In Light of the Gospel

Andy Naselli has a post that examines Peter Adam’s Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality. In the book, he asks this question: “What devices do we use to hear God’s Word today and yet avoid its intended impact?” And he answers it by examining different types of personality and what those personality types do to deflect God’s word. Here is the list from Andy’s post:

1. Emotional people can easily deflect the Word by turning the hearing of it into an emotional experience. This means that they can test the reality of the coming of the Word by means of testing its emotional impact, and then focus their response on that emotional experience. But once the emotion has passed, so has the Word.
2. Cerebral people can easily deflect the Word by turning the hearing of it into an intellectual exercise. They substitute understanding it for responding to it, fitting it into their theological grid so that it does not impact their lives.
3. Ministry people can easily deflect the Word by receiving it as a message to be passed on to others. They can always see the application to others, but not to themselves.
4. Practical people can easily deflect the impact of the Word of God by reducing it to something easy to understand and to do. They will have no time for anything not immediately relevant. They will reduce the Bible to a set of instructions for daily living, and develop a legalism that blunts the power of God’s Word.
5. Superficial people will pay as much attention to the words of the Bible as to anything, and so will never be able to receive the words that can change them.
6. Reactionary people are those who always want to contradict what anyone has asserted about anything. They too will find that their habit of life makes it very difficult for them to receive the Word of God and let it bear fruit in their lives.

Andy also goes on to explain Adam’s conclusion on the matter, so be sure to read the whole post.