Today’s study tip doesn’t have much to do with the studying itself, but everything to do with its effectiveness. Before you open your Bible or notebook, take a few moments to walk through these questions in preparation.

1. Why am I studying?
Habit – I admit, this is often my reason. I read and study every day.
Obligation – Sometimes this one gets me, too. I teach, so I have to study.
Vindication – Ever want to win an argument or prove a point?
Need – I believe the best studying happens when it comes from a need to be with God, the spiritual equivalent of sitting with Him and hearing His stories, His advice, His comfort.

2. Am I prepared?
Clear the mind of distractions. Pray for the Holy Spirit to do the teaching. If necessary, use music to help make the transition to study time.

3.  Am I ready to hear what God has to tell me?
Sometimes, God has to deliver a challenge, a reproof or even a rebuke through His word.

4. Am I ready to change?
God’s ultimate goal is conforming us to the image of His Son. I need to be ready and willing to change my actions, attitude or thinking based on what He shows me. That may involve giving up long-held, tightly-grasped, ingrained notions.

After you study, before closing up, take a moment for review.
What did God teach me?
It helps me to write these down, and I refer back to them often. (Usually when I have to learn the same lesson again.)

Who else may need to know this?
God places us in the body of Christ for a reason, and we are instructed to comfort others with the comfort we have received.

Finally, don’t forget to thank God for revealing Himself once again.

Not every study can be completed in one sitting, especially if you are doing a topical study rather than a passage study. For example, several years ago, I determined I really didn’t know or understand how the Holy Spirit worked. I started a list in the back of my Bible and every time I came across a verse dealing with the Spirit, I made a note. I wrote down the reference and what the verse taught me about the Holy Spirit. After a year or so, not only did I have my own personal Holy Spirit ‘concordance’ but I had a much better grasp on how He worked.

I have several of these long-running studies in progress. The biggest one is ‘fear of the Lord’. I read a fantastic book called When People Are Big and God Is Small by Edward T. Welch. In it, he described the trouble we run into when we let people’s opinions influence and affect us more than God’s opinion. He cited several Scriptures dealing with the fear of the Lord. I started marking them and keeping track on my own. Here’s one of my entries:

Proverbs 14:26 In the fear of the Lord, there is strong confidence
It produces not only faith in God’s actions and character, but faith in my own course of life.  If I am constantly living in fear of the Lord, then I can be sure my choices are the right ones and the things I am doing are within God’s will.  It makes me much more attuned to His ways and purposes.

I have a list of benedictions, of verses for my husband that describe men of character (he is one, for sure) My newest one is on the wilderness. A lot of stuff seemed to happen in the wilderness, so I got curious and started a list. I also have a few lists that are more narrow in scope like the names and descriptions of God in the Psalms, and the righteous vs. the wicked in Proverbs.

This is a good, no-pressure way to study something that interests you. The only caution is… don’t lose your list! I lost a chunk of some of my lists in a computer hiccup so I’m ‘restudying’ those topics.

Something I’ve noticed in the course of reading and studying Scripture is how often God goes to extremes. By that I mean, when God says or does something, it is “all” or “none” or the “most” or the “least”. Paying attention to those little words are tremendous food for the soul when you study.

Try it on familiar verses like Isaiah 53:6 – “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” All of us are sinners. I cannot justify or excuse what I think or do. I am part of that ‘all’. All of us have rebelled and God laid the guilt, the consequences and the judgment on Jesus Christ. Not some, or even most. Every last one of us. No one is beyond the reach of Christ’s blood.

Psalm 23:4 “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” No evil. None. Not even the most terrifying, threatening, stomach-churning, heart-pounding evil. I will not fear it. That’s mighty big faith… but He’s a mighty big God who is there with rod and staff to comfort.

And one of my personal favorites- Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;” (Middle of a sentence, I know, but I’m trying to stay focused here.) Worry about NOTHING. Pray about EVERYTHING. There are no exclusions. Worry and anxiety are a sign that we don’t believe God is in control. Of everything. Nothing has escaped His notice, and everything is part of His plan. But, none of our concerns are too small to bring Him. He is always ready and willing to hear our hearts.

So as you study and read this week, watch for extremes- all, nothing, everything, nothing, none, every…  and be assured that God never does anything halfway.

We’ve had several tips in a row, taking a closer look at Scripture each week. As promised, today we’ll look at just one verse and see how rich just a small portion of God’s word can be. In Isaiah 38:17 it reads,  “Indeed it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; but You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” This verse is part of a prayed offered just after God heals the good king Hezekiah. I chose it as an example because I figured it wasn’t especially familiar.

Now, doing a super-close examination takes some time. Don’t panic thinking you have to give every verse this treatment. Try it on one or two key verses, then next time you have a few hours to study you can walk through a whole chapter this way… Just kidding. Sort of.

The secret to this kind of study is to slow down, and spend some time in one single verse. Try with a memory verse, or the key verse in your next Bible study. Keep your dictionary (or concordance) close by, and ask a bunch of questions. Notice what God is doing and what the human subject is doing. It may be the speaker or it could be someone he’s talking about. Look for hows, whys and so whats. Here’s how I broke down our example verse.

Check the transitions words to get a structure. We have: [this] BUT [this] FOR [this]. So something, then contrast, then a reason. However, in that first little section we get more.

Indeed- that’s a word of agreement or acknowledgment. ‘It was for my own peace’, answers ‘why?’, gives us a reason. What happened? “I had great bitterness.”  The Hebrew word gives us grieved and provoked as synonyms, and it’s translated hard times, troubles, anguish in other versions. So in applying that- Have I ever had great bitterness (or hard times, troubles or anguish)? Yes. Did I come through them acknowledging to God that it was for my own benefit, peace, welfare that those things came into my life? Not always.

“…but You lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption…” That bitterness was a pit of corruption. Checking the synonyms again, corruption also means destruction, and a pit can also mean a dungeon. The implication is that Hezekiah recognizes he was powerless to rescue himself from the bitterness that would destroy him. God was more than capable, though. And notice, God does it lovingly, not dutifully, not begrudgingly, but in love. His love for us causes God to act on our behalf. God, in love, delivers our souls from ultimate corruption in salvation, but He also delivers us from life situations in that same love and grace.

“…for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” For is a “why” or “how” word, so let’s see what questions can we answer here. Why does God intervene? He sees us as worthy of rescue. Why? Because He no longer sees our sins. Why? (And this is the good part) He personally cast every last one of them out of His sight. In the past. It’s already done.

So sum it all up- The bitter hard times that Hezekiah went through, that God delivered him from were an object lesson. The experience taught him how God has rescued him from a much greater, eternal bitterness of soul. It also showed him that God didn’t just save him, but that God is involved in the daily trials he faced. That knowledge and assurance was so sweet, it was worth learning it in a difficult way.

(Thanks for being patient while the posts are a little less frequent. I’m getting caught up on all our school stuff, so I hope to be back on schedule in the next week or two.)

Yesterday morning, our church had the privilege of baptizing four young men and women. Our church is kind of small-ish so any baptism is a big deal, but this one was extra special. One of the young men, Revel, was in a wheelchair. Our church baptizes by immersion, so Revel put himself in the hands of the pastor and two other men to get him down in the water, baptize him, and get him back out. It was a beautiful picture of the desire to follow Christ’s example no matter what. Then the other men stood in for the rest of us in the body of Christ, coming alongside Revel to help him accomplish what he believed Christ was calling him to. He said that he felt comfortable, felt welcome at our church. His new wife was baptized yesterday, too. It truly was a joy to watch.

I wish that was the end of the story. Because of the special activities, the order of service in morning worship was a little out of sync. We had to move pulpit out of the way. The screen had to be raised and lowered a couple of times. The little kids weren’t dismissed for children’s church. And the stand-in worship leader didn’t ask for prayer requests. Some folks were a little distressed by that. It seems some folks didn’t come to the worship service, they came to worship the service. See the difference?

So many times in the Old Testament, God said to Israel through His prophets that their empty, ritualistic worship made Him sick. (I’m paraphrasing.) Maybe that’s our problem- we prefer form over function. We like predictability over faith. We like safe, and ordinary. Maybe we need more of that desire to obey that Revel has, even if it means going someplace we can’t go on our own.

Jesus was never predictable, or ritualistic, or formal. He was accessible, He was passionate and He was intense.