Time was when the big word in Christian circles was inspiration. It’s still a good word; after all the Bible was “given by inspiration” or “God-breathed”. I remember reading that the famous American evangelist D L Moody once preached on John 3:16 every evening for three weeks. That’s inspirational! Moody was an inspired preacher. After the first week, I would have expired!
The shortest verse in the Bible has been likened to a small window in a very big wall: the closer you get the bigger the view beyond. Moody saw in John 3:16 a vast panorama. I wonder what he saw in “Jesus wept” — John 11:35 — the shortest verse in the Bible?
Submerging himself prayerfully in the Gospels and the book of the Acts of the Apostles, all of which he read through three times in 30 days, evangelist Oral Roberts got closer to Jesus Christ than ever and came away with an anointed ministry that brought millions to Christ and healed untold thousands.
Nowadays we prefer information, which is extensive. But inspiration is intensive. We live in the Information Age. Christians of yesteryear travelled on Pilgrim’s Progress as a kind of inspiration byway, but Christians today travel the Information SuperHighway. One click and we’re there. “Faster than a speeding bullet”? Superman would never have equaled the speed of the Internet!
But all information and no inspiration makes Jack a dull boy. As much as I appreciate great bible landscapes – overviews, themes, and the like – I recall my father’s artistic advice: “When you paint a picture”, he would say, “always put in a person because people are interested in other people.” A woman in a field. A woodcutter in a forest. A wisp of smoke arising from a farmhouse chimney. I extended my father’s advice to “pull out a principle”, which works well when I’m teaching.
Ever marvelled at a colour plate in a book featuring famous paintings — and then read the caption, which informed you it was merely a detail from the painting? They say, “God is in the details.” Yes, and God is in the Big Picture as well. So let’s have inspiration as well as information.
Take a good look at every Big Picture in the Bible, and then take time to examine the inspiring detail. Find a person in there, and then pull out a principle.