My bride and the kids had left town for a couple days to see some family and I was faced with a considerable challenge. I’m blessed with a wife who makes coffee for me almost every day. After I had recovered from the morning emotional distress of missing the presence of my family, I was faced with the reality that my coffee was not going to magically appear. I’m ashamed to say that my chosen path was to get in the car and drive a few miles and find the drive-thru window for my morning cup of black gold.
Do you approach the Bible with “fortune-cookie” mentality?
I know what you are thinking… but you need to hold on just one minute. How many times do you hit the fast-food line instead of cooking yourself a meal? Be honest, you too have driven for a cup of coffee while your perfectly adequate coffee maker has sat ready to go on your kitchen counter.
We are all guilty of our lazy moments. Unfortunately, we don’t stop the reach of laziness when it comes to the way we approach our relationship with Jesus. Miraculously and graciously we have at our finger tips the very words of God preserved and delivered into our hands. We have The Book which reveals the person and work of our God. We have the perfect gift of His self-revelation to us. Yet, more often than not this wonderful Book is treated just like another source of maxims we can pull from when our genius leaves us for a moment.
Cultural Christianity has come to understand the Bible as a plethora of fortune cookie like sayings to pat us on the back when we feel down. When we have tried and tried AND TRIED to figure something out and are at our wits end… our fortune cookie Bibles help us get over the ‘hump’ as we search through the concordance to find the fortune which will turn our luck around.
Between this fortune cookie mentality and the desire for predigested truth we no longer know how to bask in the richness of the scripture. We no longer allow the scriptures to speak for themselves. We no longer look for the Bible to change our belief, but rather only to speak into a decision or offer a little wisdom when our own falls short.
What if we developed the discipline of going to His Word without an agenda to be forced upon it? What if we believed that all of scripture is worth our time and powerful enough to change our lives – even the parts we may not be looking to change? Further, what if we spent a morning reading and praying and all that came out of it was a fuller understanding of the character of our God?
Fortune Cookie Christianity is arrogant moralism. His Word is a bottomless source of joy waiting to be mined by us each and every day.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
(2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)
Matt Powell serves as teaching pastor at Crossings Community Church, a body of believers whose mission is to engage, equip, and empower homes for gospel transformation in Katy, TX.