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The Bible Regime - Studying the Scriptures
"...reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness." (1 Tim 4:7, NKJV)
I
am a worship leader and musician, not a Bible teacher, at least, not
'officially'. But I've had a number of people comment favorably about
my grasp of Scripture. I've been asked if I was a seminary student at
some time. Flattering!
For those of you who want a firmer grasp
on God's word, I decided to share two of my basic attitudes that have
helped me tremendously in this area.
The first is found in 1 Tim
4:7, "...exercise yourself toward godliness." The NIV has it as
"...train yourself to be godly." This tells me two things: first, that
godliness is NOT natural for us. If it was we wouldn't need to train
ourselves for it, right? Second, that godliness can be uncomfortable.
We need training to get past the stage of discomfort and godliness
becomes a trained reflex, an ingrained reaction.
Applying it to
the Bible, it means that if we want to know the Bible, we need to put
in sustained consistent effort on a particular aspect of it. Talk with
runners and sportsmen, people who are intimately acquainted with the
nature of exercise, and they will tell you that you will not get the
full benefits of a particular exercise by doing it just once and
leaving it alone for a year. They will recommend doing the same
exercises daily, or at least 3-4 times a week, for 4-6 weeks. So if we
take this idea and apply to studying the Bible, we should have 4-6
weeks of reading the same book, chapters or verses over and over again
in order to get intimately familiar with it.
One thing you will
discover though, is that once you start getting into the swing of
seriously studying one part of the Bible, you take less time to
understand other parts. After I spent a lot of time training myself in
the book of Psalms, (I tried to memorize about 30 Psalms, spent more
than a year on them) I found that I could recall other parts of the
Bible (like the Gospels) more easily when I needed them. This did not
make sense to me when I first started, but now I realized that it's all by the same writer, the Holy Spirit, right?
The
second idea that has been useful to me is that of the Scripture being
food. In Hebrews 5:12 the truths of God's word are both milk (for
infants) and solid food (for the mature). Here's something to ponder:
Do you honestly think a baby contentedly feeding at his mother's breast
understands or is aware in any way about the immunoglobins, antibodies
and the colostrum in his mother's milk? And is he shortchanged in any
way by his lack of understanding or awareness?
I knew that in
Matthew 13:19 it says that if we do not understand the word of the
Kingdom sown into us, the wicked one snatches the word away. But here's
my question: how then can we get ourselves to the point when we do
understand God's word?
"Think about what I am saying. The Lord
will help you to understand all these things." (2 Tim 2:7,
International Standard Version)
And the word for 'think' in
that passage is noieo, which literally means "to exercise the mind
towards" (Strongs #3539). Yes, the idea of exercise again! That
suggests to me that the understanding will not always come easily, but
that we need to spend time on the Word, thinking about it.
Our
job is to think, to meditate, and to exercise our minds towards God's
word. The Lord's role is to give the understanding. If we do not
fulfill our role in this matter, we are making it difficult for the
Lord to fulfill his.
The key point of what I am sharing is this.
Very often we hear testimonies of people sharing about encountering God
in a very real way in his word. They tell us about how the eyes of
their understanding were opened on that special occasion and share the
powerful insights they receive from the Bible. And we go back home,
open up our Bibles, and, like every other day, nothing much happens, at
least, nothing that we can see, feel or even articulate in words. And
we think that means nothing is happening within us as we feed on God's
word.
Because we want something tangible quickly, it is tempting
in this day and age to let other people do the thinking and studying of
God's word for us and then turn up for their Bible study classes. That
way we at least have some information that we can share or articulate
with other people, and we believe that we have benefited from the time
spent exposing ourselves to the Bible.
Also take the helmet of
salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
(Ephesians 6:17, International Standard Version)
Having
spent a significant amount of time training in kenjutsu (Japanese
fencing) believe me when I say that you can truly acquire skill in
using a sword not by simply watching others swing theirs around, but
taking one up yourself and seriously spending time on it.
It
takes time to get really familiar with a tool to the point when you can
use it not only for its obvious applications, but for others which are
not so obvious. There will be seasons of frustration when you think you
aren't making any progress at all. But you have to persevere through
these seasons in order to reap the benefits of regular consistent
training.
So it is with God's word. Talk with those who spent
years in full-time study of God's word. You will discover that most of
the time it was ho-hum and nothing exciting. And yet through that time
God was sharpening their understanding of his word. But it takes faith
and patience to persevere to that point they have such a grasp of the
scriptures.
Do your best to present yourself to God as an
approved worker who has nothing to be ashamed of, handling the word of
truth with precision. (2 Tim 2:15, ISV)
During difficult
seasons, I faced the upheavals and trials oftentimes using the very
same passages that have brought me through previous tough times. When
everything is changing and not all the changes are good, facing
difficulties with a familiar sword in hand (what I personally call the
crisis Psalms) is a source of comfort. The more familiar we are with
the Scriptures, the better we can adapt to the increasing challenges we
face as we mature in Christ.
Well, here are my thoughts on
becoming skilled in our handling of God's word. I am sure there are
other viewpoints and ideas that are useful also, but I thought sharing
my own ideas on this might be useful to some of you.
May God's word come alive to you even more than it has before!
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