Building on What Lasts

Sep 15

It has been almost a month since I sat down to write a blog post, and apparently a lot can happen in a month. The new podcast has found its rhythm, I have released more music, the Companion Study App has continued to grow and change, our women’s Bible study finished Joshua, and now we have officially begun Judges together. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, we also decided it was a perfectly reasonable time to redo the outside of our house.

Needless to say, life has been a little wild.

If you have followed me on social media, you have probably seen pieces of the house adventure along the way. There have been contractors and siding, landscaping and plants, mulch and dirt, and an ongoing battle with an underground root system that seems determined to outlive all of us. I actually made a little video recently while pulling those roots because, as I kept digging and discovering how much was hidden beneath the surface, my mind naturally went to Bible study. I would find what looked like one little root, start pulling on it, and discover that it was connected to something much larger. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had followed the thing halfway across the yard.

If you have ever studied the Bible with me, you already know why that made me laugh. That is basically what I do with Scripture.

You start with a passage, and then you notice a word you have seen somewhere else. You follow it and discover a connection to something you studied three books ago, which leads to another passage, and suddenly the little detail you almost skimmed past has opened a window into a much larger biblical theme. That is one of the reasons I keep saying, Go slow. Study deep. Be transformed. There is so much beneath the surface of Scripture, but we have to be willing to slow down long enough to see it.

A Month Into the New Podcast

On August 9, I wrote A New Podcast, Not a New Season as I launched this new chapter of Lyric & Letter. I knew then that I didn’t want to begin with someone else’s worship lyrics anymore and work backward until we arrived at Scripture. I wanted to begin with Scripture and simply allow the Word to lead the conversation.

A little over a month into actually doing that, I can tell you how much I love it.

We began where the Bible begins, in Genesis 1, and we have been moving slowly through the story ever since. We have walked through creation, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, God’s covenant with Noah, the nations and Babel, and most recently Abram and Sarai as we entered Genesis 12. Every passage has given us another piece of this enormous story God is unfolding, and one of my favorite parts has been following those threads beyond Genesis. A word or theme sends us into the Psalms, the prophets, the Gospels, Hebrews, or somewhere else entirely, and suddenly we can see how something introduced near the beginning of Scripture continues developing across the biblical story.

That freedom to simply ask, “What does the text say, and where does Scripture take us from here?” has been exactly what I hoped this podcast would become. I don’t have to make the Bible fit a theme I have already chosen. The passage gives us the theme, and we get to follow where it leads.

The Companion Study App Has Been Growing Right Alongside It

The Companion Study App has changed quite a bit too. When I first built it, I wanted a place where someone could actually work through Scripture instead of simply reading what I had discovered about Scripture. That distinction matters to me because I don’t want to do your Bible study for you. I want to help you learn how to study your Bible.

Over these last several weeks, that little app has continued becoming more of what I imagined it could be. The ESV Bible is now integrated directly into the app, the podcast has its own home as well as embedded alongside the studies, the printables are easier to download for those of us who still love putting actual pen to actual paper, and study notes can be shared more easily. More than 400 people have now used the app, which still feels a little strange for me to type because I remember when this was simply an idea I was trying to figure out.

The number itself isn’t really what excites me, though. What gets me is thinking about someone I may never meet sitting somewhere with her Bible open, looking at a passage a second time because she noticed something she missed the first time. Maybe she checks the context instead of assuming she already knows what a familiar verse means. Maybe she follows a cross-reference and discovers a connection she has never seen. Maybe she learns to distinguish between something the text actually says and something she has simply heard repeated about the text.

That is why I built it.

And There Has Been Music Too

The music has continued right alongside everything else, and I have loved having that creative space in the middle of all the studying. There are days when I want my Bible surrounded by notebooks, commentaries, cross-references and far too many browser tabs, and there are other days when I simply want an open Bible, a cup of coffee, quiet worship in the background and a few uninterrupted hours with the Lord.

The Quiet Table has become part of that rhythm as well. We show up, open our Bibles, study quietly together, take our breaks and keep going. There isn’t a need to fill every moment with talking or turn Bible study into a performance. Sometimes there is something wonderfully simple about knowing other people are sitting at their own tables doing exactly what you are doing: setting aside the distractions and making time for the Word.

In a month when so much has been happening, I think I have needed those quiet hours as much as anyone else.

Closing Joshua and Beginning Judges

In the middle of all these other changes, our Monday night Women’s Bible Study reached a milestone of its own: we finished Joshua. After spending so much time in that book, what stays with me isn’t only Jericho, Rahab, crossing the Jordan, or even the sun standing still. It is the quiet testimony running underneath all of those events that God kept His word.

Joshua 21:45 says, “Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” That statement reaches backward much farther than Joshua. Abraham had walked through this land as a stranger centuries earlier. Isaac lived there. Jacob left and returned. Joseph died in Egypt believing God’s promise so firmly that he gave instructions concerning his bones. Moses saw the land from a distance but did not enter it. Then Joshua led another generation across the Jordan into what God had promised. Human generations came and went, but God’s Word did not fail.

And then last night, we finally gathered again and opened Judges together.

I had missed this.

There is something different about studying on my own while preparing and then sitting down with a group of women who have their own Bibles open, their own notes in the margins, their own questions, and things they noticed in the text that I may not have noticed myself. After all the preparation, it was wonderful simply to be back together around the Word again, listening to one another, asking questions, following cross-references and working our way through the passage together.

And what a passage to come back to.

Moving directly from Joshua into Judges makes the contrast between the two books difficult to miss. Joshua leaves us with the testimony that God fulfilled every good promise He made to Israel. Then Judges 2:10 tells us that after Joshua’s generation died, “there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.”

I keep coming back to the contrast between those two statements. How do you get from not one promise of God failed to a generation that did not know the LORD or what He had done?

Judges is going to make us sit with that question.

One of the things we spent time looking at last night was that Israel’s collapse didn’t happen in one dramatic moment. The opening chapters show us incomplete obedience and compromise. God had commanded Israel concerning the inhabitants and idolatry of the land, yet repeatedly we find tribes failing to carry out what He had commanded. They began living alongside the very people whose gods, worship and practices God had warned them against, and what they tolerated around them eventually began influencing what happened within them.

That led us into a much bigger conversation about idolatry and what it actually looks like.

It is easy to read Judges and keep idolatry safely tucked away in the ancient world. We picture carved statues, pagan shrines, Baal and the Ashtaroth and assume there is a comfortable distance between Israel’s problem and ours. But when we slow down and watch the progression, the distance becomes a little less comfortable. Before Israel bowed before the gods of the nations, they had already begun compromising with what God had said.

The objects of idolatry may look different in our world, but the deeper questions remain remarkably relevant. Who defines what is good? Who determines what is worthy of our trust, allegiance, obedience and worship? What happens when something God has spoken clearly about becomes negotiable because the culture surrounding us has made something else seem normal?

Judges repeatedly tells us that Israel “did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.” That wording matters because it establishes whose sight determines what is good and evil. Israel did not get to redefine righteousness according to what seemed reasonable to them. God had revealed His character, His covenant and His commands.

Eventually, Judges will take us to the devastating refrain that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” We already know where this downward spiral is heading, but now we get to slow down and watch how Israel gets there.

Last night’s study was wonderful, even though the material itself was sobering. Maybe that combination is one of the things I love most about studying Scripture together. We can genuinely enjoy being together, laugh, ask questions, chase cross-references and be glad to see one another again while still allowing difficult portions of God’s Word to confront us. We don’t have to make the Bible lighter in order for studying it together to be joyful.

We are only beginning Judges, and already I have a feeling this book is going to make us slow down quite a bit. I am very glad we get to do that together.

Building on What Lasts

Perhaps that is why the house project has felt like such an appropriate backdrop to everything else happening this month. When you start working on a house or digging around in a yard, you quickly discover that what is visible on the surface isn’t always the whole story. Pull something back and you discover what has been underneath it all along. Start tugging at one root and suddenly you realize how far it travels and how much is connected to it.

The same thing happens when we stop skimming Scripture and begin studying it. Genesis starts threads that continue through the Law, the historical books, the Psalms and prophets, into the Gospels and Epistles, and finally into Revelation. What can initially look like a collection of separate stories begins revealing itself as one unfolding story of creation, fall, covenant, redemption and restoration, centered ultimately upon Christ.

Jesus used the image of a house at the end of the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). The difference wasn’t merely what could be seen above ground. The difference was the foundation, and the storm eventually revealed it.

Maybe that is the best way I can describe what I want for Lyric & Letter as I look back over this wild month. I don’t want to create more simply for the sake of creating more, and I don’t want growth merely for the sake of numbers. Whether it is a podcast episode, a piece of music, the Companion Study App, The Quiet Table, or sitting around our Monday night Bible study together, I want whatever we build here to point us back to something that will outlast all of it.

I want women to know how to open their Bibles and stay awhile. I want us to observe before assuming, understand context before applying, trace the themes God has woven throughout His Word, and recognize the difference between something that merely sounds biblical and something Scripture actually teaches. I want us to become women who know God’s Word well enough that when the voices around us tell us to do what is right in our own eyes, we recognize that the better question has always been, What has God said?

Most of all, I want us to see Christ. Judges will give Israel deliverers, but none of them will be able to solve the deepest problem of the human heart. Again and again, rescue will come, peace will last for a time, and the cycle will begin again. The book will eventually leave us longing for a righteous King and a faithful Deliverer who can accomplish what none of the judges could. As readers of the whole biblical story, we know where that longing ultimately leads: to Jesus Christ.

So that is my update after almost a month away from the blog. Life has been wonderfully, exhaustingly busy. The house has undergone quite a transformation, the podcast is underway, more music has been released, the Companion Study App continues to grow, Joshua has closed, and now we have officially begun our journey through Judges together. There has been a lot of movement around here, but underneath all of it, the foundation hasn’t changed.

The Word of God remains true, Christ remains King, and the God who kept every one of His promises in Joshua is the same faithful God we will encounter as we make our way through Judges. There is still so much more to discover, and I am grateful that we get to keep opening His Word and discovering it together.