In fact, throughout my many years of following Christ, growing up in a pastor's home, relishing my "Jesus freakness", and serving as staff for large "mega" churches, there is no doubt that I've read the Bible more than any other book. (Calvin & Hobbes doesn't really count as a book, does it? Naw. I think I'm good.)
Yes, I can definitely say I've had the scripture part down pat. I mean, that's what we do as Christians, right? Read the Bible. Check.
However, beginning about five years ago reading is just not enough.
What began as a quiet stir in my gut, has become a raging onslaught of shifting, course-correcting, self-eroding transformation in my soul, spirit, mind, and body. Slowly I'm ditching the traditional views I was fed, stretching my spiritual wings and seeking out Jesus via scripture alone, unencumbered by preconceived ideas or inherited interpretations. While I've always had a highly intimate prayer life with my Creator, my relationship took a fresh turn as I began hungering to go beyond reading... to understanding. Oooohhh. What a concept.
So in my new pursuit of understanding scripture, I've found myself shifting from one method of Bible study to another. Sometimes I've scoured entire passages. Other times I've researched a topic or phrase. However, if I were to speak honestly, at times my study was driven by my desire to validate my thoughts through scripture, rather than to allow scripture to transform my mind.
And this, my friends, is where you come galloping in.
As a "recovering" Christian from a highly legalistic background, I'm currently in the midst of a quandary of sorts. I'm studying out a topic that seems to be ambiguous, partly because it is only mentioned once in the entire Bible. However, due to the serious context and writing surrounding the passage, determining if the instruction is cultural, required by all, or merely an account of what happened, can be tricky.
So I'm curious... how do you study the Bible? What guidelines do you use for interpreting and applying God's word to your life? What are your personal hermeneutics?
For more detail, discussion, query, discovery, and general mayhem on this issue, pop over and visit me at - www.ellenstevens.com.
How do I study the Bible?
I get honest
I ask
I listen which may include digging for a little while.
Well, it starts with my heart and identifying the needs in my heart and talking to Jesus about those needs. Honestly. With gut-wrenching honesty. Sometimes, I'll talk via journaling writing out my stream-of-conciousness prayers with pen and paper. Sometimes I will walk outdoors and talk out loud to God, processing and thinking out loud, pouring my heart out to him about whatever is bothering me.
And then I listen.
Sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it takes a while, but the Spirit always speaks thoughts I wouldn't have thought of come into my heart. Sometimes it's an address for a verse chapter and verse and I look it up on crosswalk.com kinda like a scavenger hunt and read it in several translations until one of them hits me square between the eyes. Sometimes, it's a phrase or a little snippet of scripture and I'll look those up on crosswalk.com to find the whole actual verse and I'll read that. Sometimes I'll read something someone else wrote like a blog post or a bit from a book or magazine and it will trigger a verse of scripture put my heart on a new trajectory of thought. This is what happened recently and I wrote about it in my post Accepted in the Beloved. I read something someone else wrote that brought the phrase "accepted in the beloved" to mind. I searched out the verse that came from by looking at an online concordance. Then I read the chapter and after reading it a few times, I did one of my favorite things. I paraphrased it on the fly imagining I was trying to explain the chapter to my DC. How would I explain it to them in precocious yet grade school language? I'll start writing and all the sudden it's very clearly not me writing it's the Holy Spirit translating it for me like the wonderful stage prompter and counselor that she is.
Accepted in the Beloved is what resulted and I felt dearly dearly dearly relevantly loved by the Trinity in the whole experience.
This conversational relational way of interacting with Jesus through scripture feels so so good. Like having someone scratch right in the exact spot on your back that itches so bad but you can't reach it by yourself.
Sometimes I have to dig. Looking through several translations or looking up occurences of a word or phrase in scripture.
But it all starts with the need. Need it important. Me getting really humble and honest about my needs and asking Jesus to show up for me and he does.
The difference is subtle but feels different nonetheless. A need-driven Bible study feels like a scavenger hunt where someone who loves you has gone before you and laid out the clues so you know what you're searching for is there somewhere and you know they WANT you to find them because they hid the treasure for you to find. That was their intent in the first place. If you ask him for bread, will he give you a stone?
I've just been learning that feeling hungry and then asking for bread is a big help.