The Pondify Podcast

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Pond Deify podcast. I'm your host, Matt, and I'm joined by my co-host Noel. Hi Noel. Hi Matt. We've got some new guests in the studio with us today. We've got the lovely Tom and the lovely Nigel, and we're gonna be talking about scripture with them. So first of all, Tom, why do you think we've invited you along here to, to talk about scripture of all things?

Back when I was 17, I had a word from God, , where God told me, I want you to study my word deeper. And at the time I was on a retreat I was actually on a retreat with Ben Clark, one of the guys from CCBs. And a whole load of people also asked God for words for me and independently all came back with, hey, We think you should study God's word, difa.

After being hit in the face by God with a big, with that word, I went maybe maybe I should study his word more. So I went and I applied to go to university to study theology. Took as much biblical studies as I could, and it was probably one of the best times of my life in terms of reading the Bible, understanding it, and getting to really enjoy it.

And it's been helpful in many of the other things I've done ever since, including right now trying to encourage our youth and young adults.

Very good. Next we'll hear from Nigel, who's our other guest today. Nigel, tell us a bit about maybe your Bible background or just anything about yourself you wanna tell

us.

I'm not sure whether the reason I'm a guest is because we couldn't get any other guests or whether I'm here because I actually have some sort of knowledge. I also went to university and studied theology. So my first. Studying was in religious studies and the philosophy of religion majoring on doctrinal theology.

And then my second stuff was on pastoral theology. And I'm really interested in the Bible. So I am, I've been a Christian since I was, I guess a practicing properly practicing Christian since I was 18 or 19 years old. And so I've been reading it every day since and I'm coming up for 52, which I know you wouldn't believe cuz I look 29, but 52.

So that's what I'm coming up for. And so when we talked about what to do, we decided I should be doing this episode. So here I am.

It's great to hear to hear from you, Nigel. We're looking forward to hearing lots from you later on. As I said, we're talking about scripture today.

Noel, do you wanna introduce our big question?

Yes. All right. Our big question for the day is, what does it mean to love scripture and live by it? , Maybe I'll also read the passage that we have here. Go for it. We're looking at two Timothy three 14 through 16, which says, but as for you, continue in what you have learned.

And have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it. And how from in infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scriptures God breathed and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So looking at that, maybe we'll just start by asking the both of you, what does scripture mean to you? What would we, yeah. What would we say? What is scripture? Those are two different questions. Maybe we'll say what is scripture and then what does scripture mean to you?

Okay. So I would say the definition of scripture, if you're looking in the most general terms, scripture is the written words of a religion.

So in our religion, which is called Christianity, which I wouldn't say is a religion, but you understand what I mean, in our faith, Scripture to us as Protestant Christians means what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Old Testament. We would also call the Jewish Bible because that is the Hebrew scriptures.

But the Hebrew scriptures, they also have hold sways of other things in Judaism and what we hold to be scripture, old Testament, new Testament in Catholicism. They would also include in there the apocrypha, which is the gap in between where the Old Testament finishes and the New Testament begins. So I would say what we mean by scripture is the Old and New Testament in what we call.

The Bible, but there are loads of different versions. Tom, do you know, loads of different

versions? There are lots of different versions of the Bible. , of course there's different translations. So you've got like the NIV and the SV as two of the key ones that we look at. But beyond that, you've also got the fact that the Bible was written, obviously originally in Hebrew and Greek.

And more commonly I think we've also had versions such as the Message, which was by Eugene Peterson passion, the passion translation. And would you call

that a translation? Or I've heard it called a paraphrase. So do you wanna quickly just explain the difference?

So again, yeah, the, obviously the so take the message.

Cause I think the message is probably the one that's that's more well known and I think very upfront about this where Eugene Peterson said the, what I'm doing here is I've studied the Hebrew and the Greek, and I'm trying to put the sense of this into English that is easy to understand.

So instead of this being a direct translation, it's almost my interpretation of what the sense is. Whilst I think other versions are more trying to translate, however, I'd say many translations are still to an extent, Interpreting what you say. No,

I think what we have to understand is the difference between a translation and a paraphrase.

So the way the Bible's been put together we've only really had it in English since the King James version. So the authorized version before that, you could be burnt at the stake for reading it in anything other than Latin. Because Latin, the Vulgate is the Latin version of the Bible. I think it's the Vulgate, it's the New Testament as well.

Is it? Or is it the Old Testament? Anyway, so the Latin version, so what they have done is to bring it into what is called the vernacular, which is our normal language. They have take taken the earliest possible. Paper documents that they have of each of the books of the Bible. So in the case of lots of the New Testament stuff, they found a huge, great pile of it at the beginning of the 19th century in Egypt.

And there is a version of John's Gospel, which is about 30 years after it was written. So it's like really close to the time. So they take it and it's written originally the New Testament, as Tom said, is written in Greek. The Old Testament is mostly written in Hebrew. And there is also some bits that are in Aramaic, which was the common language of the time around that part of the world.

And they've taken the earliest possible. Versions that they've got, and they've translated it from those versions, that language into the modern English. So with a translation, they have tried to do that word for word grammatically as far as grammatically able, because of course all the grammar works differently.

But as far as grammatically able word for word from Hebrew and Greek into English with a paraphrase, what they do is they take the best translation they can find and then they paraphrase it into English so that it is more easily understood. However, sorry, I just have to say this. The passion translation is not a translation, it is a paraphrase of a translation and it really annoys me.

Really annoys me that they call it a translation, but bless 'em. Anyway,

so can I try and simplify this then? So again, when we're talking about a translation, it's word for word. Every word in the original language it was written is translated into an English word or whatever. Language you speak.

And a paraphrase is like taking a sentence of words and saying, oh, this is what this sentence means. Is that fair? Or have I dramatically misunderstood that?

I think that's fair. And I'd say there's value to both. There's value to reading something that's a bit more easily understood in the same way as we listen to sermons that are coming up with ideas to interpret the scripture.

But it's also really important to be able to read translations, which are trying to give you a literal sense. So yeah, I think there's, I think there's value to both of those ones and what you'd maybe say is one's really good for study, one's quite good, I would say for encouragement or maybe trying to.

Sort of in the same way as you might listen to different teachers talk about a certain passage in scripture to try and get different angles on it. I'd say para reading different paraphrases or different versions might help you to hear different parts of the scripture in a more emphasized way. So that's why I'd say that's

helpful.

And I just wanna add, I'm not against the passion translation because it is, as a paraphrase really helpful. What I'm against is people holding things like that to say that is scripture, cuz it's not. It's an interpretation of scripture. And if you read that in comparison to something that is a much more precise translation, you can tell the difference and there's nothing.

It's very valuable, but it's not the same.

So how do we decide what is scripture and what is not?

1 really obvious answer I guess. Is that this, it's something that's been debated for a long time with a huge amount of tradition before we got to where we are. In many ways it's almost as if we are working on the authority of what's come before us.

Nigel what was the council where they talked about the Council of

Nyia?

That's the one. So the Council of Nyia, this is, this was one of the moments where they got together and with many of the, with early Christian documents that had been written weighed up, which things are authoritative, which things are inspired by God which things, can we counter scripture and which things are maybe helpful writings or in some cases not helpful writings, which we would not see as.

Authoritatively from God for our understanding. So the

Council of NAIA was a few hundred years after Jesus and the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, had already been decided on because that's the Jewish Bible. So it includes the Pentateuch or the Torah, which is the first five books, which is the law of Moses.

And then there's all sorts of other bits. But they had already been decided on by the Jewish rabbis and the Jewish teachers by about the time of the Babylonian thing. And after that I, you can tell I'm a professional, so they had already been decided. They wanted, however, to decide what New Testament books to have, because the New Testament is all about.

Jesus and the beginning of the church. And so the rule they used was if they could source the New Testament books to witnesses, firsthand witnesses, that's what they did. So all of those books in the New Testament are pretty much accurately sourced to be from firsthand witnesses. Paul, of course, being a firsthand witness to the growth of the church and also being a witness to the death of the first martyr.

So he's right there at the beginning. There are a lot of books that people say, yeah, what about the Gospel of Mary? And what about the Gospel of Paul? And all of those sorts of things. They're called Gnostic Techs. I can't remember what they're called there. There's another name for them as well, isn't there?

Tom is looking blank. I have no idea. There's another name for them. But effectively most of those are like two or 300 years after, so they can be traced to around the same time as the NY C and of the NY C and the Council of ea, however, They are not firsthand texts. So what we have in the New Testament are effectively as close as can be, got firsthand texts to the Bible to what happened.

Because again, as I understand it with with the Bible it mean is Biblia does that means library, is that right? Is that where it originally comes from? That's, so we're talking about a variety of books. It's not just 1, 1, 1 book with one author. I suppose maybe you might disagree with that.

But again, when we're talking about the New Testament, we've got effectively what is Biographies and we've got letters. And cuz you're talking about accounts, aren't you? You're talking about these are eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life and the early church. So I think what you are describing there, I've heard it before, is textual criticism.

Is that right? Is the science the science of dating, the authenticity of these accounts. Have you heard that, Tom? That that, that term before, that's a familiar phrase. And again I heard this on the Alpha course that apparently there's more evidence for the life of Jesus in the early church than there is for Julius Caesar.

And it all comes down to how soon after the events happened the texts were written and how many copies we have. And apparently there's quite a few copies. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say particularly with the New Testament, it's. There's some debate but it's very difficult to find scholars who don't just work on assumption of we're working on a space where there's lots of copies of these texts where they're dated relatively close to the source and therefore they're, we would trust them as being quite reliable in terms of what they're putting across.

The Gaelic Wars, I think the thing that's talked about in Alpha is the Gaelic Wars, which is the book that references Julius Caesar's Invasion of Britain. So the Invasion of Britain happened in, was it 50 BC or something around there. And the Gaelic Wars was written in about 300 ad so there's this huge gap between, but the New Testament was written.

Literally decades after it happened. And we have texts that go back to right at the beginning of 100, 110 ad. Some may go back earlier, I dunno. As I would. I happily admit, I am not an expert on the Bible. That's not my area of s specialty. But I would say one of the really key things we have to remember is the difference between scripture and history.

Cuz we don't read the Bible as a historical document, although it is, and it's a fantastic historical document and it's laughable that there are people who are pseudo historians who say, oh, of course the Bible's all made up, but I will read that thing. That's 400 years later and that's perfectly okay.

That makes me laugh a little bit. However, what we look at the Bible as particularly in our faith as Christians is the word of God. That's a different thing.

Yeah. Good. Okay, great. So we've talked about. How the Bible maybe came together, why we acknowledge some texts as being scripture. What do we think about the question of maybe, so we have people who wrote these books, but yet we say that God, this is God's book and this is his words.

How do we hold those things in tension? The Bible being written by men and the Bible being written by God?

That, that is a tension. Interesting because there's plenty of people who love the Bible and think it's really interesting who would not profess to have a personal faith?

I was taught the Bible by some of those people who see it as an absolute genius work of literature. And they look at the different poems the different stories allegory and I think it's very hard because we. I think sometimes for what us it's sometimes hard to even tell where the genre boundaries are within the Bible.

There are things that I think are poetry, there are things that meant history, and there are things that sort of blur the lines. But so there's a tension between almost wanting to honor the fact that this was written and really intelligently written by people, but at the same time that God still inspired it.

I think for me, often I look at this as the, it almost, it's almost better seen in mystery. . I love seeing the historical context in which people were writing in. I love seeing what were the things that people thought at the time and how might that have informed the things that were written.

And they, they talk a lot about, textual criticism and looking at, looking into the world of the Bible and why did they think what they thought? And I think all of that stuff is really important and really interesting, but it's still come from a context of God has inspired it and God, I think God has intended for things to be in there for our good and for our learning.

And I often think people can swing it too far, almost evil way into this is a totally human exercise and we are interested in it, or this is just all God and therefore we cannot analyze it. We cannot see anything in it that might be contradictory or might be human in it. And to me, I think actually there's a beautiful mystery in the middle.

I think it's, we call it the inspired word of God, and there's no doubt that human beings sat down and wrote this stuff. And some of the books that we assume are written by one person might be written by Moore. So Isaiah, for example, is very commonly understood to have been written in three parts by three different people.

Some would also say, actually no, it's perfectly okay for it to be written by one person, and that is fine. What I find really fascinating about the scripture, cuz what Thomas said about the context is in, is so interesting. Things like, nowadays, how do we read Psalm 23, which talks about the laws of my shepherd, how many of us have ever been shepherds?

And so understanding the context within which that takes place is really important. But what fascinates me is. The closest thing in the English language we have to the Bible in, in being held up and lauded is Shakespeare. Yet the Bible's 1500 years older than Shakespeare. It has been studied, actually the Old Testament's way older than that.

It has been studied time and time again. We rephrase it, we rework it, we. Constantly looking for new things. And we don't do that with Shakespeare at all. We learn Shakespeare in the original Elizabethan. And let's be honest, for me, I find that really boring and I find I have to be honest and say I find the King James version of the Bible really boring cuz it's thick and difficult for me to understand cuz it's in Elizabethan English.

However, the Bible has been reinterpreted and re-translated time and time again into the best possible English and the verses. If you take amazing verses, like if you take John three 16, which Matt will know immediately is for God

so love the world that he gave his own

son that has been studied and looked at for the whole of the last 2000 years and it still means something.

And I mean I have been a Christian, so I'm now 52, coming up 52. I've been reading the Bible consistently and I've read probably John's Gospel more than I've read any of the other gospels. And every single time I read it, something new comes out the that is not a book, there is something else to that, and it's the spirit of God that's behind it.

The Bible is an incredible thing that it speaks to us and it speaks to people on different levels. So I could read John three 16, you could read John three 16 and we would get completely different things out of it, and neither would be wrong necessarily, and all of it will inspire us to seek God because it's about God.

So why do we still follow what the Bible says? It was written a long time ago. You've talked about how much you love it, Nigel. So why do we still continue to delve the depths of the Bible?

I think there's lots of reasons. One is that God's eternal. And the subject of the Bible is not humanity.

One of the things that's happened over the last few hundred years with biblical interpretation, and particularly with literary criticism as you're talking about, is people have sought time and time again to turn the Bible around to be a story about people. And it's not. It's a story about God's relationship with people and God is eternal.

And the God who at the beginning of Genesis says, let there be light, is the same God who says, welcome home at the end of Revelation. And we are constantly learning new things about God, and each generation is constantly re-understanding and coming to a fresh understanding of who God is because. We want to anthropomorphize the entirety of history and we want it all to be about us.

And that goes right back in the Bible to Genesis two and three, and to the idea of did God really say? And I could, let's be honest, I could preach sermons and all of this, and I wish I could, we can go back to that. But what really it really comes down to is God loves us, God speaks to us, and the scriptures, the Bible is one of the most consistent ways God speaks to us.

Yeah,

I'd also say just on, on top of that is for me, I think whenever I come to the Bible, it almost transcends culture to an extent. So I'd say for instance, right now looking at the words of Jesus, like when I look at Jesus, talking about my, my yoke is easy, my burden is light and talk and talking about rest, I think there's a really pertinent.

Word in there for our current culture, which has become incredibly busy and also become incredibly distracted to the point of exhaustion scrolling through social media feeds, et cetera, et cetera. And there's, I think there's, I think there's real goal to be mind out of Jesus and his way of life, his almost slow way of life that our culture needs.

But obviously a culture a hundred years ago didn't need that. But there were other things to be found in God's word that they did need. And to me, that's one of the things that, that continues to make the Bible relevant is that it's not, ultimately, it's not a set of instructions for a certain group of people in a certain time.

It's actually it's about, as Nigel said, it's about God's relationship with us as people and therefore they're continually our principles and things that God has taught us that. That become relevant to almost to each culture.

But how can you have a relationship with a book?

So the book isn't, you don't have a relationship with a book.

If you want to snog your Bible, you can. I'm not sure it would work very well. The relationship is with God. To take on just a little bit from what Tom's saying, I've recently been meditating an awful lot on Jesus, which is natural cuz Jesus is the point of the Bible. He's the pivot, he's right in the middle.

It's the Old Testament leads up to Jesus. The New Testament talks about Jesus and tells us how to live as Jesus and it ends up with us going to be in Jesus's presence. It's an incredible thing and I am. Meditating a lot at the moment about Jesus's words and what Jesus says, because I'm thinking a huge amount about discipleship.

Now. 2000 years we've been reading about Jesus and praying about Jesus for about 500 years. We've been able to read about it in our own language, and our society is still rubbish, and we're still getting it wrong all the time. And I find myself asking, how is it that Jesus's words are still radical? It's just mind blowing to me.

And so the relationship isn't with the book, the relationship is with the author of the book who authored it through humanity and the person who it's all about, which is Jesus. And there's a huge amount of theology that could go on about that. And let's be honest, there's episodes we could do on the podcast about how did the Bible come about and all that sort of history stuff.

And there are better people to talk about it than me. But there is something. Incredibly profound. I'm sorry, I'm talking an awful lot. One of the things I do with my time is I'm a funeral celebrant, and I often speak from Psalm 23, the Lord's My Shepherd, and that's Psalm has been at the center of Hebrew and Christian Faith for about 3000 years.

And I preach on that. Speak on that. I've spoken on that probably a thousand times. And it's new every time. And it's because it's not about me as a sheep, it's about my shepherd. It's about God, who God is and wow. Who is God? That's the question, because that's the one I wanna know. I don't wanna know Paul who wrote the Bible.

I wanna know God, who Paul wrote the Bible about. That's good.

Why don't we talk a bit about what your personal now I don't wanna say relationship with scripture, as Nigel has just said, we don't have, we don't have relationship with the book, but actually think that's a good way of saying it. But how do you use the Bible, just very practically maybe you can give us a history of your relationship with the Bible or now in your life, how do you read it?

Do you enjoy reading it? Do you struggle with it? What, how do you use the Bible? What does it mean to you?

I've been always easily distracted pretty much throughout my whole life. I'm not very good at reading books. I get bored after half a page and start thinking about what I'm gonna do next.

And there's definite beauty in discipline and disciplining oneself. But I also I also think there's a lot to be said for figuring out ways in which you can go after something, especially something as important as the Bible that fits with you. I, for instance, like way prefer listening to things than I do reading them.

Throughout my life, I've probably listened through the Bible much more than I think I've ever read it. Because that's just been an easy way for me to take it in often on walks and stuff like that. So I would say growing up the Bible was hard for me honestly. And I'd like to cherry pick like passages and phrases that sounded nice to me.

And I listened to a lot of sermons, but I don't think my relationship with it, per se, was particularly deep. I think when I studied theology my relationship with it became deeper. And one of the reasons for that, and I think that's something that's worth mentioning here, is that through studying the Bible, I was given so much more of the story of the Bible.

So I came to understand how each P piece fit in place. Like I came to understand, for instance, that Books like Isaiah and Jeremiah are talking so much about Israel's whole relationship with God, where they keep falling away from him. It will eventually lead to their exile, which is one of the most pivotal parts of the entire story of God's people.

And yet God still promises redemption. And as I saw that, it means that whenever I was reading a random part of that book, I could go, hang on, what's the context? Oh yeah, it's this. So I could almost put it into a context. Same as if you jump into a scene of a movie you've seen three or four times before, it doesn't take you long to recognize whereabouts you're at.

And that's a really important thing to say is that like almost it almost means to me that study and reading that is fun have to come hand in hand. And over the rest of my time since university, one of the things I think I've also really taken to heart is, M we are not just called to read scripture, I think we're called to meditate on it.

So actually thinking things through listening to talks that give a news perspective and then going off for a walk and thinking about them. Those kind of practices I think for me have been really vital. Especially at times in my life when, or even times in the day where I've been like, I wanna read and I'm just struggling to take any of these words in.

They're just bouncing around on the page. That sort of stuff I think's been quite life giving.

When I was young, cuz I grew up in the church and we were told to do every day with cell wind. Which is every day with Jesus, but written by Selwyn Hughes. And it was, you would do your quiet time in the morning.

You were supposed to do your quiet time in the morning. I don't think I did it more than about two or three days in a row. You'd do your quiet time in the morning and it would give you just a tiny little bit and then you'd read it. And I never got on with that. I've never got on with the discipline, this thing that people do of reading every day.

And that goes right the way through my understanding my problem is I go down rabbit holes. And so I start to automatically do what Tom's just talked about, which is meditate on scripture. And I start to meditate and I start to see all these different links. And the thing that freed me completely and utterly was my friend Jim Graham, before he died, was a.

Amazing man of God. Lovely man of God. And he sat down with me and he told me off, and he said, stop trying to read it as if every full stop and comma should have some sort of eternal meaning for you. Because it won't always read it like it's written on a page. And when something catches your attention, then think about it.

And it completely changed everything because so often as Christians, particularly as Bible believing evangelical Christians, we are given the impression that every tiny little word must mean something. So if there's a comma in Zephaniah that hasn't said something, we want, it's just not the case.

I, you know what? When I was younger and I read through Ecclesiastes, it was the most depressing, pointless book I'd ever read. In the last few years, it has become the most important book to me in the Bible. It has been so profound. This thing of meaningless, everything is meaningless. And it's just, I think my relationship with the Bible is that I've read it through, I can't say I've read it through in a year, which I know would, for some people mean that I should be burn at the stake outside the church get out.

But I have read it. I've read it probably four or five times. I've dwelt in bits of it that have meant more to me than others. So when I was younger, The epistles meant a huge amount to me. In the last couple of years, Ecclesiastes has spoken to me massively. I've been spending huge amounts of time in Exodus because I've been thinking and praying through Moses and the Psalms always mean a lot to me and the gospels.

Wow. And it, the thing is that just by saying that, that sounds like this, Nigel must spend his whole life reading the Bible. I don't. But I tell you what, if you read for 10 minutes a day for a week, you've read 70 minutes of the Bible. And if you multiply that by 52, I'm somebody better at maths can do that than me.

And then if you multiply that it's a buildup. It's a, it's an accumulative thing. And sometimes I will spend time reading whole books. Other times I will spend time reading bits and I will read commentaries. Especially when I'm putting together sermons, especially when I'm working out stuff to write.

I will read commentaries, which are about what other people have learned about the Bible, and they're much more intelligent than I am. And what about

you, Noel? Cuz you are a Christian. I know you read your Bible, you've got up at the front of church and told us that you read your Bible. What's your relationship like with scripture?

Yes. I guess I differ a bit from both Nigel and Tom in that I love to read. I love to read the Bible and I don't have an issue reading it consistently every day. I love it. I also just naturally really love reading. So it comes easily to me. Has always come easily to me. I think.

Something that I love about it is just how God speaks to me through it. I think it's one of the main ways that he speaks to me is through his word. And I almost get the feeling that if I'm not reading it, I'm not listening or I'm not hearing from God because he speaks to me through it. I was actually just thinking as Nigel's talking that this, just this morning I read when Jesus is tempted and he says, tempted by the devil, and he says, man cannot live from bread alone, but by the words that come from God.

And it wasn't this morning, I thought, oh, he doesn't say man shouldn't live by bread alone or that's not a good idea, but that we can't it's a sermon now. Yeah. And that's how I feel. I feel like I actually can't live without it. That if, that, if God isn't speaking to me through it, that I'm not truly living.

Something else of experience a lot in reading it is that, It becomes, I think it's like sugar actually. If I'll use an analogy in that when you eat sugar, you crave it more, or whatever you eat, you'll actually start to crave it more. Wherever you, if you just stop eating it, eventually you'll stop craving it.

I'm not a health expert, but that's actually, that's what I think, that's what I think happens when you eat things in the body. And so what I'll say is that when I started to read the Bible, I wasn't reading it a ton, like when I was a kid. I just read it normally, I think. But when you sit down with God and you relate to God through scripture, even if you don't enjoy reading, maybe if you're just listening to it, I actually think it becomes almost like this.

I don't know if I wanna say addictive, but it becomes this thing that you crave more and more. Like you wanna be in it more. You wanna be reading it more. You wanna be with God more. I think it has that effect because Jesus has that effect. Because when you're with Jesus, you wanna be with him more yes

that's a bit about me. Something that Tim Mackey says on the Bible project, which I've found really helpful, is he talks about he talks about how, a lot of people couldn't read back in the day. So they, what would happen is instead the Bible would be read out, like scripture would be read to a crowd of people for their consumption, but then also for them to discuss.

And that, that would be the next thing they did is they would almost talk around it together. And Noel and I tried this a couple of times to, we'd sit and we'd sit and listen through an entire book of the Bible, and you wouldn't, when you don't, when you just listen to it, you, and you don't pause it, you can't stop it.

Like you're not going to hyperly every sentence, but you we took different things from it, and then we'd go for a walk and during our walk we'd talk about the different things that stood out for us. And then that would lead us into the other thoughts. I think two reasons. I'd say one is, I think it's helpful as ni as Nigel already said.

His friend said that we are not here to have to take something deep out of every single read. I actually think scripture feeds you at just in the normal every day. I think it's like again, Tim Mackey talks about how it almost shapes your mind as and shapes how you think the more you are around it.

And that's one thing. But I also think there's something really beautiful and really valid in how we read the Bible and also discussing it with one another, like listening it, listening to it or reading it, having it given to us and then going away and with a group or with someone else and saying what did you take from that?

This is what I took from that. And feeding each other as well.

Has there, have you ever read scripture maybe at different times of your life and you've received. Different messages from it, so

to speak. Sorry, can I take that back as just a question? How do you read the Bible, Matt?

Cause we haven't asked you, I should have asked you.

Something that came to mind while you guys were speaking is again very early on in my Christian walk. Someone said to me that the Bible is belongs in three places. First of all, you can stand on it because it's your foundation.

You can place the Bible on your head because it's your authority and you can place your Bible in your middle because it sustains you, it feeds you. And I've really struggled early on reading the Bible. Again, just holding, holding my attention. And until somebody said, do you pray before you read the Bible?

Because I, you I maybe admitting quite, quite a lot here, but I would read Things that God says about his children, i e me. And I would feel, oh, that, that's not for you. And it was like okay mate, you know that isn't true. And so I began to pray before I read the Bible, and all of a sudden it was like I've been given a blank slate.

Stuff was going in. And I would pick books. I remember once I had a dream and this was again very early on in becoming a Christian, where somebody said to me, in, in the dream, you should read epi. And so I went to my small group and said, is there a book of in the Bible called Epi Ians?

And they said, yes. It's called Ephesians, Matthew. You've announced it wrong. And I began reading Ephesians and in the in the the start of the letter, it talks about how Paul was so pleased to hear about their faith in the Lord. And it just comforted me that God was encouraging me to read his word.

And and then I did something that Nigel, you haven't done. Yes, one for me. I read the Bible in a year and it completely transformed the way that I read the Bible now because all of a sudden I understood or had some understanding of the entire story of scripture and it blew my mind because previously I was just reading chapters.

Out, out of order and not really having a clue of what I was talking about. It's just, it was some nice comforting words, but all of a sudden I was grasped by the o the overarching story that God has lost his children and he's gonna do whatever it takes to get them back. When I understood that, that was the message of the Bible, it just blew my mind.

And now I was joking before we started on the podcast that I love reading my Bible every single day. And I do tend to read my Bible at exactly the same time, 7 23 each day, as long as the 7 22 train, it is on time and again, as I reread the things that I have read before, I. It speaks to me differently depending on where I am in my walk.

And I wanna know, again, you guys, have you experienced that? Have you ever read the same piece of scripture and yet it's meant something completely different to you?

I've been given a piece of scripture, same piece of scripture over about 25 years by about 35 different people. And every time he's given to me, it speaks to me in a slightly different way. And it's the bit where Jesus is being baptized in Matthew. And as he comes out of the water, a voice comes from heaven, says, this is my son in him.

I'm well pleased. And when I was first hearing that piece of scripture, it made me think. You know what? Jesus is the son of God. That's really cool. God noticed Jesus and all the rest of it. In more recent times I've been hearing that and I've been understanding that God was pleased with Jesus before he did everything.

And I find that, it just makes me emotional thinking about it and such a screwed up kind of performance driven kind of person as I am recovering from over the lifetime. I need to hear that. And I think there is loads of scripture that has spoken to me in different ways. I think some of it has to do with my state of mind and my mental health would be what we would say nowadays, but state of mind has a huge thing.

If I'm fed up when I'm reading the Bible, it reads very differently than if I'm full of beans and happy. And I have to say the times I find it most difficult to read the Bibles when everything's easy. Because I don't need to read it. I just find that amazing. But the discipline of reading it every day, I have said I'm rubbish at it.

I do read it every day. I just don't read it every day at 8:00 AM or 7 23. I read it every day because I want to read it every day, and I will be in situations. People think I know the Bible off my heart because I can pull it outta my holster whenever anyone says, oh, I say, oh, that reminds me of that passage, and I can do that really easily.

There's a reason I can do that really easily. I've read it. It's as simple as that. And I've read it, and it hasn't meant anything to me. There is so many days where I've read the Bible. I thought that didn't really speak to me today. And 10 years later, someone will say something to me and I'll say, that reminds me of that passage.

Oh, That means something now. And it's a matter of, it dwells in me. It sits in your, you said it feeds you, it nourishes you, it sits in there, and when I need it, it's suddenly there and God speaks through. It's just an incredible thing.