the text, not just its significance."  This is described as perhaps "merry-go-roundish" as we need to first seek meaning but the meaning may be further illuminate by seeking significance or application.  Piper also urges us to "ask questions about the kind of emotions the author is trying to awaken....[as] everything is meant to move us.  Being moved is part of what Scripture intends.  Piper looks at Proverbs 22:17-24:22 as an example. 

Finally, as we ask questions and seek both the meaning and application of Scripture, Piper wants us to ask "am I being changed in a way that conforms to what this author intended to communicate?  Perhaps more than all the other questions we must ask as we read, this one will put us on our faces in prayer for the supernatural work of God."

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an amazing God indeed and I am amazed at Your creation and that You provide it for my enjoyment and You provide Your Word which feeds me in all ways and I have been transformed by it and blessed by it - thank You Jesus!  I am blessed yet undeserving.  My sin continues, including worry, and other sins.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me. Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your Word for me today and every day.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.

Pages: 365-373

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Psalm 119:103-104

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-six: Propositions: Collections of Nuggets or Links in a Chain.  Here, Piper continues to encourage us to build our natural reading habits by pursing "aggressive attentiveness."  He writes that we can find Biblical authors' intent by looking at the words and phrases used in their context.  Here in this chapter, he goes further by saying - using Paul as an example - that the Bible is is not a string of useful nuggets, instead it is a chain.  He introduces the use of "arcing" as a practical method or device where we "identif[y] the clauses of propositions of a text, figuring out how they relate to each other in the emerging argument, and then labeling them with abbreviations under the arcs that we connected with ever-enlarging arcs as we saw how the pieces of the argument fit together."  Piper provides Biblearc.com as a useful resource.  

As I've grown in my walk with Christ, I've leaned on Matthew 5:6 and felt the truth in this promise as continue to as I read John Piper and his thoughts about how to increase the fruit from our Bible study.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Matthew 5:6

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an awesome God indeed and You HAVE filled and satisfied me!  Thank You Jesus!  I am not deserving for how you feed me in ALL ways.  My sin continues - worry, etc.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith. Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others. Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

Think about what I am saying, because the Lord will give you the ability to understand everything.

Pages: 351-363

Think about what I am saying, because the Lord will give you the ability to understand everything. 2 Timothy 2:7

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-five: Asking Questions about Words and Phrases. Here, Piper seeks to give us practical tips about how to read the Bible naturally.  Before he jumps to this topic, Piper recommends using a Bible translation that seeks to "preserve the forms of structures of the [original] Greek and Hebrew [texts]."  He refers to this as "formal equivalence" and as such he recommends either the ESV or NASB translation with ESV being his personal preference. Piper then jumps into how we should read by "looking for the truth that the author intends to communicate by this selection of words in their arrangement...Words don't have intrinsic meaning.  They get their meaning from usage." A key practical approach is to use a concordance and to "consider...other uses [of the selected words], as they occur, in concentric circles starting with the paragraph or chapter you are studying.  Then consider uses of the word in the same Biblical book.  Then consider uses in other books by the same author." We then should widen the circle to the New or Old Testament then to the entire Bible. Finally, Piper recommends sentence diagramming (see also John Piper on "arcing")as a means to put "every part of a sentence into its author-intended relationship to the others." 

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an awesome God who loves me and who gave me Your Word to feed, sustain, and to sanctify me - thank You Jesus!  What an incredible gift - like the gift of salvation I am undeserving.  My sin continues...worry, etc.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your messages for me today and every day.

Think about what I am saying, because the Lord will give you the ability to understand everything.

Pages: 339-349

Think about what I am saying, because the Lord will give you the ability to understand everything. 2 Timothy 2:7

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-four: Active Reading Means Asking Questions.  Here, Piper continues to unpack his recommendations on natural reading - and how we can read actively and attentively by looking deeply at Scripture.  In this chapter, he focuses on asking questions as we read and by aggressively seeking answers to these question. He writes that we are to "habitually spot things that at first don't make complete sense, feel a disturbance in our minds, and then dig our way down to the beauty of truth."  He pleads that "with the profoundest respect for God's word, and with great confidence in its unity, we spot these puzzles and spare no effort to dig down till we find the unity [(that brings parts of the Bible together)]."

We are warned that "there is a direct correlation between what we understand of God and how intensely we admire him.  You can only muster only so much admiration for someone you don't know.  God is not honored by such admiration." 

He wraps up the chapter by stating that we are to "aggressively ask questions to yourself and to the text.  Little by little, thread by thread, you begin to see the intricately woven fabric of God's revelation.  Over time you will be changed."

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an amazing God and Your Word is treasure indeed, sweeter than honey and more valuable than silver and gold.  I am sustained by Your Word and I see Your glory in Your Word.  Thank You Jesus!  I am not deserving of Your Word or anything You provide for me, particularly salvation - I have sinned gravely and I continue to sin.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

They love the Lord’s teachings, and they think about those teachings day and night...I think about your orders and study your ways...How I love your teachings! I think about them all day long.

Pages: 325-337

They love the Lord’s teachings, and they think about those teachings day and night...I think about your orders and study your ways...How I love your teachings! I think about them all day long. Psalm 1:2, 119:15, 97

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-three: The Power of Patience and Aggressive Attentiveness.  Here, Piper starts to unpack a recommendation that in our goal of reading the Bible naturally, we "form the habit, and develop the patience, to look longer and more carefully than you ever have."  He urges us to read actively vs passively as we become engaged and more alert. He shares colorful stories of how scholars urged him to "look, look, look" at the subject of his study.  He states that "[t]he barrier to seeing the riches of the Scriptures is not owing to the act that more people don't know Greek and Hebrew, but that more people don't have the patience to look, look, look."  This is described as a costly effort but one that yields immense results. Piper quotes a Harvard art history professor - Jennifer Roberts - who recommends that we "develop the patience to 'decelerate' and 'immerse' [ourselves] in attention...[as] patience becomes an active and positive cognitive state...now it is a form of control over the tempo of contemporary life that otherwise controls us. Patience no longer connotes disempowerment-perhaps now patience is power."

More on this topic as Piper continues to unpack this topic in the next chapter tomorrow...

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, Your teachings, Your orders, Your ways, Your Word - all worthy of my full attention, and constant meditation - I seek Your glory in Your word and I seek to both see and savor it - to be glorified by it and of course to worship and please You with my life.  I know I exist to glorify You and I know You love me and saved me.  Thank You Jesus!  I am not deserving of such love and to be saved - it is only through Your grace. My sin continues.  I too often seek my own comfort yet You call me out of my comfort.  Please forgive me Jesus!  Help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for myself today and every day.

Now we did not receive the spirit of the world, but we received the Spirit that is from God so that we can know all that God has given us. And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom but with words taught us by the Spirit. And so we explain spiritual truths to spiritual people.

Pages: 313-323

Now we did not receive the spirit of the world, but we received the Spirit that is from God so that we can know all that God has given us. And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom but with words taught us by the Spirit. And so we explain spiritual truths to spiritual people. 1 Corinthians 2:12-13

This afternoon, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-two: The Ordinary Aim of Reading: God's Intention through Man's Intention. Here, Piper seeks to reinforce what he started in the previous chapters here and here where he explores the ordinary aim of reading and states that we are to focus on what the Biblical authors intended at the time. In this chapter, he focuses on two questions.  One, "[h]ow does the human author's intention related to God's intention as the one who inspired the text?" His answer is that God's intentions are communicated through human intention - scripture "comes in the language of particular human authors in particular times and places" and "God availed himself of the language, style, vocabulary, and peculiar usages of individual biblical writers." In other words, "to grasp what these human authors intended to communicate in their particular historical situation is also to grasp God's own intention for that situation."  Piper also looks at a second question which is "[c]an an author mean more than his is conscious of?" Piper wants us to understand that God "can and does have more in mind to communicate...Yet no author, except God, sees all the necessary implications of what he writes...But that does not disconnect the intentions of God from the vocabulary and habits of writing used by the human authors.  We have no other sure and certain access to the mind of God through the way authors use language to communicate their intentions."

Piper ends by stating that "we must not ignore the urgency of pursuing the human authors intention with all our might." 

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an awesome God who loves me and who has provided Your Word and the Holy Spirit so that I can see, savior and be transformed by Your glory - thank You Jesus!  I am not deserving of how You provide these and all the gifts You provide - particularly salvation.  My sin continues...daily.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

Most of all, you must understand this: No prophecy in the Scriptures ever comes from the prophet’s own interpretation. No prophecy ever came from what a person wanted to say, but people led by the Holy Spirit spoke words from God.

Pages: 303-312

Most of all, you must understand this: No prophecy in the Scriptures ever comes from the prophet’s own interpretation. No prophecy ever came from what a person wanted to say, but people led by the Holy Spirit spoke words from God. 2 Peter 1:20-21

This afternoon, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty-one - The Ordinary Aim of Reading: Five Reasons to Define Meaning as What the Author Intended to Communicate.  Here, Piper seeks to build on the previous chapter by providing five reasons "for advocating for" reading to understand what the author intended to communicate. 

 First, "the Bible assumes it" - Piper provides a few examples, including 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, John 21:20-23, and 11:11-14 to help us see that "Jesus really does intend for us to pay close attention to his words in order to hear what he really intends to communicate."  He goes on to say that "[t]here is little good that will come if we bring a definition of meaning to the Scriptures that they themselves do not assume."

Second, we should pursue "this definition of meaning because it helps us treat others the way we would like to be treated."  Put another way, we should "[r]ead an author of any important communication the way you would like to be read if you wrote an important communication."  Piper goes on to say that "when we write important things, we want our readers to make every effort to see and honor our intentions as we wrote." Of course the implication is that the Bible an important communication and we should treat it accordingly!

Third, we read this way because we humble, assuming we seek to grow closer in our understanding of God.

Fourth, we read this way "our way of reading corresponds to the way the universe really is."  Piper shares that "there is a life-shaping objective reality outside of us that we cannot control and that we need to know and adapt to...God is absolute reality."  He goes on to say that "[h]uman authors have imparted their God-given intention to words.  Those words exist, and those meanings exist. They are objective realities outside of us.  It is our glory to seek them and find them-by reading."

Fifth, and finally, we read this way because it has authority over us.  The meaning cannot change.  The applications may change based on the individual reading Scripture and their circumstances, but the meaning is fixed. Piper writes that the Bibles teachings and their "unchangeability that lets their divine authority endure from age to age."

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are indeed great, as is Your Word and the Holy Spirit and I see Your glory in both and I am both amazed and blessed - thank You.  I am blessed and undeserving of the blessings You pour for me.  I am selfish and I have other sins.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith.  Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others. Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.

The Lord is good and right; he points sinners to the right way. He shows those who are humble how to do right, and he teaches them his ways.

Pages: 295-300

The Lord is good and right; he points sinners to the right way. He shows those who are humble how to do right, and he teaches them his ways. Psalm 25:8-9

This morning, I continued with John Piper's Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture, continuing with Part 3 The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally, chapter twenty - The Ordinary Aim of Reading: The Meaning of Meaning. Here, Piper seeks to help us start understanding "basic, general habits of good [Bible] reading."  He encourages us to avoid looking at types of writing as a guideline for interpretation or understanding.  He really wants us to understand and interpret Scriptures with a "mind-set that usually sees the most in a text, and sees it with the most transformative authenticity and confidence, is the mind-set that lets the text itself dictate as much as possible while we scrutinize the text with all our might." He is hopeful that through his own experience he can pass on "habits of mind and heart that I think are stunningly fruitful."

His focus in this chapter is for us to understand natural (or ordinary) reading or the act of reading that we do versus the supernatural reading that occurs through the Holy Spirit that helps us. Piper writes that the "ordinary aim of reading is to grasp the meaning of the text."  He then goes on to help us understand that as we seek the meaning of the text, we are seeking "what the author intended to communicate" including emotions and what the author wanted us to experience - the author's intention or "transfer of thoughts from one mind to another."

Piper pauses further unpacking of this matter for the next and subsequent chapters. 

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My Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are an incredible God - the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.  You are my Lord and Savior.  Without You I am nothing and condemned to death - thank You Lord for saving me...and for giving me the Holy Spirit to help me and Your Word.  I am not deserving of such love.  My sins continue...daily.  Please forgive me Jesus and help me overcome and turn from my sin towards You.  Help me love You with all of my heart, soul, and mind and love others as You love me.  Help me grow in my faith. Give Lisa and myself wisdom and strength.  Please heal Lisa of her cancer and from the side effects of chemo.  Help us lead Zach and Dustin to You Jesus and for them to choose You as their Lord and Savior.  Please provide Godly friends and spouses to Zach and Dustin.  Help me serve You, my family, my church, and others.  Help me understand, be obedient to, and apply Your message for me today and every day.