I have the privilege of reading through a booklist required for a PhD admission “field exam” on biblical spirituality.  These historical theology books relate mostly relate to evangelical Christianity. When asked about how my reading is coming along, I typically reply, “I’m like a kid in a candy store!”

I continue to evaluate the feasibility, or common sense, of pursuing a doctorate at my age, experience, and life-station, but last summer I decided to concentrate on “the process” rather than “the product.”  In the words of Dallas Willard, I cannot necessarily control
outcomes, but I can control my faithfulness to opportunities that God gives me.

Recently, a mentor helped me realize that one of my “spiritual pathways” to worship is
through study, asking what my reading does for me beyond intellectual enrichment.  I knew the answer immediately, but took a little while to articulate: I am moved
to worship as I discover new truths about God. Studying theology has always been a
doorway to adoration for me. If my heart is not moved, changed, enlarged in conformity
to Jesus Christ, there is little point to the study of theology.  Here’s an example:

Yesterday I was reading about the centrality of the Bible in evangelical tradition, and
was challenged in my personal discipline of Scripture reading:

“… Spurgeon encouraged those reading the Bible to take time over it.  ‘I am afraid,’ he
commented, ‘that this is a magazine-reading age, a newspaper-reading age, but not so
much a Bible-reading age as it ought to be.’ This exercise in serious reading involved
meditation and prayer. Above all, Spurgeon believed that Scripture should be read in the
presence of Christ. This is how he put it:

” ‘He [Christ] leans over me, he puts his finger along the lines, I can see his pierced
hand: I will read it as in his presence. I will read it, knowing that he is the substance of
it — that he is the proof of this book as well as the writer of it; the sum of this Scripture
as well as the author of it. That is the way for true students to become wise! You will
get at the soul of Scripture when you can keep Jesus with you while you are reading.’ ”

[cited in What A Friend We Have In Jesus – The Evangelical Tradition, by Ian Randall, Maryknoll, NY; Orbis Books, p. 47]

If this was true in the nineteenth century, how much more so today.

Lord, help us to see you in every page of Scripture, even the sections we’re eager to “get through.”