So whether you’re spending Valentine’s Day with a significant other, hanging out with family and friends, or ignoring the holiday altogether, we hope you’ll do some thinking about love—not only romantic love, but the Christlike love that we’re called to show to everyone around us. To help you focus in on the uniquely Christian understanding of love, our sister site Bible Gateway has put together a list of the most popular Bible verses on the topic of love.

It’s a good list—but also a fairly familiar one if you’ve spent much time in church or reading the Bible. Most of these verses are explicitly about love—defining it, explaining how to demonstrate it, and encouraging us to practice it. They’re the verses that pop up when you put “Bible verses about love” into a search engine. But certainly our Christian understanding of love does not begin and end with a handful of individual verses—we learn about Christlike love all throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. What other Bible verses or stories speak clearly to you about the nature of love? If you were to compile your own list of Bible verses about love, which other verses might you choose?

The Common English Bible isnt simply a revision or update of an existing translation. Its an ambitious new translation designed to read smoothly and naturally without compromising the accuracy of the Bible text. As the CEB translators did their work, a team of reading specialists from more than a dozen Christian denominations reviewed the text to ensure that the CEB is accessible to all English readers, including children, Bible students, and people encountering the Bible for the first time. The CEB represents the work of a diverse team with broad scholarship, drawing from over 100 scholarsmen and women from twenty-two faith traditions in American, African, Asian, European and Latino communities.

The result is a strong, readable translation that will be a welcome addition to your Bible study. Its available now in the Bible version drop-down menu at BibleGateway.com. You can read more about the CEB, or start reading!

In September last year, the Committee on Bible Translation announced that it would release an updated version of the NIV. The goal of the update was to maintain and strengthen the NIV’s existing focus on transparency to the original text and ease of understanding for a broad audience.

After a year of scholarly review and revision, the updated, fully searchable NIV is making its debut appearance at BibleGateway.com on November 1! The print version will follow in early 2011. You can read the press release announcing the news here.

The NIV’s debut will accompany the unveiling of the beta version of a new and improved Bible Gateway website. You’ll have the chance to visit the beta website and share your opinions; Bible Gateway will use your feedback to make the new site even better. Accessing the beta site will require that you create an account and log in to try out the new features, including:

> View the updated NIV text in parallel with the TNIV and NIV 1984

> Share any verse or passage using your favorite social media or email

> Keep up with your daily devotionals or Bible reading plans

> Share your feedback on exactly what you think about the new site

So visit BibleGateway.com on November 1 to check out the updated NIV and take the beta website for a spin! There will be more details about each of these in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on the Bible Gateway blog (and Facebook and Twitter accounts) for the latest news.

Jesus told a group of religious leaders, who were well acquainted with the Old Testament but violently opposed to Him, You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (John 5:39-40).

It requires an open heart as well as an inquiring mind to study the Bible. When we discover Jesus as the Person to whom the entire Bible points, we must then decide how to respond to Him.

There is great joy for all who will open their hearts to Christ and find life in Him.

Read the entire devotional at odb.org.

When did you make the jump from intellectually knowing about Jesus to actively following Him?

In the past, I’ve used books that steadily and purposefully walked me through a passage; but when left to my own devices I tend to slowly read through one book at a time. I might not move on from a particular chapter for a few days or even weeks.

What about you? How do you do your personal Bible Study?

Share your thoughts!

I had ignorantly assumed that the deaf would be able to read, but according to Bruce Smith of Wycliffe Associates, there is a higher illiteracy rate among the deaf than among the hearing. Additionally, print and sign language aren’t interchangeable; there are signs that don’t have corresponding spoken words, and words that don’t have signs.

Right now, the only sign language into which the Bible has been even partly translated (on video) is American Sign Language, and even that language only has the New Testament. Over 200 other sign languages lack any translation of any part of the Bible.

Here’s an excerpt from a Mission Network News article about sign language translation efforts:

Wycliffe Associates knows they need to start somewhere to maintain their commitment to see Scripture in every language around the globe.

Smith said it’s a common misconception that since the deaf can see, they can read and therefore they only need a written translation of the Bible. However, the rate of illiteracy in the deaf community is even higher than among the hearing: “Printed English worlds that we would read hear in America have no relationship whatsoever to the sign that American Sign Languages use. They are separate languages. So we need to get out of the mode that what they’re doing is just representing the words that we read on a page,” Smith said.

That’s why Wycliffe Associates is creating video translations for various sign languages around the world. To get started, they’re working with a powerful ally: “The great news is that we’re working with a partner that’s very experienced in this area. They’re called Deaf Opportunity OutReach International,” Smith said. […]

Since there is little previous work is this field, Smith anticipates this work to take at least a decade. To expedite the process, Wycliffe Associates needs volunteers with job, technical and life skills to aid in many of the tasks that come with translation. The more volunteers they have, the more the translators can focus on simply translating each language.

Read the rest of the article at mmnonline.org.

Do you know anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing? How does the lack of a complete sign language Bible affect them?

It’s no surprise, given the heated debates and apologetics that characterize much of the interaction Christian evangelists and Muslims, that missionaries would look for different outreach strategies.

One such alternate evangelism approach tries to do exactly that, but it’s not without detractors. It’s called the “Camel Method,” and it introduces people to Jesus not through the Bible, but through a book that’s much more familiar to most Muslims: the Koran. A New York Times article last month illuminated a growing controversy in missionary circles:

Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa — Arabic for Jesus — is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to [Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary president] Dr. Caner… the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception.”

David Garrison, a missionary who edited a book on the Camel Method by Kevin Greeson, the method’s developer, defends the use of the Koran as a path to Jesus. “You aren’t criticizing Muhammad or any other prophets,” Dr. Garrison said, “just raising Jesus up.”

The “camel method” has been criticized by many Christians for introducing Muslims to a non-Biblical Jesus, and some call it a “bait-and-switch” evangelism technique. But defenders of the practice claim that starting with the Koran, rather than the Bible, lets missionaries avoid predictable and unproductive debates.

They also say that starting with the Koran avoids giving Muslims the impression that you are attacking their faith and leaves them more open to dialogue. A Christianity Today article notes that:

International Mission Board trustees found the method valid after a 2007 investigation that included issuing principles of contextualization. “Historically, a missions approach has been to extricate Muslims from their community once they converted, which didn’t do much for planting the gospel among Muslims,” [IMB president Jerry Rankin] said.

An IMB-sponsored survey in 2002 found some 125,000 Muslims who had come to faith in Christ through the camel method, been baptized, and were orthodox in their practices.

Joseph Cumming of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture […] estimates that 90 percent of missionaries living among Muslims refer to verses in the Qur’an without inciting the heated arguments found in the U.S.

What do you think? Is it dangerous to use a non-Christian text like the Koran as a first step in evangelism? Or is it worthwhile if it lets missionaries avoid pointless debates and out of hand rejection?

Share your thoughts!

It’s probably no surprise to learn that although most Christians would like to read through the entire Bible, many (if not most) cannot say that they’ve read the entire Bible. The good news is that there are some helpful free tools online to help you make it through the entire Bible in 2010! Over at BibleGateway.com, we’ve just posted about our daily Bible reading plans, which have proved extremely popular since we introduced them last year—they break the text of the Bible up into short daily readings and spread them over the entire year.

It’s easy to start a reading plan, and you’ll find that they take just a few minutes of each day… and the rewards of reading through the entirety of Scripture are immeasurable. If you’ve always wanted to read the Bible but, for whatever reason, have never done so, here’s your chance to finally do it—starting on January 1, visit the BibleGateway.com reading plan page and get started on your own journey through the Bible!

I would guess that most active Christians have read or been exposed to most of the New Testament (and maybe the “famous” Old Testament books, like Genesis and Psalms) in the course of their churchgoing and personal devotions; but once you start getting into the lesser-known Old Testament books (Leviticus and Numbers, I’m looking at you), I’d expect to see a dropoff in reading.

Does that 10% include you? Have you read the entire Bible? If not, what stopped you, and do you plan to do so in the future?

Share your thoughts!

The idea came from Aaron Linne, a Lifeway employee. In the video below, Linne talks about how he consumes almost all of his media and content through his Xbox… everything except for books.

He is “more comfortable with a controller in my hand than I am with a book in my hand.”

I’m always fascinated to see different ways in which we package the Bible to reach audiences. Whether it be through paraphrases, like The Message, or devices like Faith Comes by Hearing’s Proclaimer, Christians have gotten God’s Word into nearly every medium that people invent.

I do wonder if we’re losing something when we move from paper to electronic devices though. On one hand, it’s far easier to distribute and access the text digitally than it is physically; on the other hand, I find something spiritual in the heft and physicality of a print Bible.

What do you think about reading the Bible through your Xbox? Do you think anything is lost when we start using electronic media as the primary tool for Bible reading?