Letting the Bible Speak

Last week, after I posted some of the discussion questions for this week's study, Shanna posted this comment:

I have to admit that I was a little discouraged when the speaker implied that "letting the bible speak to you" was ridiculous. No everyone has a source of spiritual support to help them navigate the bible in an intellectual manner. I remember being 14 and desperately seeking God with no one around me to act as a Shepard. I prayed about what I was about to read in the bible, asking God to guide me, and the passage I read turned my life around. This a situation where "letting the Bible speak to you" is far from ridiculous.

 (see here: Preparing For Discussion - Interpretation: Scripture Reads Us)

On Sunday, Pat sent me an email with a story that begins in this way:

A cab driver in the Philippines became radically saved. He was taught that he now had the power of God in his life to transform his community. Because he had not had any prior religious training to the contrary, he took a literal approach to believing what the Bible says about prayer and miracles.

Read the rest of the story here: Prime Time With God: Transforming A Workplace)

I am beginning to ask myself if it isn't so much "letting the Bible speak" that can be a problem sometimes, as putting our own interpretations on the Bible in the absence of relationship with and surrender to God. If we earnestly seek God while we are reading scripture, I believe that God will speak...BUT we have to be open to the possibility that what God will say with not fit within our current understanding of the world or even within our current understanding of God.

This always leaves me with such a feeling of responsibility, maybe even vulnerability. It's my responsibility to tend my relationship with God in such a way that I can hear the still, small voice amidst the clamoring of my experiences, the world around me, and my own misgivings and intellectual scruples.  I have to silence the clamor and be still. And trust. I have to trust that God will speak, that I won't have to chase God down the rabbit holes of scriptural interpretation, that God is right there with me while I chase after truth.