{"id":1536,"date":"2009-11-05T23:10:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T07:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/11\/05\/a-man-of-the-book\/"},"modified":"2009-11-05T23:16:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T07:16:43","slug":"a-man-of-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/11\/05\/a-man-of-the-book\/","title":{"rendered":"a man of the book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019d like to recommend an excellent article by one of my old professors, Dr. Stewart Custer. In \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bjupress.com\/resources\/articles\/t2t\/biblical-balance.php\" target=\"_blank\">Biblical Balance<\/a>,&quot; he writes advocating that we become less shallow in our Scriptural understanding and really get to know our Bibles. I am afraid that most of us are \u2018sound bite\u2019 Christians. We treat the Bible like the media treats newsmakers \u2013 we take a slice of words that we think represents all of truth on a subject and think we know what the Author meant.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Custer starts his article this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Many people use Scripture for their own purposes. I am referring to sincere Christians who use the Scriptures to reinforce their own private interpretations of the Bible and of life. Many of these people are very godly individuals. I know of preachers whose personal dedication to the Lord is unquestioned, but who have certain doctrines for which they are notorious. They plug these things as though they were the great truths of revelation, when they happen to be of private interpretation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Most fundamentalists would say they have a handle on the idea of holiness. Dr. Custer points out there are approximately 600 references to the word \u2018holiness\u2019 in the Bible (leaving aside passages that don\u2019t specifically use that word). How many of those passages would you say you have thoroughly studied? What kind of grasp do you have on holiness, according to the Scriptures?<\/p>\n<p>Our culture is filled with media, as Dr. Custer points out. All kinds of noise blares at us, demanding our attention. We live fast paced lives. We are \u2018Martha\u2019 Christians. We need to learn to be \u2018Mary\u2019 Christians, and sit at the feet of Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>Turn off our televisions and our computers. Turn off our ipods and iphones. \u201cTake my yoke upon you, and <strong>learn of me<\/strong>; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.\u201d (Mt 11.29)<\/p>\n<p>I can tell you that I was mightily convicted by this little article this evening<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"don_sig2\" style=\"border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px\" height=\"50\" alt=\"don_sig2\" src=\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/don_sig25.png\" width=\"150\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019d like to recommend an excellent article by one of my old professors, Dr. Stewart Custer. In \u201cBiblical Balance,&quot; he writes advocating that we become less shallow in our Scriptural understanding and really get to know our Bibles. I am afraid that most of us are \u2018sound bite\u2019 Christians. We treat the Bible like the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[111,92,108,49,41,70],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-oM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}