{"id":4142,"date":"2024-03-22T03:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T03:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4142"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:26","slug":"no-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4142","title":{"rendered":"NO ADVANTAGE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I have been finishing up the prospectus for my dissertation, the modern believer’s lack of discipline within the life of the spirit has been much on my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n

As Mark Twain famously noted, \u201cThe man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.\u201d Consistent daily Scripture study seems a habit out of reach for the majority of Christians. I asked some of the pillars of my own church what they would guess if asked what percent of the church members read their bibles on a daily basis.<\/p>\n\n\n

The consensus was 5%. That felt about right – but it shouldn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n

According to a recent Pew Research Poll<\/a>, though, 63% of Evangelical Protestants claim to read the Bible “at least once per week”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Does that sound a little high to you? Do you think they are counting reading along during worship?<\/p>\n\n\n

A quarter of those Evangelicals polled admitted to reading their Bible only “several times a year” (7%) or “seldom\/never” (18%).<\/p>\n\n\n

One could argue that Christians across the board, having the power of the Holy Spirit behind them, should stand out as paragons of self-discipline in a world of self-indulgence. No such divergence in discipline is apparent to me though. Do you see it? Isn’t “self-control” one of the gifts of the Spirit?<\/p>\n\n\n

We have been \u201cgiven much\u201d in terms of education and literacy, but are we living up to the \u201cmuch which is expected\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have been finishing up the prospectus for my dissertation, the modern believer’s lack of discipline within the life of the spirit has been much on my mind. As Mark Twain famously noted, \u201cThe man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.\u201d Consistent daily Scripture study seems a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4143,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}