Where to Find God in the Month Of May - The Christian Online Magazine

seank.mitchell@yahoo.com

May 27^th is the day my family celebrates the birth and life of my older brother. Somewhere in this same 24-hour period—442 years ago—is when John Calvin died at the age of 54. Calvin is typically remembered for his theology of predestination, which stated that God’s sovereignty was the deciding factor in the eternal destination of people’s souls. Some in Christendom believe with Calvin, while others contrastingly believe men and women determine their eternal destination through the exercise of free will.

Whether our theological thinking is Calvin’s friend or not, I doubt that very few of Jesus’ followers will disagree with the following: John Calvin made one of the greatest statements on the topic of finding God as anyone ever has. According to Calvin, “Man’s supreme end is to know God, especially through the scriptures (italics mine).”

If economists and psychologists were to configure a study to show the statistics of Bible reading, we probably wouldn’t learn much that we haven’t already been thinking. For example, we would learn that a lot of people that call themselves Christians probably don’t spend more than an hour per week reading and reflecting on the scriptures. We may not even be that surprised to find out that some in Christian circles don’t read the scriptures at all.

Calvin’s statement has meant a lot to my personal faith. Admittedly, I am one of the statistics who has struggled with Bible reading more than once, and on one occasion, I completely ignored the scriptures for several months. Why would I do this?

I don’t believe I was running from God, because during that same time, I was still thinking a lot about God, reading books about Christian faith, discussing God with my Christian brothers and sisters, and embracing my calling. The real problem then was not as much my relationship with God as it was my relationship with the Bible. (Conversely, since the Bible does have a great deal to do with our finding and knowing God, I guess I can as easily conclude that my relationship with God was affected during that time.) Up to that point, I had read through the Bible several times, and I knew it so well that people would often look to me as a quick reference for where certain quotations were found. Sounds ministerial enough, only that is not the main reason you or I should be reading the Bible. Yes, we are to study God so that we can share him intelligently with others, but we should be finding and knowing Him first. So, to freshly find and know God through the scriptures, and to rekindle my desire for the Bible, I knew that something had to happen. That something turned out to be my approach to the Bible, my acknowledgement of my lack of appreciation for the full grace of the Bible.

The Bible is a book inundated with drama, war, passion, mystery, death, redemption, betrayal, discovery, sexuality, acts of faith, and doubt. Sounds a lot like the stuff that goes on in and around our lives. Threading His way from the beginning to end of the Scriptures is God Himself, the one of whom the story is really about. The story is the history of God, and it covers His interaction with people, His love of them, His forgiveness of them, and His teaching that He was a real presence in their lives. The story isn’t in our hands so that we can only find out who we are; it’s there to enable us to find and know God Himself.

In the Biblical stories of God, there are a lot of people like you and me. Within these stories, we find people learning about God and learning to live with what they find. Sometimes they question God, other occasions lead to idolatry, and then there are those who decide to follow God in the face of a life-threatening risk. There are also those beautiful stories where God heals diseases, raises the dead, and performs other miracles that bring even more grace into our thinking. No matter how the story develops, two things are constant: The revelation and effect of the God-character. A character that transcends the pages we flip through and whispers that the story was written for us—written so that we could find the One who has already found us. Read again.

P.S. Happy Birthday, brother; and thank you, John Calvin.

Sean K. Mitchell is a fundraising consultant and author of The Financial Pilgrimage, a book that discusses why the story of God is vital to our everyday, financial decisions. For more information on the book or to contact Sean, visit www.thefinancialpilgrimage.com.