‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road, and while he opened the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32)
Do our hearts burn as we open the Scriptures?
Scripture Access and Engagement is about loving God’s Word with our whole heart, mind, and soul so we can love him more deeply. To love God, we need to love his Word. Our knowledge of God’s truths in his Word needs to be devotional and personal.
God’s Word leads to knowing God and loving God.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road, and while he opened the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32).
The Word of God is given to us so we can know him. For many in this world, they do not have the Word and live in Bible poverty. Despite centuries of missions activity, people are blocked from having a relationship with their Creator because the Scriptures do not exist in a form they can understand. With 7,000 known languages in use today, over 1 billion people worldwide do not have the full Bible in the language they know best.
The Bible is indispensable for personal spiritual formation and world evangelization, revealing God’s identity, character, purposes, and actions. The Word is the primary witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. In reading, listening, and watching Scripture, we meet him through his Spirit. Everyone deserves to know him by his Word. Our issue network explores why engaging with Scripture is essential and seeks to overcome challenges to Scripture engagement in the workplace, home, church, and public square.
We receive the whole Bible as the Word of God, inspired by God’s Spirit, spoken and written through human authors. We submit to it as supremely and uniquely authoritative, governing our belief and our behaviour. We testify to the power of God’s Word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. We affirm that the Bible is the final written word of God, not surpassed by any further revelation, but we also rejoice that the Holy Spirit illumines the minds of God’s people so that the Bible continues to speak God’s truth in fresh ways to people in every culture. (The Cape Town Commitment I-6)
We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. We also affirm the power of God’s word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. The message of the Bible is addressed to all men and women. For God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God. (The Lausanne Covenant, pt2)
The Scripture Access and Engagement Issue Network collaborates with the Forum of Bible Agencies’ International Scripture Engagement Group, World Evangelical Alliance Scripture Engagement Initiative and the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative in addition to hosting webinars with other Lausanne Issue Networks.
