For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.
Describing my relationship with Brent Billings proves to be quite a challenge. I knew Brent originally as a colleague to work alongside of at Real Life on the Palouse years ago. Brent then became a student of BEMA and has gone through the study more than anyone I know. Brent has been a facilitator for me on my trips to Israel and Turkey; he has been an unbelievable asset in the production of the BEMA podcast and my recent season of ministry. More than any of that, however, Brent and his family have become great friends of ours. I could think of nobody that has more interaction with the idea of "Message" than Brent Billings.
To say that Marty and the work of Impact Campus Ministries has changed my life would probably be putting it lightly. The narrative view of the Bible as a whole body of work is what I have been looking for my whole life, but I had no idea I was looking for it.
Reflecting on the idea, I see how I was drawn to it. I knew the stories of the Bible pretty well, and the parts that weren’t stories (the prophets, perhaps, or Leviticus) were basically ignored. Of course I knew the key passages, such as Isaiah 53, but I didn’t have an understanding of what Isaiah was doing with his prophecy. (And on top of that, I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how prophecy worked.)
I knew Abraham was a patriarch, but I didn’t know why God chose to partner with him. I didn’t even view their relationship as a partnership, and I certainly never considered the idea that God would want to partner with me in the same way. I had heard of the concept of “children of Abraham” that Paul speaks of in Acts and Galatians, but the implications of that idea were far outside my realm of understanding.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t even consider the “Old Testament” something important. It was more like a collection of good stories and some historical documentation thrown in for good measure. I spent the vast majority of my time in the New Testament, happily taking what it said at face value. I simply didn’t know how Tanakh (the Jewish name for the Old Testament) fit into the story, or my story. Am I even a part of this story?
Today, I don’t spend time fretting about the inconsistencies between the creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2–3. I see them in the proper context of the entire narrative and reap dividends of wisdom from both accounts. Today, I don’t shudder when I think about the book of Leviticus. I see what the book is doing and I understand how it develops the relationship between God and His people (including me). Today, my eyes don’t glaze over when I open the Text to a prophet. I know where this prophet sits in history, I know who his audience is, and I know the image he uses to speak to them.
Even on the very day I write this, as I am going through the book of Matthew, I see the references Jesus makes to the Words spoken before. Jesus didn’t come to invalidate the Old Testament, but to make it come alive. We see Jesus live out the Text if we can only open our ears to hear it.
The pursuit of Message at ICM has opened my ears to hear things I never knew I was missing. The Bible truly is a single story about God’s work in the world—a story that continues to this day. I have so much more to explore, and there is much I do not yet understand, but I am no longer afraid of the unknown. My faith is not dependent on a perfect grasp of the meaning of every passage. Even though the journey ahead is long, I’m thrilled to be heading in the right direction.
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