Stephen J. Nichols on Reading, Loving, and Living God’s Word

Stephen J. Nichols, Welcome to the Story: Reading, Loving, and Living God’s Word (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 176pp., ISBN 9781433522307.

I’ve read and benefited from other books by Stephen Nichols (mostly on Jonathan Edwards), so I fully expect to enjoy this one, his take on the ever-growing reading-the-Bible-as-a-big-story-that-shapes-us genre.

There is a pdf excerpt here which gives a flavour of the level and style, which seems friendly and introductory, or perhaps one notch beyond introductory.

Here’s a bit from the first chapter:

‘The story of the Bible is not only the greatest story and not only the truest story. It is also the only story that makes sense of our lives. To put it another way, the Bible has existential significance. The Bible gives meaning to all our lives and to every inch of our lives. It alone makes sense of what happens to us. The Bible alone makes sense of all the confounding and confusing things we experience... As we listen to the Bible’s story, we begin to understand where we fit in and how the moments in our lives and the things around us fit together. We begin to make sense of our world and of our lives when we understand the story’ (23).