Feeding Yourself with the Word
I was in college before I learned how to feed myself—spiritually speaking. Until then most of what I knew about the Bible I had received from others. But during my college days God gave me a hunger to know him through his word. At that time I began to study the Bible for myself. When I started to study the Bible I soon became a self-feeding Christian. This means I began to learn how to discover personally the rich treasures the Bible contains. I didn’t stop studying the Bible with others, but once I began to see for myself the great wisdom of the Bible, I had something meaningful to contribute to the discussion. I also found I could understand sermons much better—and I got much more out of them!
In the coming weeks I am going to teach you how to study the Bible for yourself. You don’t have to remain at the mercy of someone else’s interpretation. That won’t mean you will no longer need others. But it will give you the ability to understand what they are talking about and see for yourself what the Bible says.
Before we get started here’s a preview of where we are going.
- First, we will learn how to observe what the text says. Here we will be asking questions of the text in order to discover what it says.
- Second, we will learn how to interpret what the text says. Here we will discover what the text means.
- Third, we will seek to apply what we learn. In this section we will discover how it works.
Well, that’s it for now. Next week, Lord willing, we will learn how to observe the text.
Bro. Craig