The Sean McDowell Show - The Most Important Muslim Convert to Christianity

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Today, I sit down with an anonymous Christian scholar living in a predominantly Muslim context where openly following Christ can be life-threatening. Because of active persecution, our guest appears without revealing identifying details. Today, he'll talk about his doctoral research, focused on the most important Muslim convert to Christianity, and explores the historical roots of modern Christian-Muslim engagement especially the often-overlooked Urdu apologetics tradition. READ: Let the Convert Speak, by Ibn Hikmat (Link forthcoming) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Life Audio. I wondered what sort of kept people away from sort of regularly engaging the Bible. Is it that they don't believe the Bible is true? I wasn't convinced to that. I started to become convinced that one of the barriers, especially among young people, was that they weren't convinced that the Bible was good. It feels irrelevant 2,000 years ago, or it's just boring. What do you understand is biblical freedom?

And how do you think it's different from a common cultural understanding of freedom? So we're free from these things and we're free from condemnation, and all these kinds of things, but we're also free for something, right? So Paul will say, you know, it's for freedom, the crisis that you're free. So don't use that freedom to indulge sort of what your flesh, but use it effectively to love another person. What are the different gifts that we get from being immersed in God's Word? How do we develop a hunger for scripture?

And why do we often see reading scripture as a burden rather than a blessing? We'll tackle these questions and a whole lot more with our guest. Our Talbot colleague in theology, Dr. Ujjay Anisor, around his new book, The Goodness of God in the Gift of Scripture. I'm your host, Scott Ray. I'm your co-host, Sean McAul. This is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. You would say, thank you so much for being with us.

So appreciate your book. It gave me a whole host of things that, frankly, I'd never thought about before. Well, thanks for having you on. You know, there are a lot of books on the Bible and a lot of books about reading the Bible well. What motivated you to write this particular approach that you, that you put out in your book. Yeah, I think my particular burden was the sense that I wondered what sort of kept people away from sort of regularly engaging the Bible.

So is it that they don't believe the Bible is true? I wasn't convinced of that. I started to become convinced that one of the barriers, especially among young people, was that they weren't convinced that the Bible was good and that the Bible was for their good. And that it was a gift given from God for their well-being. And so I want to sort of use this idea of the Bible as a gift as a way of sort of reframing how we think about what the Bible is fundamentally. Yeah, that's a great response. As an apologist working with students, I would agree that they're not convinced it's good.

And many also feel like it's just 2,000 years ago. It doesn't really relate to my life. That's right. But the goodness is at the root of it. We've seen apologetic shift from, is it true to like, is God good? So calling scripture good, I think is scratching where people are. itching, so to speak. Now, there's a lot of books about reading the Bible well that some of our colleagues at Talbot have written. Absolutely. How is this book unique? Yeah, so this is not a book

about hermeneutical strategies or exegetical sort of approaches. It's really just a book about posture. So what are the kinds of postures we need to adopt towards scripture in order to sort of read it faithfully and fruitfully as Christians? Right. And you would summarize the big idea as what? The big idea is scripture is God's gift through which he gives us a plethora of other gifts. And so when we approach the Bible as a gift, it'll sort of combat that sort of lethargy we have towards engaging with it. Because when we're engaging with the Bible as a gift, we're engaging with God's speaking voice to us and a speaking voice that wants to sort of draw us into a meaningful relationship with him. Why do we tend not to see it that way? Yeah, I think there are a number of legitimate reasons. Maybe I don't want to, maybe not legitimate reasons, but real understandable reasons, right? So the Bible, like Sean, you were saying, it feels irrelevant 2,000 years ago, or it's just boring, right? It's boring. We have those experiences where we feel like I'm not getting anything out of it. Or, you know, the Bible is oftentimes presented as, you know, you should read your Bible. And oftentimes our hearts rebel against shoulds, right? And so there are a number of reasons like that that I think,

are understandable, not excusable, but understandable. So, Uche, you're a professor at Talba School of Theology. So it's your job to teach the Bible and assume that it's good. Now, you don't think that it's good because you're a professor. You're a professor because you think it's good. What's the backstory in your own life and you're wrestling with scripture that brought you to the place that you think it's good? Yeah, so for me, you know, I became a Christian when I was 18. and I didn't come from a Christian home.

There's no exposure to Christianity or anything like that. But when I became a Christian, I was befriended by these guys at my church. They were like six years older than me. They're all guys from like the hood, basically. They're all these hood guys. Come from hard backgrounds. None of them had a college.

What city or? This is back in Toronto where I grew up. And none of them had sort of an educational background. None of them went to Bible college. None of them went to college. but they loved the Bible. And so they would hang out, you know, on weekends, have these sleepovers. I don't know what they were doing, but they'd have these sleepovers where they're basically like debating the Bible.

They're talking about the Bible. They're studying the Bible. And I looked at these guys as an 18-year-old and they were like 24. And I'm like, these guys are like cool guys, but they love the Bible. And the Bible has changed these guys lives. And so I said, okay, I want to be exactly like them. And then I saw that these guys had this kind of understanding that wasn't, tied to their Bible college education, it wasn't tied to a seminary education. It just came from

them being steeped in the word. And so I loved that, and I wanted to emulate that in my own Christian life. Now, you, the structure of the book is more, is more devotional than anything else. Yeah. The different gifts that God gives us through the gift of Scripture. Yes. So you start out with one that I, you know, I'd never, never really thought about very much. And that is the gift of blessedness. And you make a really sharp contrast between the way the Bible describes someone who is blessed and the way culture sees someone who is blessed. Because non-believers all the time that have a platform talk about, oh, I'm blessed by this, I'm blessed by that. And their concept of that's really different than what the Bible is. So what is the gift of blessedness and how is it

different than what the culture takes for granted? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I think the culture, when it thinks about blessedness, things about it in terms of achievements, maybe awesome experiences, cool vacations, that kind of thing, or just stuff, material things that they've received or maybe they've earned or whatnot. The Bible has a conception of blessedness that's not entirely different than that. So the Bible sees blessedness as, you know, us receiving gifts from other people, but especially from God. So there is one concept in the scriptures of blessedness as receiving gifts. But there's another concept of blessedness. And you find it in Psalms like Psalm 1, where it says, blessed is the man who fill in the blank,

or in the beatitudes where it says, blessed are those who fill in the blank. And what blessedness means there is sort of like true happiness? And so then what is true happiness? True happiness is basically being in communion or in relationship with God. It's being known by God and it's knowing God. And so when we read the beat the beatitudes and it says, blessed are the poor and spirit, those who mourn, those who are pure in heart, peacemakers, those who are persecuted, clearly it doesn't mean situationally and circumstantially

they're hashtag blessed. It means that they're blessed because ultimately they're seen by God and known by God and they know God. They're sharing in God's own life and God's own sort of eternal blessedness and happiness. And so it's a richer concept biblically. And so when we talk about the gift of blessings, we're talking about that gift that God gives to his people. Through his word. Through his word. Yeah.

Now, I love, because he said at a point that when people in the culture talk about being blessed, it's almost a form of self-flattery, you know, sort of look at me, I'm so blessed by what I've accomplished, as opposed to what God's given me graciously. Yeah, that's right. And they may frame, you know, Christians do it too, right? So Christians are going to frame blessedness, you know, online when they put it on their post. They're going to talk about being blessed. And they're doing the same kind of thing, but they're going to slap a sort of a Christian label on it or thank God for all the things that I've done.

But at the end of the day, the Bible is not completely contradicting that. The Bible does recognize that stuff, stuff that we do. have the accomplishments that we've achieved, those are all given to us by God. That is to be blessed, but that's not the fullness of the concept of blessedness biblically. I love that. That's helpful. Uche, one of the lessons that my dad taught me, and you'd say it in a somewhat provocative way to make it sink in is he'd say, you know, nothing is right or wrong because the Bible says it. The Bible says it because it's right or wrong. The point was to get back to the source of morality is God's character.

And we get our right and wrong from his commands. And they're in the Bible so we know what is right and wrong. And I think he's trying to avoid the sense of like legalism or bibliolatory where people will worship the Bible itself or hold it up as the ultimate standard missing that Jesus said, you know, if you love me, you'll obey my commands. It's a means of loving God. You talk about the term bibliolatory. Explain what you mean by that and maybe how somebody might know if they've fallen into it. Yeah, so I have a sort of troubled relationship with this idea of bibliology, right? So oftentimes Christians, especially those in the sort of conservative evangelical world or maybe the fundamentalist types of Christians, we have the charge leveled against us that we oftentimes just love the Bible too much.

And so the reason why I have a troubled relationship with this idea of bibliology is I'm not convinced that our main problem is we love the Bible too much, right? You read the surveys, you know, a lifeway conducted a survey. I don't know how recently it was. And I was saying something along the lines of like, for evangelicals, they, 50% of people engage with the Bible maybe once or twice a week. 50%? Right? Once or twice a week.

And so is it Bible love? That's our problem? Probably not. But back to your question. So when I think about biblioletry, what biblioletry is, according to sort of the accusers, is it's a love for the Bible that's divorced from God or divorced from sort of the relational dimension of relating to God. So it's loving the Bible for itself and not seeing the Bible as sort of divine speech, God's self-communication, a way of relating to God himself. And so it's sort of putting the

Bible on the level of like, you know, they'll say, is the Bible the fourth person of the Godhead? Obviously not, right? But it's that kind of idea that we might elevate the Bible in distinction from or separate from a relationship with God himself. Yeah. How might somebody know if they've committed that? And you have full permission to step on top. I mean, this is the Bible Institute of L.A. The Talbot is housed in. So convict us. Push back in ways maybe we do this in unhealthy manner.

Yeah, and I don't know. So I think if we relate to the Bible in such a way where love of God and love of neighbor are not a fruit of our reading of the Bible or our interpretation of the Bible or our use of the Bible, then there's probably a problem in the way that we're engaged in the Bible. The Bible's not the problem. We're the problem. And so we may elevate the Bible in those sort of harsh conversations. We may elevate the Bible as the highest authority and highest standard, but we're using the Bible in a way that's contrary to the Bible's own intention. So could that be a form of bibliology?

I think that might be a way of gauging, like, am I engaging in the Bible in a way that is actually loving God and loving God's Word and the way that God's Word is meant to be loved, which is in connection with him and loving our neighbor? Something along those lines, I might say. Yeah. Fair enough. By the way, I know you're in jumping here, Scott, but I was, I enjoy getting up in the morning,

reading the Bible before life gets busy and hectic and crazy. There's a piece. There's a focus there. And I'm up there reading. And my wife came in recently asked me to do something. I'm like, I'm reading the Bible. My gosh. And then my next thought was like, wait a minute.

Why am I reading? Right. I can better love people. And somebody's interrupting. That's right. That's right. I've completely lost my focus here. These are the kinds of things that can happen.

That's a great example. That would brilliant. Toshae. Appreciate that vulnerability. Yeah. Oh, man. There are more to come, I suspect. I hope so.

Yeah. Now, you know, one of the various gifts that God gives us through the gift of Scripture, I think I may have had backward until I read the book. And you described the gift of purity. I think I've typically thought of purity as a gift that we give back to God and to others, rather than a gift that he gives to us. So how does, help us, you know, make sense of that. How is purity a gift to us from God?

Yeah, that's good. So I think purity, it is something that we give back to God. We're called to and we're obligated to live pure life. So I'm not completely wrong about that. You're not entirely nuts. I appreciate that. So we are responsible to give purity back to God and present our bodies to God in holy ways. However, because God is the sanctifier, right?

So the scriptures are going to talk about the sanctifying work of the spirit in 1st Peter. And so God is the one and the only one who can make us like God, right? And so the purity must be a gift, a gift that God sort of empowers and enables in the Christian life. So in that sense, a very basic sense, it's a gift. But even more than that, purity is also sort of a gateway to other gifts, right? So when you read back to the beatitudes, Jesus is going to say, blessed are the pure and heart. Why? For they will see God. And so there's a result that comes from having a pure heart, right? The pure and heart will see God. And so purity is a gift in that sense and that it just opens the doorways to greater blessing and even the ultimate blessing, which is the vision of God. Yeah. That's great.

The most common command in the Bible is to not fear, do not be afraid. So two books I've said recently, Deuteronomy, and it's just full, of do not fear the giants in the land. Don't fear the Amalekites. And that I've been reading Acts, and it's like a drumbeat in Acts. Do not fear the authorities. Do not fear what they can do to you. You have a little bit of a different take. You maintain that the Bible gives us the gift of fear.

Tell us what you mean. Yeah, so when we become Christians, you know, we're free from the fear of what, fear of death, fear of condemnation, the fear of alienation, but we're never actually ever off the hook from fearing the Lord, right? So the fear of the Lord is a basic sort of requirement of any devoted God follower, especially a Christian, right? So the fear of the Lord is a gift in the sense that what it means to fear of the Lord is to love God. It's to revere him. It's to have a sorrow for our sins.

And these kinds of things are only most true in the lives of those who are followers, followers of Christ who know God. And so fear is a gift in the sense that God is the only one who can sort of engender fear. fear in us, in that God is the one who sort of draws us to himself and breathes new life into us. And as that new life has breathed into us, we begin to fear the Lord. But similarly to the purity question, fear is also, again, a gateway to other blessings, right? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The Lord draws near to those who fear him.

And you read many, many kinds of things like that in Scripture. So for God to grant us the gift of fear means he's trying to grant us. grant us a whole plethora of other gifts as we fear him. Okay, so articulate again what you mean by the fear of God, because when people ask me, I'll often say it's a sense of awe. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning,

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No, I think that's basically correct. But I'd want to add the dimension of the fear of God includes love, right? And so we fear God not as distant and as judge. We fear God as father. And so when we're thinking about the fear of God, how do I fear a father? The fear is not dread or just awe. It's also love. And so then obedience in the context of that kind of fear is I want to obey him

because I want to please him. I don't want to disappoint him. That kind of frame. It's more of a relational frame than a sort of like, I'm worried or I feel dread or I just feel awe, that kind of thing. And so it's not completely different

from what you're saying, but I'd want to add the dimension, like the very relational filial, sort of, we're sons of a father, and so we fear God as father, as a loving, benevolent father. That's different. I wonder if that has something to do

with what Paul describes in Galatians about the term we refer to God as Abba. It's that sort of tender, but it's out of love for God, not being afraid. That's exactly right. And so that, I think initially, I think if we misunderstand the fear of God, we don't. That Abba father creates a lot of tension for people. And I don't think that's the way it's intended.

That's exactly right, yeah. Now, you also talk about the gift of salvation. In my view, I would say J.P. Moreland would say, O'Shea, that's a profound grasp of the obvious. That's fair. But there's more to it than that. The concept of salvation is different in the scriptures that you described than I think the way we commonly take it is sort of this individual fire insurance that gives us eternal life.

There's more to it than that. What else is there in this sort of expanded concept? Yeah, so what I try to do in the book is I try to sort of draw attention to how in Psalm 119, which is the focus of the book, how the Psalmist is always praying for salvation, earthly deliverance. Lord, I stay close to your word. I keep your word, therefore deliver me, that kind of language. And so I'm trying to wrestle with what do we make of these kinds of pleas for earthly salvation? because they're not only found in the Old Testament.

So in the New Testament. So deliverance from our enemies, from like real life hardship and real life circumstances, like salvation in that sense. What does God deliver us from those? And how to staying close to God's word connect us to that? So in the New Testament you have John Baptist's dad, Zechariah. He's giving us sort of praise to God. And he talks about the Messiah as the one who's going to deliver us from our enemies. Now, we can read that as simply saying he's going to free us from Satan.

or free us from the power of sin. And I think all those things are true. But I think he has an earthly frame of reference in mind when he's talking about the Messiah would deliver us from our enemies. And so I want to think through, okay, how does God respond to us with respect to these earthly sort of deliverances? And so in sort of in line with Psalm 119,

I basically concluded that for the person who stays close to God's word, while it's not guaranteed that God's going to deliver them, Obviously, Christians die. Christians are persecuted things along those lines. They can have a greater sense of confidence that God may and will deliver, even though he may not always. But they can have 100% confidence that within the creation itself, in the new creation, not in another sphere, but in the new creation, God in real history will deliver them from all their earthly troubles, their enemies, their hardships, their health issues, all those kinds of things that they will receive. earthly salvation. And so I'm trying to broaden, broaden how we think about salvation.

Yes, it's primarily from sin and death and those kinds of things. But he really does deliver us from all the earthly enemies, all these other sort of like seemingly mundane or less spiritual kinds of things. And in the instances where he doesn't, or at least doesn't on the schedule that we would like. Yeah. We trust that he will and we have to trust that he's got better designs for not. delivering us. But we don't want to, we don't want to just rest at, well, God is never going to deliver us. And he treats us the same way he treats those who don't know him. I don't think that's the way that scriptures understand it. They understand it as, well, God does grace and

favor those who know him are those who stick close to his word. Yeah, I've heard NT Wright suggests that one of the only answers to the problem of evil is the cross. Actually, where God promises, as the promissory knows. of his deliverance, as you describe ultimate deliverance. Yeah. And so in a very real sense, God has delivered us, even though it may not be realized in maybe this side of eternity. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, those deliverances are really material earthly deliverances. Like, he really is going to deliver us from actual enemies, those who oppose him, those who made our lives difficult. we actually do get delivered from that in history on this earth. It's just at the new creation. Yeah. And I think it's in the Old Testament, too, that version, that form of salvation, I think, was the primary. It's pervasive. Yeah. It is. And the notion that we are spiritually blessed and spiritually delivered from those things was a takeoff on that more concrete, more tangible way that everybody, I mean, everybody who read the Old Testament was familiar with that concept. of salvation. So when it got applied in the New Testament to the cross and resurrection of Jesus, to our own spiritual life, it had a really deep, rich meaning. I think that's right.

And I think that's why people misunderstood Jesus to a large degree, right? Because they had a particular earthly frame of reference as they thought about deliverance. And Jesus was sort of expanding that and saying, wait, wait, there's a greater deliverance that I'm going to give. I'm not negating that I'm going to provide those other deliverances, but I'm providing an even greater deliverance than that. You're talking about the goodness of God in Scripture. and it seems your methodology is you've identified certain beliefs that we have as evangelicals and just slightly reframing them away from how our secular culture or just pop evangelical culture maybe doesn't fully understand this concept.

I was super interested in this concept of freedom because I've written a lot on this. And I've actually said, I think one of the biggest lies today that this younger generation believes are lies about what it means to be free. Interesting, yeah. And of course, there's nothing new. about that back in the garden, Satan's temptation is like, God's keeping you from the fun, not setting you free. So the Bible gives us freedom. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. What do you understand is biblical freedom? And how do you think it's different from a common

cultural understanding of freedom? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm Canadian. So I find myself fascinated fascinated by American understandings of freedom. I'm not saying in a pejorative sense. I really think American concepts of liberty and freedom are very, very fascinating. Too late. I'm offended. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Canadians are so sorry. We don't want to offend you. We're so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Says the Canadian. No, but I think an American, maybe a North American concept of freedom is sort of like the individual's right to sort of define themselves or the individual's right to not have any sort of external constraints placed upon them, that kind of idea. And that's not exactly at all what the Bible's talking about when it talks about freedom. So I think the biblical understanding of freedom is sort of like freedom from something. And we'll talk about that. And then freedom for certain things, right? So freedom from sin, freedom from death, freedom from slavery and bondage, these kinds of things. Yeah, freedom from guilt.

Freedom from inappropriate shame. Yeah. All those kinds of things. So we're free from these things and we're free from condemnation, all these kinds of things. But we're also free for something, right? So Paul will say, you know, it's for freedom, the crisis that you're free. So don't use that freedom to indulge sort of like your flesh, but use it effectively to love another person. And so, you know, there's this passage in one of Luther's writings where he talks about the Christian is the free lord of all, and yet he's the dutiful servant of all.

And what he means by that is because we've sort of been freed by Christ, through faith, we've received justification. We're free. We don't have to work to sort of attain a certain kind of status or a sort of relationship with God or anything along those lines. But as free men, as free people, were then called to use that freedom to be the dutiful servant of all. And so our freedom is for something. We're freed from death and sin and bondage. We're free for loving God and loving other people. And so I think that's what Christian freedom is all about.

Love it? Yeah. I remember when I first came to faith, I was 16, came to faith. young life. And I sort of grew up in a very liberal Presbyterian background. I never heard the gospel until I was in high school in young life. And I remember the first, probably the first three or four years I was a believer, I could not get enough of scripture. And I had this, you know, I had these, these Bible study guides that I worked my way through almost every book of the Bible. And I just soaked it up. And I had a couple of people who,

who built into me and who helped, who helped give me that love for scripture. But over the years, you know, and then I learned Greek and Hebrew and started studying the scripture academically and sort of separating the devotional and the academic side of reading the Bible

became a little more challenging. But, you know, and I don't, I confess, I don't have that, you know, that sort of initial hunger. I'd like to think that my, my approach to scripture is, you know, is, is matured over time. And, you know, I'm just, I'm, I'm more familiar with scripture than I was when I was a teenager. And so my, my, my, my, my, my hunger for God's word is just, it's different. It just looks different. I'm not, I'm not sure, I have times when, honestly, I'm, I'm not as hungry for God's word as I was in the past.

And some of that, I think I've been maybe a little jaded by the, I could, by, by, by so much of my life, looking at scripture academically. But I'm wondering, you know, how would it, how would you suggest a person develop that for a hunger for God's? And what does that look like? Because for me, it looks, what it looks like, you know, 50 years into walking with God, it just looks different than it did, you know, in those early years. Yeah.

And is that common? and how do you help people who've been at this for a while, you know, address maybe some of the lethargy that, you know, or is, you know, some of the apathy that might set in over reading scripture? Yeah. Yeah, I think there's wisdom in what you're saying. I think we have to acknowledge that there's going to be a shift in what passion looks like. I think there's a shift in what passion looks like from when I'm a brand new Christian to when I'm 50 years walking with. Jesus. It doesn't mean the love is any different. It doesn't mean the commitment is any weaker. It just means that the passion is not going to look like 20-year-old youthful zeal. It's going to look different. And so we need to allow

for that. This is not to let us off the hook from having a real hunger for God's word. And so I think one of the things we need to do is we need to, again, we need to acknowledge that I'm not where I was when I was 20. There might be something I need to fix, maybe, but it might be fine that I'm faithful in my engagement with scripture even though I'm not like bubbling over for lack of a better term. But, you know, I was thinking about this. How does someone develop hunger? And I think oftentimes we hunger for those things that we've experienced as good. And we want more and more and more of it.

And so I wonder how many of us are just disconnected from sort of like the benefits that scripture is actually brought about in our lives, whether our hearts and minds have connected with that in recent days, right? So maybe a good practice might be, you know, just stopping and asking the Lord. Lord, help me open my eyes to see the many places in which your word has breathed life and transformed various dimensions of my life, like my relationship with my kids, my family life, my own, my own heart, the way that I've engaged with friends and colleagues. Like, how has your word borne fruit?

And sort of having your heart re-engage with those things, that may stimulate. We may just need to pray like the Psalmist, Lord, help me to see wonderful. things in your law, like open my eyes to see these kinds of things. If we're feeling like we're in a dry place, maybe we just need to mix things up and try different ways of engaging the Bible. We need to do whatever we can to sort of stir up that hunger, but we also need to have a little bit of grace for ourselves where we say, okay, hunger is not going to look like the way it did where everything was kind of new.

So when I think about, you know, my joy and Bible reading when I, you know, in my younger days, it was because everything was a discovery, and discovery is exciting. But when you move to a place where it's not all discovery, but it's reminder and it's sort of like recalibration and those kinds of things, then hunger looks different and joy looks different, but it's no less there. You know, that's actually can be the discouraging part is recognizing that you need to be reminded of these things so repeatedly. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You know, because we're, you know, we're all the crooked timber of humanity. Absolutely. that sometimes sometimes the scripture and God's Spirit just has a hard time straightening out that crooked timber.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's interesting because our basketball coach here, Dave Holmquist, fourth all-time winningest basketball coach in college history. I played for him. My son's playing for him right now, and he'd just say, you know, one of the keys is just reminding people at the right time of what they need to do, the basics. It's not always this radically learning something new. just applies to the scripture. I agree. I appreciate your your sense of like give yourself grace. If you're not in a moment of joy with the scripture, the last thing you need to do is to beat

yourself up. Maybe it's seasonal. Maybe there is something to tweak and I need to change. But the idea of that idea of like recapturing, what are the moment? Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible study KJV app by Salem Media makes it easy to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organized. Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Growing your faith every day.

Search for King James Bible study, KJV, and download the app today. In which I did love it. What are the moments in which I had that joy? And is there a way to tap into that? It takes some thought to do that. I think that's really good. What are some of your own practices at this stage in your journey and some of your disciplines to get into the scriptures? Yeah.

So I find the Bible reading most, maybe enjoyable, most fruitful when I slow down. So, you know, I have a regular rhythm of, you know, I'll read my four chapters so I can get through the Bible and the year kind of thing, right? So I have that. But, but, and that's fruitful in the sense that it's constantly sort of like having the word wash over me. It's kind of helping me sort of have a good biblical sort of worldview in my day to day. But most fruit comes when I slow down and I actually meditatively and reflectively read the Bible. And so I do it with a journal or sometimes I don't do it with a journal. But I read it and then I actually respond to it, not by immediate obedience in that sense.

But I respond to God. I respond to him. And I'm reading the Bible relationally. And I'm not reading the Bible academically or academically. just to read or whatever it might be, but I'm trying to, like, force myself to read the Bible as if the Bible is God's speech to me. And so God is addressing me. And so I need to sort of engage with him. So that's sort of my general sort of like approach to lively Bible reading. But, but, you know, I've had in recent years, I've had these moments where I'm like,

okay, or these seasons, not just moments, these seasons where I felt like I need to shake things up. And so I'll, I'll stop sort of like opening the sort of book version of the Bible and I'll listen to the audio Bible. So I've been doing audio Bible for a long long time. Or I'll change translations. Or I'll try to like very Bible teachers that I might want to listen to. Or I might listen to scripture songs. So for instance, like Eddie Bion, one of our faculty here, he just released an album, right? My worship album. And his worship album has a number of songs that are just scripture songs. And so I've been listening to his album for this last couple of weeks. And he has a couple songs that just keep on bringing the scriptures to my mind. So I'm walking through my

day and I have these scripture texts through this song in my mind. So the basic idea is mix things up, add whatever you need to add, shake things up so as to not grow dull and bored in our engagement with the Bible. Do whatever we can. That's so good because the Bible is developing spiritual muscles. If you work out and do the same routine, you hit a flag zone and you get bored, you're not motivated. I do the same thing. Oh, different reps. You're doing a different exercise. And it just keeps it interesting to me. That's right. So I'm always shaking things up. the moment I'm not looking forward to doing it, I ask myself, why do I not want to read this? Do I need to pivot and do something else to make it interesting?

And I found that helps personally. Yeah, and I'm not convinced it's a sin that we grow weary. You know what I mean? Or that we come to a place where we need to change things up. That's just to be human. It's just human nature. It's the way the work. And so just change things up.

Acknowledge that and make a move. Yeah. I wonder if people sort of misunderstand what it means to find joy in reading the Bible. And I wonder, you know, what does that actually look like? And how do you think people misunderstand that notion? Because I think that's a really important part of this. But for people who, you know, they view it as an obligation that I'm just sort of, you know, I'm just sort of slugging my way through the text.

Yeah. You know, and, you know, some people might say, well, you know, I'm really just, I'm really just checking a spiritual box. And I would really like to find joy in reading scripture. But, you know, I think just clarifying what that actually looks like. You know, it's not somebody necessarily jumping up and down when they find an insight in Scripture. But what does that look like? Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, I have this conversation in one of my theology classes.

where we're talking about, do Christians need to experience joy all the time, right? So it's the debate, and we have this debate in class, and people are like, what do you mean by joy? I'm like, all right, so let's talk about joy, right? So there's joy, so they'll give me their two categories, like joy is like an emotion, or joy is like this sort of deep contentment, which one is it? I'm like, I mean, the Bible's kind of ambiguous. It's kind of both. So, like, there is an emotional component to it, and there's sort of a deep contentment component. And both of those things should be present in our Christian life.

The contentment component needs to be sort of like the ongoing reality. the experience of emotional joy is not always going to happen, but we need to long for that kind of thing. And I think that's probably the case in scripture, right? So we need to have, I think so much of our problems in reading the Bible and engaging with God or whatever is our expectations, right? So if my expectation when I read the Bible is that there's always going to be a aha moments or there's always going to be some sort of like experience, then all Bible reading ends up being is disappointing and it ends up being the exact opposite of joy. But if I can somehow reframe what is happening, when I read the Bible. Like, what's God doing?

And I think what God's often doing is he's doing this. He has a slow, formative work he's doing over the course of many weeks and months and years of scripture engagement. That if I could, if I can sort of like get myself aligned with that program, I can find contentment, at least, at least that form of joy. Like, I can find contentment in my daily Bible reading because I'm not waiting for the big moment, but I'm content to allow the word to slowly. chip away and slowly shape me into who God wants me to be. Wait for that big moment, too. It gets a lot more challenging. The more familiar you are with the script for the longer you've been reading it.

I mean, you know, I mean, you know, familiarity makes me go quickly. That's right. That's why your admonition to slow down is such a good point. But I'm, yeah, I think I would see it as more as this sort of deep contentment with the fact that even if, even if I can't see it, God's doing something with me. And I may not see the fruit of that, you know, for some time to come. Right, that's right. Yeah, we walk by faith, not by sight.

And in the sense that even our spiritual growth, sometimes the wrong question to ask is like, today, am I growing? Did I grow? And it's like, well, I don't know. I mean, like talk to someone, ask someone else after two years, ask him, have I grown? And they'll give you a better answer than you asking that question or you wanted to see it in the day to day. So I think it's the same with our Bible. So let me give you a little bit of a contrarian just for fun because I'm with you on the slow process. But I read all the time going, I'm just looking for a connection I didn't see.

Help me understand something here. And with that mindset, I often see stuff. Like I was just reading the gospel, John. And twice in chapter one, it refers to John the Baptist who came physically before Jesus. It says twice, he existed before me. Like, oh, that's twice. Why is that emphasized? and it kind of unlocked the role of John the Baptist that's there.

So I want to read with that expectation and not lose that. So maybe this would be a way to ask the question. If I'm your student, I come down and I go, Uche, I want to get into the Bible more. What expectation should I have so I can get the most out of it, but not be disappointed like you described. Coach me. All right. So I think the pattern of the Christian life, not just in Bible reading, is we pray, expectantly, but we don't pray presumptively or be presumptuous in our prayers, right? So we want to pray

with hands open, expectantly that God can actually do this, right? So that's what that has to be our posture. But we need to understand that God's typical program isn't that. And so that's the tension, and we're flitting back and forth between those two things at all times. And so when it comes to Bible reading. My prayer is, Lord, show me wonderful things in your law. Help me to see things that that'll delight my heart. But also, Lord, help me to find contentment in this relational engagement that I'm having in reading your word. It's the both end. And I think we can't give up the expectant stuff. And then we won't, we'll do exactly what you're saying. We won't see the things that we could potentially see because we're not expecting to see them. Right.

So like a realistic hope, and you're just going to live in that tension and that's okay. I think that's just, yeah, that's the Christian life in a nutshell. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that actually, I think, helps give people grace along the way. Yeah. And I think that retrospective look back, you know, after a year or two years. That's really helpful part of this. Because I can, you know, it's like, you know, I didn't chart my kids' growth every day on the wall.

I chart it every three months, every six, you know, and where you can see it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, you know, I think the, just the whole biblical concept of wisdom, you know, being fundamentally a skill that takes, you know, it takes time to develop and, you know, the early attempts that, you know, the kinds of crafts that the Bible describes as skills as wisdom, you know, are not developed overnight. That's right. And I think sometimes we get impatient with the long game that our spiritual life actually is the long game. That's right. Yeah, and we get discouraged by because of our impatience at the end of the day. Yeah.

And so it discourages the Bible reading. It discourages just prayer. Discourges the number of the things that were meant to sort of engage with in our Christian lives. And that's why I think the relational setting that you put this in is so helpful. And I would see that relational setting is really helpful in understanding our sin. as well. It's not because, you know, I've done something that shames me. It's because I've hurt someone that I love. That's right. And I feel, I don't feel guilt. I feel sorrow. I feel sadness. That's right. Because of how I've hurt someone that's right.

Who has loved me and who I love so dear. Amen. Yeah. Amen. One, another thing I thought about is, would you have a different set of suggestions for someone who is new to the Bible, maybe, maybe sort of like, like you? did not grow up around the Bible and familiar of the Bible was kind of new thing, how would you coach them to initially get into God's Word without being sort of blown away by all the stuff that is probably going to make them confused and puzzled? You know, I could see them getting lost in the, you know, in Chronicles or Lviticus or someplace like that. Daniel, yep, yep, among others.

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, I became a Christian when someone gave me a King James Bible. I was 18 years old. I got a King James Bible. The person just said, read the Gospel of Matthew and kind of work your way through it or whatever. So I had no idea how to read a Bible. I never had a hermeneutic anything. But I just started reading the Bible as a non-Christian, and lo and behold, I'm able to understand it. And I'm able to encounter the real Jesus. You know, prior to that, I was a Mormon, right? So I didn't know the real Jesus. And so I didn't know the real Jesus. And so I, I I'm encountering the real Jesus, and I'm encountering his teaching on sin and redemption and resurrection, and I'm wooed by Jesus himself in the Gospels. And so if a non-Christian, who doesn't have the Spirit of God in them and whatever is able to understand and be drawn to Jesus and make sense of the New Testament, surely even the most brand-new Christian can. And so I would say for the brand-new Christian, start where I started, start in the Gospels, and have a realistic plan for just kind of daily reading it. So as a non-believer, I would sit in my room at night,

and I'd read like chunks of scripture. I didn't read them by the chapter. I didn't know how to read. I just kind of read until I got tired. And so for the new Christian, I would just simply say, have a plan. So have a realistic daily plan where you're every day going to read the Bible for 15 minutes. And then after that 15 minutes, you're going to respond to it.

And by respond to it, I mean, you're going to like take something from that, and you're going to sort of prayerfully bring that back to the Lord. And that's it. See what happens. Yeah, see what happens over the course of time. I think you'll be shaped and you'll understand the Bible. You'll be like those guys who mentored me in my early days as a Christian. None of them had theological education, but they knew the Lord and they knew the word just by reading it and being voracious readers of the Bible.

And so daily plan. That's a drop the mic moment right there. That's great. Anything else you want to throw in there? No, you nailed it. Good book. Appreciate it. Well, well done. This is great stuff. And I like the idea that you have here about reading, you know, like a chapter a week and do it slowly, do it devotionally. And to appreciate the other things, I love how you put the get, that some of these gifts are gateways to other gifts as well. And I would see that, I think the main thing I took away is that the, the script.

Scripture is the main gateway for the gifts of God, the various gifts of God, to come into our lives and to take root. That's exactly right. So we are so grateful for this. And your students, I mean, who, what parent wouldn't want their student to come be exposed to somebody like this? And this view of Scripture. Oh, thanks.

So this is great stuff. And, I mean, I observed him teach a couple years ago for a promotion application and was just through. Cool. To see what I saw. So in the book, I think, you know, it reflects the way you teach in the classroom, too. Yeah. So your students are richly blessed as a result of this, and you were a huge asset to both

the Talbot and to Biola. Yeah, I appreciate that, Scott. Thank you. I want to recommend the goodness of God in the gift of scripture by our colleague Uche Anizor. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you have questions or comments, please email us, I think, biblically at biola.edu, and join us on Friday for our weekly cultural update. In the meantime, think biblically about everything.

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