The Movement  

THE BIBLE AND THE MOVEMENT:

The Bible can be easily read and explained to a child, yet, there are people who devote their whole lives to studying the history, authors, places, times and purposes of the varied books in it. In The Movement we are striving to be as a child reading the Bible, reading it with an open heart and mind, without presumptions, and at the same time using our minds to dissect its details. Reading the Bible is not always an easy task and people have used it for great evil and good. The problem there does not lie in the actual Bible itself, the words, accounts and stories, but in the person who is reading it. How a person approaches the Bible is the most important thing, for that will affect their interpretation. In The Movement we feel there are some ways we can approach the Bible to study it affectively, those are that: the Bible contains the words of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17), to love God and others is the primary message (Matthew 22:36-40), it should be our greatest confrontation and greatest hope (John 16:8, Mark 10:29-30), all truth can be measured against it (Acts 17:23, 28-29) and reading and understanding it is a life long journey (Psalm 119). With these things in mind, we can start asking the right questions and hearing what God is saying to us about the past, our present and future.

1ST QUESTION: What is God Saying to me, our group, our culture, and our world?

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NLT

 

The Bible claims to be the inspired word of God. Every person who reads the Bible has to eventually come to accept or reject this. Coming to this place is an intellectual and spiritual revelation. It is not something that is easy. With the help of God’s spirit and each other we are able to process and figure these things out in our own lives.

2ND QUESTION: How does this help me love God and others more?

36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”(Matthew 22:36-40)

The greatest demonstration of knowing, believing and following the Bible is when love is coming out of our lives. When we miss this point in the Bible we are missing the message of God. The Bible is not a sappy book and there is violence, suffering, doubt, adultery, injustice, rape, murder, hatred and confusion within its pages. These things happened then and our happening now, but we constantly see through all that God’s forever enduring patience, kindness, mercy, faithfulness, gentleness, joy, peace, hope and love towards mankind. All those attributes should be shown growing in life of somebody who is reading, believing and following the scriptures. Anybody who claims to follow the Bible and uses its words to not show love has missed the whole point.

3RD QUESTION: Is my way of thinking or acting contrary to what God is saying, How is God trying to better my life?

8 And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. (John 16:8 NLT)

29 “Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, 30 will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property-along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30, NLT)

We need to be convicted and confronted while reading the Bible. We need to realize our sin. This confrontation usually does not feel good, but it always leads to our benefit. Sin is the thing in the world that blinds us from seeing God, hope, love and having freedom. God’s reaction to sin is purely out of trying to replace the bad in our lives with good. This confrontation ends in hope. Like in the passage in Mark above, we might have to give things up to follow Jesus, but we will receive so much more in this life and the next.

23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

7God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28′For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29″Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by man’s design and skill.(Acts 17:23, 27-29)

In the above passage from Acts we see Paul referencing writings and beliefs outside of scripture. He is quoting a poem and showing the truth that the author is saying. Paul then takes that poem and highlights and strengthens it by using the scripture. Anything if it is true, can be found and confirmed in the Bible even if its source is not directly from specific passages. We use the Bible to measure all truth.
Reading the Bible is a life long journey. It is something that is not mastered and reading it takes time and discipline, as an individual and community. We can follow the heart of David in Psalm 119, where he tells of how important God’s words are to his life. Also we can follow Jesus when He say’s, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). In the Movement the Bible is read, studied and applied.

BASIC BIBLE STUDY METHODS:
- Pray and ask God to reveal what He is saying to you today.
- Know the context of every verse: Read the sentences around it, then consider the whole paragraph, know who it is being written to, the history, culture, and then consider the passage in light of the whole entire Bible. How do these verses go with the main message of the Bible, to love God and others.