When You Read the BIble -- Do you understand it?

A while back God placed a burden on my heart to teach women how to study the Bible for themselves. It was a heavy burden. He showed me how we have become so dependent on Bible study DVDs and Bible study material produced in mass that we’ve produced a group of Christians who love to study the Word but can’t feed themselves – Babies. There is nothing wrong with the Bible studies that are biblically based, but the problem comes when you can’t sit down with God and His Word, open it and dig into the richness of it and have a deep, meaningful conversation with God.


As I study my way through Hebrews I see why God laid this so heavily on my heart. This isn’t a new problem for believers. In Hebrews 5:11-14 it talks about how the believers have become dull, lazy, picked up on the habit of not listening (depending on the translation you read). Some of you have been Christians for so long you should be teaching, but you’re still on milk needing someone to lead you through Bible study (found in Hebrews 5). Does this sound like you? How long have you been a Christian, and are you digging into the Word? Have you matured in your faith to eat the meat God has prepared for you? If not, YOU ARE MISSING OUT! The Amplified translations says those who eat solid food have sense and mental faculties that have been trained by practice to discriminate and distinguish between good and noble, evil and contrary to divine.

Does it bother you that when a monkey-wrench is thrown in your direction that you can’t go to the Word and dig in to get relief, to get closer to God, to get answers? Does it bother you in the least that your only Bible study comes at the feet of an intermediary like Beth Moore, Priscilla Schrier, etc? Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE them, but what if God wanted to speak something to me directly through His Word? What if God wanted to reveal something to me about Himself that I needed in that moment and I didn’t know how?

Have you ever been to a foreign country where you didn’t speak the language? A girlfriend and I went to Italy several years back. We had a blast. So many wonderful memories were made. On our way to Florence, we rode the train, and there was a couple of older gentleman sitting across from us who attempted to start a conversation. I had downloaded some Italian speaking app to my iPod so I had learned a few words. My girlfriend spoke Tex-Mex and not well. Fortunately, one of the men had a decent grasp on the English language, and we could converse with them, but when he got off the train at his exit, the conversation became strained and comical. You see, we knew little Italian, and the last little man knew no English. We were reduced to drawing pictures and playing charades to communicate.

How does God speak to you? How does He communicate the hard stuff? Does He have to teach you visually? (Those can be some hard and painful lessons – been there, done that.)

I’m still not where I want to be in knowing everything there is about the Bible. I want to go back to seminary to learn more techniques and ways of digging deeper into the Word. And if you know how to dig, then you need to be teaching others whether it is in a small group, one-on-one, or large groups.