Pastor David Platt wants to protect people from reading the Bible in ways that are “harmful” and to help them understand that the Word of God is a “treasure” that is available to them daily. Platt joined ChurchLeaders for an interview about his new book, “How To Read the Bible,” which is out today.
“I see a lot of ways that people approach the Bible, even in Bible reading, that can actually be harmful,” said Platt. “There are ways to read the Bible that are actually deceptive or destructive, very harmful to our relationship with God. And so I want to help protect people from that.”
Pastor David Platt on ‘How To Read the Bible’
David Platt is the pastor of McLean Bible Church in Washington, D.C., and the founder of Radical, an organization that equips Christians to be on mission from where they live to the ends of the earth.
He is a New York Times bestselling author of several books, including “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream” and “Don’t Hold Back: Leaving Behind the American Gospel to Follow Jesus Fully.” His latest book is, “How To Read the Bible: A Simple Guide to Deeper Intimacy with God.”
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“I really want to frame Bible reading in the context of a love relationship with God, which I believe is what the Bible represents,” Platt said in his interview with ChurchLeaders. “Like, this is God speaking to us out of love for us [about] how to have life.”
The reality that Platt has observed as a pastor is that, instead of seeing God’s Word as a love letter to them, many Christians see Bible reading as a duty or a task to check off their to-do list.
To illustrate his point about how we should respond to God’s love, Platt shared that when he first began exchanging letters with his now-wife, he was a “teenage guy with a crush on a girl,” and he “obsessed” over and over-analyzed every word in the letters she wrote him.
“This is what Bible reading should be,” Platt said. “We are experiencing God’s love for us.”
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