Knowing God through His Word — Part 1
Exhortations, Encouragements and Study Helps
Introduction
This series of brief essays, Knowing God through His Word, looks at Bible study through many lenses. It discusses reasons to study the Bible, hindrances to Bible study, and practical approaches to Bible study and memorization. It draws from from many different authors, disciplines, points of view, and centuries.
Essay One jumps right in by summarizing a few thoughts about why to study God’s word and three attitudes that hinder believers. It is taken from Dynamics of Spiritual Growth by John Wimber and Kevin Springer.
One
Why do we study God’s Word?
According to John Wimber and Kevin Springer,
The purpose of Scripture is to bring us into union with Christ and into relationship with his Father . . . The Bible is God’s authoritative voice, expressing his claims on all men and women. This truth should put an insatiable hunger for God’s word in our hearts and minds.
God’s Word come to life inside of believers, it brings His people into union/unity with one another so that the Body of Christ moves as one.
Wimber said that two attitudes hinder Christians from meeting God in His Word and giving it rightful authority in their lives.
The first attitude he calls a “leave it to the experts” mentality; it’s thinking that the Bible is too difficult and complex for us.
The second attitude he calls a “me and my Bible” mentality; it is an emotional, subjective view. To avoid these obstacles, he says “When I stick to the following principles I usually meet God in Scripture study.”
1. Read to learn from God. Learn from God in devotional reading as well as in study. Meditate and pray over Scripture. Ponder. Think. Stop to ask, “God what are You saying to me?”
2. Read to obey. Learning about God without doing what He asks is merely mental exercise. We risk coming under Jesus’ judgment of the Pharisees. He said, ‘they do not practice what they preach.’ Matt. 23:3. . . Scripture mirrors reality; it reveals the masks that cover our faces, and it tells us how to take them off. How can we know what God wants of us if we don’t know His will? Is it of any benefit to know His will if we don’t act on it?
3. Read to share with others. Reading the Bible selfishly, just for our selves, misses out on a key dynamic of God’s word. The Lord gives us His light to show the way to others. Often there’s an unexpected blessing in sharing God’s word with others: understanding deepens; the word of God comes alive even more.
Quoted and adapted from: Dynamics of Spiritual Growth by John Wimber and Kevin Springer, Hodder and Stoughton, 1990
