One of my resolutions was to start attending and eventually becoming a member of a church. To many of my friend’s surprise, I’m actually quite spiritual. I do believe in God and Jesus, and I do pray every day. I don’t think I could have made it this far in life without His help.

I started attending Cornerstone Christian Fellowship last week to kick off their 2 year adventure of reviewing the Bible from beginning to end called, The Bible: Exploring God’s Glorious Mess.

I chose this church because:

1. I’ve attended before. It’s small & tight congregation.
2. It’s modern and relaxed.
3. Lots of ministries and volunteer opportunities.
4. The Bible exploration! I want to learn what it’s all about!

To really take in what I’ve been learning, I will blog last week’s sermon notes. Although I believe in God and  Jesus… I really have very little understanding of the Bible and it’s teachings. I tend to be very scientific and logical. I like KNOWING how things work, exist, etc.

Last Sunday, (1/3/10) Past Karl went over Genesis 1:1. The book of Genesis was written by Moses, and it begins with In the beginning, God… He explains that God never explains his existance or how He came about. This always troubled me. I would always ask why? Then, Pastor Karl simply stated, to understand the Bible, the Christian faith, you just have to believe that He exists without question. This creates the basis of faith. Right then, I had an Aha! moment.

The Bible is God’s story. We need to read God’s story, God’s way. God is the hero of every story in the Bible, and the Bible ONLY makes sense with God as its focus… We will not require naturalistic explanations for the miracles of the Bible.

He then made a great example. The Bible has some folklore-ish characters, talking animals and plants… being swallowed and not digested by a giant fish… all of this is hard to grasp unless you are willing to accept that there is a greater being out there that can make these things happen.

Then, Pastor Karl explains that many of us read the Bible out of context. Instead of really trying to understand God’s message, we try to understand the Bible as to how it selfishly applies to ourselves first. To really understand the bible and it’s teachings we must understand that:

We are not biblical literalists. We are biblical contextualists. The reason it is hard for many of us to  understand or contextualize the Bible is because

1. We never read the Bible from the beginning to the end in one sitting. We read the Bible in sections or pieces… never really molding the whole concept together.
2. We want to look for personal application first and context second.
3. We are taught to use the Bible as personal application instead of its true teachings.
4. The Bible is an on-going spiritual battle that takes time and effort to understand.

When reading the Bible, ask What was the intended message by the original author, as drawn from the context of the story.”

After the sermon, it was really easy for me to realize where I was going wrong with all of this. I’m going to start over, pray for better understanding of Bible, and really take it all in.

Happy Thursday everyone!