Interpretation – Washington Presbyterian Church

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

4 Truths to Preach to Your Sorrows

Tim Challies meditates on Romans 8:28 and offers some bedrock truths for us to remember when we are experiencing sorrow. Here’s one of them.

God loves me. It’s the simplest of truths but also the most important and the most formative. Why? Because if you really believe that God loves you, you will respond differently to your trial than if you think God hates you, or if you think God is apathetic toward you, or if you just aren’t certain how God relates to you. Preaching to yourself “God loves me” establishes your relationship with God in your own mind and heart. You may be tempted to reason from this hard thing to the belief that a bad circumstance must point to a bad relationship. But when difficulties come your way, it does not mean that God’s character has changed. It does not mean that his disposition toward you has changed. It does not mean that his relationship to you has changed.

How to Be Happy at Work

Dan Doriani writes about different approaches to work and he offers recommendations that will help Christians to be satisfied with work.

A few years ago, researchers compared the job satisfaction of people who aimed for enjoyment at work with those who aimed for meaning, or work that reflected their values. Perhaps counterintuitively, the survey found that people who pursue their values, rather than happy feelings, have “higher passion and job satisfaction, and lower turnover intentions.”

If we compare feeling good and doing good, doing good brings more satisfaction over time. Similarly, if we compare the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of purpose, purpose is more satisfying over time.

Revelation Is Not a Puzzle: 4 Keys to Interpretation

Daniel Hyde offers some help for us as we read and try to understand the book of Revelation.

The book does ask to be understood. Yet not in the way so many think. The seals, trumpets, and bowls are not a collection of coded predictions that we can confidently match, one by one, to individual events in a modern timeline. If each symbol pointed to one datable event, how would we identify which event among thousands? Thus, we’d get endless interpretations and no certainty, and the book would stay closed.

That’s why I say Revelation was not given like a mass of puzzle pieces to be solved. God did not give Revelation to be interpreted by us but to interpret the world for us. That one sentence changes what you’re doing when you open it. You’re not the detective. You’re the one being shown something.

So how do you read Revelation? Here are four keys: Read it as a book about Christ, to reveal, written in Old Testament signs, and to be heard and obeyed.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.

Young People, Go Outside

I admit that I can be rather ridiculous in my enjoyment of nature. My daughters have rolled their eyes at me many times when I squeal with delight at the sight of some little bird or ladybug or lizard. Imagine my reaction to watching baby sea turtles find their way into the ocean a few years ago. Forget about it. I might have (definitely) cried.

What’s the Difference between Venting and Lamenting?

Christians today are increasingly aware of the importance of emotions. This growing emotional awareness is a positive development—especially when we learn how to process those emotions with God! At the same time, and perhaps even connected to this heightened emotional awareness, there is a growing recognition of the importance of lament.

But as we think through processing our emotions and practicing lament, there is an important distinction to make. That distinction is the difference between venting and lamenting.

“That’s Just Your Interpretation”

When someone says “That’s just your interpretation,” or when critics slander conservative Christians as believing not just in the infallibility of the Bible but in the infallibility of their interpretation of the Bible, the next step is almost never to strive for a supposedly better interpretation. The critics don’t mean to dive deeper into the text so as to determine what the Bible teaches. The charge of “just your interpretation” has the opposite effect; it short-circuits the interpretative process altogether.