Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-151 Sunday 04 Aug 2002

Reading – Psalm 119:137-176 RELEVANCE AND POWER

‘I’m ecstatic over what you say, like one who strikes it rich.'(Ps 119:161, The Message)

Throughout the psalm, there has been a note of pleasure. The Law is not something to be obeyed out of a sense of duty. On the contrary, it is something in which to delight (vs 143,174) and rejoice (v 162); it is, as we saw last Sunday, sweet (v 103) and precious (v 127).

There are still many who find great pleasure in God’s revelation of himself. But there are also many more within the church who find little pleasure in coming to the Bible, who do not meditate on it at all, let alone day and night (v 148). They see little relevance in the Bible; they find little there which will equip them for living in today’s world. The situation outside the church is, of course, even worse.

What has gone wrong and what can we do to bring about change? Too often the Bible has been used in unhelpful ways. Recently someone told me she was thinking of leaving her church because the preaching was all about judgement and failure with no offer of any hope of change. A friend who had a responsible job in London’s financial centre said to me several years ago, on leaving church, ‘Nothing I hear on Sunday engages with the pressures I face from Monday to Friday.’ He is no longer in the church.

The Bible is not simply to be the subject of an academic exercise for it is the personal communication of one who is near (v 151), who hears (v 145) and who delivers (v 146). If we fail to demonstrate its relevance to daily life or its power to change lives, we sell others short and do the Bible a disservice.

How do you respond to the challenge to bring the light of Scripture to bear on the issues which confront us in the world today? What can you do today in response?

– John Grayston

Copyright Scripture Union, 2002

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