Fruitful Leaders

Fruitful Leaders is the featured new book in this quarter's IVP Leadership Club brochure.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter on leaders who love the Holy Spirit and the Bible:

Here are two convictions about the Bible and leadership:

• The Bible is the pre-eminent way through which the Holy Spirit speaks to us. It is impossible to be gifted by the Holy Spirit to be a spiritual leader without a deep and growing desire to be a Bible-centred, Bibleteaching, Bible-applying leader. To say, ‘I love God but don’t have much desire for God’s Word’ is as ridiculous as saying, ‘I love my wife but I’m not interested in what she says.’

• The critical thing in leading and growing biblical disciples is to help them know what the Bible says and to live it out. To say, ‘I love God’s Word but don’t put it into practice’ is as ridiculous as saying, ‘I love it when my wife talks to me but I’m not interested in doing anything she asks.’

The goal of leading people into the Scriptures is so that God will reveal himself and his truth, setting hearts on fire, and make people alive to himself and eager to do what he says. Listen to how the psalmist describes his experience of what God’s Word is meant to do to us:

• I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands (Psalm 119:131).

• I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil (v. 162).

• I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. Let me live that I may praise you (v. 174).

• I delight in your commands because I love them. I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love (v. 47).

• My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times (v. 20).

• The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold (v. 72).

• How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth (v. 103).

You get the idea! This man is meeting God in his Word, exposing his heart to God, and God to his heart, and abandoning himself in worship. He hides God’s Word in his heart so that he will adore God and follow him in joyful obedience:

Your statutes are my heritage for ever; they are the joy of my heart. (Psalm 119:111)

It is impossible to have a heart that is happy in God without enjoying the Bible, impossible to have sustaining delight in the Lord and to lead others in it without delighting in the Scriptures. But it is also impossible to continue enjoying him if we don’t follow what he says. Jesus regularly told the Pharisees that their minute knowledge of the Scriptures was worthless because they didn’t live it out.

Why Are Bibles Black?

Why are Bibles black and drab when God's truth within is so beautifully, sweetly, deliciously multi-coloured?

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The Critical Value of Bible Study

I earnestly believe that Bible study isn't an end in itself, it is a means to an end - knowing God. But becoming deeply familiar with how to read the Bible well is a critical skill for all Christians. All churches ought to put on Bible training regularly, run Bible study courses and classes, and show all our people how to do the working for themselves. We ought to encourage our people to read excellent and accessible books on the subject

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Principles for Bible Application 3

Here are 4 final tips for avoiding some of the more common mistakes:

1. Tie your major applications to the major points of the passage, not to tangential points, unless you have a really strong reason for doing so. Give more time to applications that come from the more major points

2.  Always ask before making an application "can I see how this passage links to God's big purposes in creation and redemption? And most of all can I see how it leads people to his Christ as the highpoint of the story line of the Bible?" If you can't, or find you are forcing it fairly randomly (eg I can't see how the tassles on the garment of the high priest are about Jesus but they MUST be, so I will say they are - don't laugh, I have heard it done), then you probably are not yet making pointedly powerful applications from the passage

3. Don't do moral example application before doing salvation history application. Sooner or later it turns into mere "blessed thoughts" or moralism. The Bible becomes simply a set of lessons about how I should live my life rather than how I pursue Christ and live in God's salvation for God's purposes

4. Don;t assume that what God does for Bible characters he will do for me. That way we only choose to apply the bits where nice things happen. We will talk about God protecting the baby Moses and apply it to us but we won't talk about God allowing the slaughter in the innocents in the subsequent passage because we wouldn't want to apply that to us. Which tells us that our applicatory principle is wrong

The Lord's Prayer

Here is the audio of last Sunday's message on the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6

The Lord's Prayer

10 Favourite Bible Posts

Here are ten of my favourite Digital H2O posts on the Bible

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Announced, Confirmed, Testified; Hebrews 2:3-4

Wherever you come down on the question of signs and wonders, the writer to the Hebrews is clear what they were (and are?) for - testimony to the great salvation found in Jesus Christ. I was recently asked "if Acts type miracles don't cease with the closure of the canon, why don't we see them much today?" I rather suspect that the answer is because we don't want to put ourselves in Acts type situations today

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