The Psalms and Spiritual Disciplines: Reading the Word and Understanding Genres

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

      

 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lordyour God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

As summer rapidly approaches and our structure changes or falls apart completely, I wanted to focus on what my family will do this summer to stay in the Word.

Last time, I shared some of my favorite children's Bibles and resources to help you read and teach the Bible to your children well. I would encourage you to write down a list of goals for yourself and your family this week:

• How will we incorporate the discipline of prayer intentionally in our days this summer? 
• How will we incorporate the discipline of praise/singing intentionally in our days this summer?
• How will we incorporate the discipline of reading/teaching the Word intentionally in our days this summer?

    Like the other disciplines we have discussed, reading/teaching the Word takes intentionality and purpose. If you are waiting to get that urge to read the Bible to your children daily, you might be waiting for a while....this discipline takes effort and planning. You can be spontaneous, but I have found that this discipline is best used with an intentional teaching time each day. It will look different for every family depending on your sports' schedule for the summer and the ages of your children. For us, we keep the same routine all year long. Right after breakfast, we have our intentional reading/teaching time. My children know exactly what to expect and are generally compliant and some times even excited to participate (there are days, however, that are difficult - which is why it is so important to be faithful and consistent). Because of my children's ages, we still read a children's Bible story book in addition to me or my 6 year old boy reading a short passage of the Bible to us. I have said it before, but as helpful and wonderful as these Bible story books are, it is still vitally important for your children to hear the actual Word of God. 

   I would like to address the question of genres and how to teach the Bible to your children when you might find it difficult to explain or understand yourself. You might think...genres???....I don't do English lit., but you can! We all feel (as we should) ill-equipped to teach the Word of God to others, and it can be especially hard to explain and teach some of these stories to children. You have to understand the point of the story so well yourself that you can condense and simplify some of it for them. This can be so daunting! Here are a couple of things that have helped me (not an English lit. person):

• Make sure you are reading the Word consistently yourself (not necessarily quantity, but quality)
• Understand that in addition to the Bible being God's very Word to us, it is also a book of literature.

The Bible contains wonderful literature - poetry, prophecy, discourse, narrative, etc. Having a proper understanding of what each of these terms mean can really help you as you read the Bible and discern what kind of genre you are reading. Within each genre, there will be terms that may be helpful to understand as well, such as different kinds of poems like a chiasmus, or knowing if Jesus is using a metaphor in one of His parables. This might be old news to some of you, but if this is something you have not really thought about, I would encourage you to purchase two things:

The Literary Study Bible (gives you great overviews of what is going on with the literature in the Bible)

How to Read the Bible as Literature (anything by Leland or Phil Ryken will be very helpful to you on this subject)

• Sign up for the Simeon Trust First Principles Course (this will stretch you, but it is a wonderful study that you can do alone or with others. It will take you through the basics of looking at genres and how to approach and find the structure of each passage/text). This is a wonderful organization that has been one of the best tools that has strengthened my faith. I would recommend doing the regular course and not necessarily the one for women (if you are a woman). I enjoy hearing the women too, but I have found it very helpful to hear David Helm           (he wrote The Big Picture Story Bible that I recommend for babies on up) teach these principles. This course isn't very expensive and will be so good for you! 

Each passage has a structure and the structure will reveal an emphasis. This emphasis will help you know what the main idea (or the authorial intent is) and will in the end help you travel through the cross (show you Jesus) and apply it to your life without legalism or moralism. 

The resources above will greatly help you, even if you consider yourself a genre/literature expert. Even if you have very young children, it is never too soon to make sure you are finding the structure/emphasis/main idea of a story so that you can point to Christ and apply the story well. The Bible is always relevant and always has an application for us that is not legalism or moralism. 

Tomorrow, I will give an couple of example of stories from each genre and how to go through these principles of finding the structure to reveal the emphasis of the story or passage. Until then, be thinking of how your family will faithfully read the Bible together this summer.