Read Your Bible As Though You've Never Heard of God Before

Tonight I had the opportunity to listen to the sermons Francis Chan shared on the topic of Faith and Family over at Focus on the Family.  Click here to listen, you'll be glad you did.  In one of the sermons he something on the side that is so important, I think, for the church today to hear.  He said: 

"Read (the Scriptures) simply.  Read them like you would if you were on an island by yourself and had never heard about God before.  ... what would be your natural conclusion if the American church world hadn't given you your theology.  What conclusions would you come to?"

I really dig what he's saying here.  It's a simple idea, which is the point.  We often come to the Bible with an attitude that we already have it all figured out.  Especially in Reformed circles, where an intellectual Christianity is fashionable,  everything about God is presumed to be known and neatly organized into predefined categories offered by the American church, i.e. T.U.L.I.P.

I think it would do us a great amount of good to step away for our American, intellectualized conceptions of who God is, and read His word like it's our first time ever hearing about God, allowing the Holy Spirit (not tradition or social influences) to guide us to our conclusions.  We might be surprised to learn that we don't know as much about God as we think we do.  We might even learn something new.