Currently in college, I am taking a class on how to be a better bible student. This class has been incredibly insightful so far, and it was definitely not was I was expecting. I definitely do see today that Christian teens and those in my age group don’t study enough, or don’t study at all. Therefore, this results in ignorance of God’s word, and young people not living for God the way that they’re supposed to.
To open up, one must remember that the bible is God’s Holy word. He inspired the writers of the bible to relay to us what he wants (2nd Timothy 3:16). Knowing this, we should hold it in the highest regard and WANT to study it. The bible is from God, and it’s His message to us about Him, and what He wants from us. Why shouldn’t we want to study it? The truth is, you will never know absolutely everything there is to know about the bible. I’ve heard even older bible students say that after so many years, they still have so much to learn. I find this too, even though I haven’t been studying for as long as they have. I’ve been studying my whole life, basically, and I keep finding out new things over and over again.
I just want to share some tips I’ve learned on being a better bible student. First off, the biggest thing is your attitude. To really get the most out of what God’s trying to tell you, your attitude must be correct. I see this so much. I see young people constantly having improper attitudes toward study and understanding of the bible.
First off, we cannot simply just go in to reading it to vindicate ourselves. When we go in to try to find anything to justify anything we’re involved in, you may not get the entire picture of what God wants, or miss the mark completely. For instance, (I know some might bash me for this, but it’s the truth) some might say that only belief in God is necessary to be saved. They go into the bible, and they find John 3:16. One then might assume it’s all you had to do. But, they fail to look at anything else. For instance, in James, it talks about faith and works (James 2:14-26). It talks about how faith and works go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other. Simply saying you believe isn’t enough, because as it says in verse 19, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble!” (emp. added). Wow, even the demons believe. That doesn’t mean that they do what God wants, though. For a Christian, that belief should encourage them to actually act on that faith and do as God commands.
You have to look at all the evidence side by side. No, these verses do not contradict one another. You have to put them together. The word of God all fits together perfectly. So what you get is that faith as well as doing as doing what God commands is absolutely necessary.
When studying the bible, one must throw away all preconceived notions. When you do this, it makes it easier for you to be open to whatever God says. The word of God can be understood by anyone. I hate to say it, but if anyone has told you that you can’t understand it, only a handful of people can, that’s a huge mistake. God wrote the bible for everyone’s salvation. If He didn’t want everyone to understand it, why did He state so many times that Jesus came to die for EVERYONE? And that He wants EVERYONE to be saved (2nd Peter 3:9)?
Now, that’s not to say that we’re not going to get confused sometimes. Every once in a while, we’re going to hit something we really don’t understand. But what we need to do is do what we can to FIND that answer. It really bugs me when I show a verse to someone to show them what the bible says, then they say don’t understand it, but yet they don’t care enough to find out more…and yet they claim to care about what God wants.
Honestly, I don’t believe we have any excuse not to understand the bible nowadays. I mean, think about it. During the middle ages, common people weren’t even allowed to look at a bible or even learn how to read. They just went by what a lot of the Lords and priests told them. They didn’t have any good access to information. Today, we have access to a WEALTH of information. We have computers, android phones, inventions like the iPad and Kindle, libraries with tons of books, PDAs, podcasts, even electronic bibles…the list goes on and on. If you think about it, God has blessed us with all of these things to help us understand the bible better. If you really want the answer to something, you can easily find it. There’s even a website that has all the verses of the bible. There’s one verse per page, and it gives quite a few different translations of that verse. Odds are, you’re going to easily understand one of the translations of the verse. I use this all the time when I’m trying to study or even write a blog article like this one.
In this series of lessons, I want to mainly discuss how to become a better student of the bible by changing our perspectives and attitudes. Only then can we really work towards being the best students of the bible that we can.
(Note: The book that we are studying from in my class is called How to Study the Bible by Kevin Rhodes if anyone wants to know where some of my information comes from)
