Metaphor Part II: The whole point of me writing all that out in my last post was to mention metaphors. While I used many metaphors I never discussed metaphors themselves. Specifically I wanted to mention my struggle with metaphors.

I love the Bible. I love that it is the word of God, the real words of real men, inspired by God. The Bible is living, organic and applicable to our lives today. When I preach I preach heavy application. I love to study the bible and what it means. But I also strongly believe that the bible applies to us today and when I read it and teach it I generally focus more on personal and communal application rather than other aspects.

So yesterday as I was preparing my message for next sunday I was torn. There they were, those metaphors about the ship just staring at me. Just asking me if they could be used in my sermon. They were ripe for the picking.

I had to ask myself. Is that I'm doing ok. Is this what Luke had in my when he wrote them? Was Luke just giving a history of the Early Church? Was I digging out of the word things that were meant to be there?

I decided to go with the metaphors.

We live life in the metaphors of the Bible. The Bible is applicable not as an owners manual, not as a rule book or a text book, it is the living word of God applicable to our lives.