“How sweet are Your words to my taste,
Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Ps. 119:103
It took me a long time to enjoy Bible study. As a matter of fact, I had been a leader at Grace for two and a half years before I ever really got into studying the Scriptures on my own and enjoying it. But now, I love it. If I could, I would spend all of my mornings just sitting and pouring through the Scriptures, memorizing, translating, interpreting, or just reading them. I feel toward them as David did when he said that God’s words “are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine fold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10). That is some pretty strong imagery there, but how did I come to love the Word that much?
Like I said, I was a leader for a long time before I really got into studying the Scriptures on my own. I had gone through Inductive Bible Study as a leader a few times, and had certainly learned a lot from it, but it was not something I was about to do in my spare time. Then, my senior year, as a Servant Team leader, I was challenged by my leader to begin to pour through each weeks lesson. To not just do what it took each week to get by, but to really spend time doing each part of the inductive process. This meant I would do word studies, do mechanical layouts, read some online commentaries, write out a bunch of observations, and even memorize the book. At first, this was difficult, but as time passed I began to enjoy the challenge of it, as well as all that God was revealing to me that I had never seen before. It helped that each week after our Bible study on Sunday nights, my friend Steven and I would get together at a coffee shop and discuss in more depth what we had learned. As he and I discussed the passages, we realized that the way we were understanding 1 Peter was different than what our leader was teaching us each week, so we told him as much. We thought we were right, and Jerry, our leader, let us think that we weren’t completely wrong, and so all of a sudden, Steven and I began to develop an ownership of the Word. Not only were we studying it, but we were developing our own beliefs from it instead of being spoon-fed everything, and it was great! I grew so much through studying 1 Peter, because for the first time in my life I was studying the Scriptures on my own, seeking the Lord in them, and letting Him speak to me through them.
This is why we do Inductive Bible study at Grace. Of course, we desire for you to know what the books of Titus and 1 Peter are about, but more than that, our desire is for believers to have a passion for the Scriptures and to know how to study them on their own. If you find your time in the Word to be dry or boring, let me offer up a suggestion: spend even more time in it. The more you spend in there, the more it will become like “the drippings of the honeycomb.”
Marty Scott