Questions are a great thing. They are what drive the world to strive for bigger, faster and better. Without them, we are content with where things stand and don't push ourselves to new discoveries. Think of some of the big questions throughout history; Columbus questioned the world being flat, Martin Luther questioned the Lutheran Church thus starting the Protestant Reformation and I could go on and on with people that asked questions about their world throughout history. The point is, without asking questions we do not learn as much, we fail to see all of the information at hand and we do not increase our knowledge.

When we read and study the Bible, we need to bring questions to the text. Not that we cannot learn biblical truths from the surface value of verses in God's word, but by asking questions, scripture will become richer and more alive than ever before.

When reading we need to ask questions like: who was this written too? Why was this written? When was this written? Who wrote it? What is happening in history during this time period? Are the recipients or the writer struggling with anything in particular? Are there any repeated words or phrases? Is the language used passive, aggressive, comforting, rebuking, praising, encouraging, etc..? Are the verbs used past tense, present or future? As you can imagine the list could get quite lengthy. Then add in the questions specific to the particular verse or passage you are studying.

The bottom line is this: there is always something more to learn about scripture. After we accumulate enough data about a passage we can then look to interpret this information and make it relevant to our lives. The most important thing to remember is that the Bible cannot mean what it never meant to begin with. That is why questions are so important. By asking questions we get closer to the heart of what particular passages mean and how they relate to us as 21st century Christians.

Too often people take one or two scriptures using a surface interpretive approach and force scripture to fit into a mold that they have fabricated so that they can justify their behavior. Or simply they are looking for answers and they find a scripture that appears to be the answer so they take it and never realize that within the context of that scripture, the meaning that they have just assigned it was never intended to be assigned.

An example of this would be in Matthew where Jesus says, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." I have heard it said that this verse is speaking about spiritual warfare and I would guess that most of you have heard the same. It sounds like it would be about spiritual warfare and it makes for a great illustration from scripture about it as well, but from further study, I have learned that in its historical and cultural context, this verse has nothing to do with spiritual warfare, and to say so is taking scripture and giving it a meaning that it never was intended to have. The context shows the meaning of this statement has to do with Church order and authority. (If you want to know more about this, check out Rob Bell's book Velvet Elvis).

Final Thought: My challenge for you this week is when you are reading the Bible, don't just take the time to have devotions gleaning only what's on the surface, but also take the time to ask questions and more questions and more questions until you begin to see the richness and depth that that we can find in God's word if only we would take the time to dig in and understand it.