Part II of Finding Margin for the Devotional Life

Hey friends,  we’re in the second episode of a three-part series and I’m excited to dive back into it. If you didn’t listen to “Playing Catch-up and Part I of Finding Margin for the Devotional Life”, I hope you’ll take some time to circle back there. The comments from that episode lead me to believe it hit the mark with so many listeners, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Today, we’ll be talking about where and how to begin if you’re new to Bible Study.  The first thing I like to do whenever I’m speaking on this topic is to pause and reflect on what it was like before Bible study was my delight. It’s not hard to remember the days when I wanted to love the Bible, but I just flat out didn’t and trying to read it made me sleepy. So, let’s start there.

If you’re new to the Bible, or even if you’re not that new to it, but you’ve never developed a hunger for digging into it on your own, my first suggestion is for you to take your current experience with the Bible, whatever that looks like, and approach God with it in prayer. Ask Him to help you develop a desire for His Word and to teach you through it, and then, ask Him again tomorrow. I still pray this way on an ongoing basis. I thank God that His Word has become as much bread to me as the physical food I eat. I acknowledge that He has done this marvelous thing, not me, and I ask Him to help me love His Word more than I did yesterday.  He is faithful.

My second suggestion is one you’ll find in a lot of places that address this question. That’s because it is solid good advice and why reinvent the wheel, right? Find a translation that you can understand. A few of my favorites are the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, the New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, the Amplified and the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Okay, that was more than a few, but you get the idea.  If you can’t buy a Bible just now, type a verse in on a search engine and you’ll find websites where you can read a slew of different translations as quickly as your Internet can load the page, all free. Take every advantage of that. Reading the same verse in various translations will often open our eyes to something we didn’t see in the initial reading.

To recap, begin by asking God to help you love His Word, and two, find a translation you can understand. The third suggestion brings us right down to the meat of this week’s podcast. I’m often asked where to begin reading and how much to read? For me, both of those questions require me to assume an uncomfortable level of authority, but I’m game to answer if you will take my thoughts as just that, my thoughts. There are as many answers as there are Bible teachers.

That said, I like to direct new Bible students to John’s gospel. That’s the fourth book of the New Testament. The gospel of John is beautiful, profound reading. This is going to be a real over simplification, but where the first three gospel writers major on the humanity of Jesus and the timeline of his earthly ministry, John’s first words take us all the way back to the beginning, “In the beginning was God and the Word was with God”. John opens with the divinity of Jesus as the living Word of God who first spoke the world into existence, and then he devotes his efforts to establishing this same Jesus as the Son of God and long-awaited long-promised Savior, stepping into time to redeem it. John’s gospel is my favorite because He stresses the importance of the Lordship of Jesus and our need to believe and keep believing. That speaks to this remedial learner who totally gets the words of the anxious daddy in the gospel accounts who once said, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” Approach the book of John in bites, not to conquer the reading, but to hear the words.

And don’t try to read too much at one sitting unless you’re drawn forward. For instance, the first verse of the first chapter is weighty and full of glory, and the chapter has another fifty verses!  Pace yourself. The first five verses are a manageable section by themselves. Take them one or two at a time, but don’t race. Read and savor. Pause and ponder. Ask the Holy Spirit to talk to you about what you’re reading and to help you take His words into your day.  If you want to do more, type that verse into a search engine along with the word commentary and read what other learned scholars have to say about it. Whatever time you give to unpacking that verse is to your great benefit.

But, let’s back up even further. Let’s say the idea of studying a book seems too much to you. You can always start with a good devotional. Most of the daily readings will include a Scripture verse. Acknowledge to God in prayer that you know those Biblical words are more important than anything the devotional author said and ask Him to teach you more about them. Say the verse aloud, write it down, or peck it out in a notepad on your smart phone. Meditate on the words. The truth you pull from them will belong to you and to your descendants! Know what I just did there? I quoted Scripture and I didn’t have to reach for it. Holy Spirit brought the words of Deuteronomy 29:29 back to me because I’ve often held the promise to my heart. “The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and to our descendants forever.”

The more you engage with God’s Word, the more of it you’ll remember too, and God will be able to bring it back to your thoughts during the day and speak to you through it. We’ll end with another delicious truth. If you engage with God’s living Word, God’s living Words will engage you.

That’s it for now. I hope these thoughts have helped you. It’s fun for me to think about and trace the steps that led to my love of God’s Word! For instance, right now, it’s occurring to me that listening to teaching podcasts, much like this one, has been another tool the Lord has used to stir up my hunger for His Word, so offering you whatever help I can feels really cool to me! The next time we’re together, we’ll be talking about developing a prayer life.

Hit subscribe so you won’t miss it and invite someone to join us! I’ll see you right here next time, if the Good Lord’s willing and the creek doesn’t rise. This is Shellie with hugs for all!

 

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