Life with God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation

If you are looking for a Bible where the commentary has a bent toward Spiritual Disciplines...this is the one to have...hands down.

This book had been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years before I started into it. It's one of the better, deeper books I have read recently. I thought it was going to be heavy on the importance of practicing the spiritual disciplines as a means to growth, and while Foster certainly advocates the value and wisdom of the "disciplines of grace", his approach is wonderfully balanced, wise and full of grace. Foster's theology is sound. I found the book encouraging, insightful, and thought-provoking. I read it over a couple of weeks, 10-15 pages at a time, and I looked forward to my engagement with it. I found it sufficiently helpful that I bought copies for two young men who are very important to my daughters (and me). I told them it was a book I wish I had read (and taken to heart) when I was their age. It's one that merits a second read in years to come.

A few years back, a large group of biblical scholars and devotional writers pooled their collective talents to birth the "Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible". The project was headed up by Richard Foster, the author of the modern-day spiritual classic "Celebration of Discipline". The "Renovare Bible", while praised for its content, received mixed reviews because of its gigantic size; it looked more like a dictionary than a daily study Bible. Well, the fine folks at HarperCollins have fixed that. In what popular writer and pastor John Ortberg calls, "the most spiritually-impactful Bible our time", the "Renovare Bible" has been re-released in a smaller size and has been renamed "The Life With God Bible". I went through a period of a couple of year in college when I was infatuated with study Bibles. At one point I probably had at least ten different versions. The more I became drawn into theology and serious study of the Bible, as opposed to light, devotional reading, the more I hungered for a Bible filled with insights, commentaries, and notes. However, it seemed to be an empty pursuit. I never was able to find a Bible that was had enough study material to satisfy while also being practical enough to lug around and use for daily readings. Thus was the paradox: the better the content, the bigger the Bible. Also, the more academic the content the less relevance and practical the Bible tended to be. So after discovering the "Renovare Bible" a few years back, I was intrigued by its content but immediately put off by its bulkiness. I doubted very much that I would be able to use the huge book as my every-day Bible. Yet, the names of the contributors at least matched the Bible's own weight and were still hard to pass up. After reading the who's who in the list of authors, I couldn't help but lick my chops. Spiritual heroes like Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Walter Brueggemann, and Eugene Peterson--some of my favorite writers, even now--beckoned readers to open the "Renovare Bible". Those men are the modern day Apostles in the Evangelical world. It was tempting not to purchase the "Renovare Bible", but I eventually passed because of its sheer bulkiness. Fast forwarding a few years, the "Renovare Bible" has been reborn--or "born again" to use a more explicit Christian phrase. The folks at Harper Collins have solved the greatest problem with the Bible--its overall size--and have accentuated the change by offering a few different cover styles for the new rendition. I was mailed to a copy of the "Life With God Bible" through HarperCollins Publishers--the version I received is enclosed by a dark brown, imitation leather cover. There are, in addition, paperback and hardback editions available. Aside from the size and cover changes--which again were the only downside I saw to the original "Renovare" version--the "Life With God Bible" is loaded with the same spiritual richness that was found in the "Renovare Bible". The Bible itself is aimed at one thing: f

Personally, I am glad the Renovare editorial board asked those of us involved in the project to provide material that was inspirational, in-depth, thought-provoking, intricate and complex. I have never been of the opinion that Christianity ought to be reducible to a bumper sticker or a t-shirt slogan or that a Bible had to be compact and portable to be of any value. Other generations had no problem with Bibles that weighed a pound or two and had no issue with being afforded the opportunity to access copious amounts of inspirational material. They only asked that it be written with piety and integrity and that it not skate the surface. They expected to work their intellects and their spirits when they cracked open commentaries by Luther or Calvin or the Cappadocian Fathers or Matthew Henry. I believe the Renovare Study Bible lies happily within that tradition of the deeper life. It is jam-packed with essays and meditations and spiritual insights that will keep you thinking and wondering and praying and wrestling for months and years. Look, you have Walter Brueggeman of Old Testament fame, you have Eugene Peterson of The Message and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Virginia Stem Owens with all her wonderful literary ability, William Willimon of Duke Chapel with all his refreshing eloquence, Dallas Willard of The Divine Conspiracy, Richard Foster of Celebration of Discipline, Thomas Oden with his love of the old Christian writings, an incredible and eclectic gathering of believers spading the verdant earth of the Holy Bible. I am going through this excellent tome from cover to cover and there is lots of good stuff. They could never have included so much solid material by putting out a slimline Bible. I wouldn't miss this spiritual journey for the world. All these writers and perspectives. It works for me.

I was delighted to find Richard Foster's Renovare Bible in the public library. As a born again Catholic Pentecostal I was pleased to see the Deuterocanonical books included and the devotional commentary is helpful in opening them up. For anyone desiring to mine the riches of unfamiliar scriptures, I heartily recommend the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible.