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Transformation Requires Information

The early Church was attacked by opponents with a litany of slanderous insults. One of the most poignant of such insults was intriguing: “People of the Book”.

This insult was telling. What stood out about the Christians as they multiplied throughout the Roman Empire and beyond was this: they carried their Bibles. They believed the Bible. They held to the Bible. They trusted the Bible. They memorized the Bible. They walked with Jesus, Bible in hand and told every one the good news of the Bible.


TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES INFORMATION.

But here’s the question: Do you know what the Bible teaches? What Christians need most in the increasingly secularized context of the Pacific Northwest is a solid understanding of the Scriptures. We need to have knowledge!

Often, we consider our need for heart transformation or life transformation. But, what about thought transformation? Disciples of Jesus need to think like Jesus. The mind matters, not to the detriment of heart and life transformation, but as a prerequisite to them! That’s why Jesus himself taught that we must love the Lord our God with all our minds (Matt 22.37, Luke 10:27). The fact is, we can’t be deeply moved by something we don’t understand.

The fact is, we can’t be deeply moved by something, we don’t understand.

How do we grow to love the Lord our God with all our minds? Nothing is more important than developing the habit of daily bible reading. But this isn’t just our spiritual opinion--it is--but it’s much more than that. There have been studies that support this.



RESEARCH SUPPORTS THE EFFECT OF BIBLE STUDY ON CHRISTIAN MATURITY.

This is not just passion and theory, there is a direct and verifiable relationship between the outward marks of spiritual maturity and the input of daily Bible reading. As strange and nerdy as this is, there are actually people who spend time studying this as a subset of sociology. Track with this!

In his book No Silver Bullets, missiologist and church researcher Daniel Im argues that easily, the primary way people go from being loosely committed churchgoers to being deeply committed believers continuously taking steps of faith and bearing fruit in real life is a daily study of scripture. They studied research, polls, questionnaires, and compared input and output behaviors. They found a direct correlation between the input of bible study and the output of things like church membership, giving, serving on a team a church, and competence and consistency in sharing the Gospel.

 

DAILY READING IS OFTEN HARD BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE

You’ve heard the convicting sermons. You’ve been moved at a heart level and have convictions about the importance of Bible Study. But for some reason realistically, you still can’t do it. Bible Plans feel daunting, don’t they? All of us have failed at them, given up, and felt defeated. You basically died in the book of Leviticus. We don’t want that for you. Instead, what if you tried something more practical and realistic?

We’re offering the January Kickstarter plan. It’s just one month five minutes a day.

The point of this plan is not to conquer the entire Bible in a year. It’s something much more important: to gain the habit of daily bible reading. In his book, Atomic Habits, James clear argues extensively that the key to gaining any habit is not diving in full throttle, which often results in failure, but doing a much easier, small amount consistently! That’s the approach we’re taking with this plan.

What’s awesome about the plan is you will indeed finish multiple books, and all in under five minutes, for under 30 days.

DOWNLOAD THE READING PLAN PDF
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Throughout history, Christians are indeed the people of the Book. That’s because real life transformation requires information--there’s even sociological research that bears this out. But bible plans are often hard. Rather than try to conquer the Bible starting tomorrow, why not gain the simple habit of reading daily for a short plan together through the January Kickstarter?

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