Title: How to Read the Bible Supernaturally

Author: John Piper

Published by: Crossway

Overview

How to Read the Bible Supernaturally  is a work by John Piper to help readers to read the Bible at a deeper level.  He calls it reading the Bible supernaturally.  This is not something mystical but rather a reading of the text with the intentions of getting all that the author(s) intended in writing it.  The book is laid out in three “parts” or sections.  Each section is broken down into chapters that cover points.  The work is summed up in a conclusion.

Thoughts

Reading the Bible is one of the most important works that a person can do.  The Bible tells us that faith comes into one’s life as they hear the word of God (Romans 10:17).  What that person does with that faith is on them, but without the word of God, there is no hope for that faith to be present.  I appreciate John Piper’s work on helping readers to look at the Bible in a new (yet older) way.  Piper does not share some mystical way of reading God’s word.  He simply points the reader to apply normal reading rules that will help the reader to see all that is present in the text.

I did think that the first half of the book was somewhat slow and detached from the rest of the work a little.  I get (and appreciate) the proposed goal of reading the Bible:

That God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation (p 48).

A good portion of the first two parts of the book are explaining certain things before getting to some practical points in part 3.  I think part 3 (the final fourteen chapters of the book) is the real work of the book.

Recommendation

I believe that reading the Bible is one of the most important things that a person can do.  I believe that Reading the Bible Supernaturally is a book that would help someone who is starting to read the Bible or one that has become bored with reading the Bible.  There is not anything majorly new in what Piper shares in this book, but it is some good reminders to go back to some basic tools in order to get the most out of one’s reading of the Bible.