Sorry Beth and any other fellow History buffs, it’s just not my jam.
In each room, standing stately in the corner, as if they had been there as long as the furniture there would be a tour guide. Ready and definitely not particularly willing to answer questions or deliver their preprepared speech.
Tour guides. You know what I mean. At the front of the overly large group walking around a museum, lanyard round the neck, microphone clipped to their lapel, delivering the same talk they’ve delivered three hundred times and sixty-two times to three hundred and sixty-two different groups of tourists. Facts. Dates. Dreary voice monotonously sharing the no-longer-inspiring information that they’ve spouted a zillion times.
Now, contrast that with when you’re travelling and you bump into a fellow traveller who has just come from where you’re going. Completely zealous about all the different places you simply must go. Or, the ones you meet who’ve just been to the same destination you visited, “Oh my days, did you see the . . . that moment when you turn the corner and . . . “ The fellow traveller is expectant, excited, ready to discover and encounter something new at every turn.
Which one would you rather spend the afternoon with?
I had the privilege recently of sharing some top tips for how we can read the Bible with others, specifically in relation to how we open Scripture with people who don’t yet know Jesus — or who are somewhere on the edges of faith, asking real questions, not sure what they believe. And this is the thing I want us to all be reminded of. Because, bless our cotton socks, those of us who’ve grown up in church or been around the block (and the Bible) more than once have a tendency of trying to be tour guides. Polished. Prepared. Knowing all the right things. Having an answer for everything. And it’s time to stop.
Why? Tour guides have stopped discovering. They’ve arrived. They know the material. They think they’re the experts. And that energy, however unintentionally, communicates something to the person standing next to them: you’re here to receive what I already have.
Acts 4:13 is an absolute corker. The religious leaders are looking at Peter and John — these ordinary, unschooled men who have somehow just turned Jerusalem upside down — and the text says they were astonished and “they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”
Not: they had studied well.
Not: they had all the answers.
Not: they were impressively prepared.
They had been with Jesus. That’s it. That is what matters.
And I wonder how often we’ve tried to substitute knowledge about Jesus for actual time with Jesus — and then wondered why our conversations feel hollow, why the Bible feels dry, why sharing our faith feels like a performance we’re not quite pulling off.
In the introduction to King’s Cross, Tim Keller writes:
Though as a youth I had believed that the Bible was the Word of the Lord, I had not personally met the Lord of the Word.
The Word of the Lord. The Lord of the Word.
Turns out that we can know a great deal about the Bible and still not have surrendered to the Lord it’s pointing to. Let’s not forget Satan quote Scripture at Jesus in the wilderness. The Pharisees knew the law inside out. It can’t be about just facts. You can be theologically literate and relationally distant. You can have all the answers and still be missing the encounter that makes any of it actually alive.
On messaging about this with my newfound friend Jessica Cruickshank, she commented that this is because “Religion is easier than relationship”.
Eeesh. But isn’t she right?
It’s more comfortable to engage with a text than to sit before a Person — to argue about the Bible rather than look God in the face with a question especially when he doesn’t immediately answer. But encounter is the thing that changes people. Not information transfer. Not getting the argument right. The Living Word, doing what only living things can do.
God says it Himself in Isaiah 55:11 — and this is my favourite verse in the Bible —
So is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
It will not return empty.
Which means when you open the Bible with someone — even if you fumble it, even if you can’t answer the hard questions, even if you feel wildly out of your depth — it is doing something. The pressure is off! You don’t have to carry the weight of that. Attributed to Spurgeon, we need to just “Let the lion loose”.
And the best way to do that is to be a fellow traveller. Someone still in the middle of discovering. Someone who says I don’t know, but let’s find out together without feeling like their faith is on the line. Someone whose appetite for the Word is visible enough that people around them get curious.
Because here’s the thing: people aren’t drawn to certainty nearly as much as we think they are. They’re drawn to authenticity. To someone whose faith is clearly doing something real in their actual day-to-day, 24/7 life. To someone who has been with Jesus and the whole world can see.
You don’t have to be the tour guide.
You just need to be someone who’s expecting to discover something new when we turn the corner . . . or page.
Lord, forgive us for the times we’ve tried to defend You rather than simply introduce You. For the times we’ve hidden behind information when what was needed was encounter. Make us people who have been with You — obviously, visibly, unmistakably. Give us the humility of fellow travellers and the joy of those who are still discovering. And remind us that Your Word never returns empty. It doesn’t need our polish. It just needs our willingness to open it with others. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Praying for opportunities to be refreshed, delighted, and revitalised by the Word this week.
Cheering you on,
Em 💛
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