Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Faith Comes By Hearing: Listening to the Word of God

During a recent cleaning at the house, we ran across a set of CD's from "Faith Comes By Hearing," an organization dedicated to distributing the Bible around the world in audio formats in a multitude of languages. A number of years ago, many people at our church bought CD sets of the New Testament and we challenged ourselves to listen to the entire New Testament during Lent (if memory serves me correctly...maybe it was at a different time of the year).

With the rediscovery of this set, I decided to pop the CD's in my car last week and start listening once again. It is a unique experience hearing the Word of God read and hearing it read in a continuous fashion. And it's also interesting to find how much of the Bible you can listen to in a series of 7 minute commutes (which is exactly how long it takes for me to drive to the church). With a few other brief drives here and there, it only took me 2 days to get through 22 chapters of Matthew.

Before writing this post, I checked out the "Faith Comes By Hearing" website and noticed that they also offer the New Testament as a free mp3 download. This is great for those of you who use this format. If not, you can order the Bible on various forms of media, in various translations, and in dramatic or non-dramatic style (mine is dramatic, which basically means that there is a musical "soundtrack" and the voices change when there is dialog or discourse...I actually find it distracting; I wish I just had a straight reading).

If you've never done something like this, give it a try. You'll find it beneficial and faith strengthening. After all, Scripture does say that, "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17)

3 comments:

Audio Bible said...

Kurt,
Thanks for posting about Faith Comes By Hearing. I appreciate your desire to listen to God's Word and then tell others about your experience.

Which version do you have? We offer many non-Drama recordings for those who prefer a straight reading.

Becky said...

Oh! Thanks for the links. It's what I've been wanting for a while now.... Now, I'm off to see if they offer it in Japanese, too!

Kurt Onken said...

Audio Bible...thanks for checking out my blog. I have the NRSV Dramatic Version. I think what happened was that I originally ordered another version that was a straight reading, and someone else in our congregation ordered the one I have now. We swapped when they didn't like the dramatic version, I offered to take theirs. Don't get me wrong, I still thoroughly love the quality of the reading and the presentation is very well done.