Today, we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Dane Ortland,

entitled Nine Wrong Ways to Read the Bible and One Better Way.

Dane is the author of Deeper Real Change for Real Sinners from Crossway.

Nine wrong ways to read the Bible, and one better way.

Written and read by Dane Orland.

A book of good news.

Many of us approach the Bible not as oxygenating, but as suffocating.

We see the Bible lying there on the end table.

We know we should open it.

Sometimes we do. But it is usually with a sense of begrudged duty. Life is demanding enough, we think.

Do I really need more demands? Do I have to hear even more instruction telling me how to live?

That's an understandable feeling, but it is lamentably wrong. And it brings me to the central thing I want to say about the Bible as we think about how real sinners get traction for real

change in their lives. The Bible is good news, not a pep talk, news. What's news? It is reporting

on something that has happened. The Bible is like the front

page of the newspaper, not the advice column. To be sure, the Bible also has plenty of instruction,

but the exhortations and commands of Scripture flow out of the Bible's central message,

like ribs flowing out of a spine, or sparks from a fire, or rules of the house for the

kids. Paul said that the Old Testament was written so that through the encouragement of the

scriptures, we might have hope, Romans 154. He said, the sacred writings are able to make you wise

for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, 2 Timothy 315.

The Bible is help, not oppression. It is given to buoy us along in life, not drag us down.

Our own dark thoughts of God are what cause us to shrink back from opening and yielding to it.

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