Archives for November 2018

5 Promising Benefits of Personal Bible Study

November 22, 2018 by jstults Leave a Comment

We all know Bible study should be a priority – that’s kind of a given if you’re a Bible-believing Christ-follower, right? Unfortunately, as Christian women, we all too often see personal Bible study as merely an item on our to-do lists.

So, when life gets crazy busy and our to-do lists grow impossibly long, personal Bible study becomes an item we either neglect or remove from that ever-growing list.

If we really understand and believe in the promising benefits of personal Bible study and the impact they have on our daily faith walk, then time in the Word of God is no longer negotiable. Rather than a thing on the to-do list with many other things, Bible study would become a source of strength and life – a necessity for survival rather than simply something we should do.

You might find those words strong. Is Bible study really necessary for survival?

According to God’s Word, yes!

Let me ask you a silly question – do you eat every day? What happens when you don’t eat often enough?

You grow weak. Obviously, failing to feed your physical body affects your physical health in a negative way. In the same way, failing to feed your soul affects your spiritual well-being in a negative way!

But do we really see it that way? I fear not.Most of us wouldn’t go days or weeks, months or even years, without eating food, yet many of us willingly allow large amounts of time to pass without feasting on God’s Word.

And we wonder why so many of us Christian men and women are discouraged and lacking in transformative faith…

Far too often we downplay the power of God’s Word and treat it as something to use as-needed rather than something required for survival!

Let’s take a look at what Scripture says about personal Bible Study and the benefits we receive from it.

5 Promising Benefits of Personal Bible Study

God’s Word is a thing of beauty, friends. When we treat it like any ordinary advice book out there that we only consult when we have a problem, we miss out on so many blessings! Before you dig into the Bible for yourself, consider what this psalmist had to say about Scripture:

Open my eyes, that I may behold
Wonderful things from Your law. Psalm 119:18 (NASB)

Personal Bible Study is one of the most powerful tools and weapons in our faith arsenal, friend.

The Word connects us to the heart of God – it’s His love letter to His chosen people! If we really want to know Him and understand who we are IN Him, then we must spend a good amount of time studying God’s Word for ourselves. If we don’t, then we miss out on the benefits regular Bible study offers us, like the following:

To know the truth and recognize what is false.

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Acts 17:11(NIV)

Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith. 1 Timothy 6:20-21 (NIV)

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 2 Timothy 4:3 (NIV)

According to the Scriptures above, the best way to recognize false teaching is to be well-acquainted with what is true. That’s perhaps the most important benefit of personal Bible study!

We cannot afford to take other people’s word for what is true about the Bible. If we really want truth, then we must dig into the Bible for ourselves and measure what we’ve heard about God or been taught about God with what He actually says about Himself. His Word is the only infallible, trustworthy authority.

We should be more like the Bereans and examine the Scriptures so we don’t become like the world – hearing only what we want to hear, what feeds our desires.

To help us discern right from wrong by giving us knowledge and the guidance we desperately need in this fallen world!

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness… 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)

Your word is a lamp for my feet,
a light on my path. Psalm 119:105 (NIV)

God’s Word is alive! Another important benefit of studying God’s Word is that it acts within us. It trains us in righteousness, and helps us teach, rebuke, and correct that which is false. This is an essential benefit of personal Bible study for any Christian who wants to grow in Christ-likeness! The act of studying Scripture keeps us on the right path.

To avoid sin and the destruction that follows.

[M]y people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
“Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God,
I also will ignore your children. Hosea 4:6 (NIV)

I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11 (NIV)

Hosea describes how a lack of biblical knowledge destroyed God’s people, resulting in the fall of the Northern Kingdom. If we wish to avoid sin and destruction, we must follow the exampleof the psalmist and hide His Word in our hearts. Notice that when we maintain a steady diet of God’s Word, it actually keeps us from sinning!

To help us obey!

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Joshua 1:8

[S]o that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:17 (NIV)

Through personal Bible Study, we can meditate on God’s Word. The result? Obedience! Earlier we read in 2 Timothy 3:16 that the Word of God trains us for righteousness, but the following verse (17) explains that the purpose for this training by the Word is to equip God’s people for good works. Thus, studying the Word plays a vital role in helping us obey God and serve Him.

To give us freedom.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32 (NIV)

Without knowing the truths of God’s Word, we are easy prey for the Enemy and false teachers. Right knowledge, attained through Bible study, is essential for our own freedom. We must know who God is, and we must know who we are in Christ so we can be freed to experience confident faith.

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Friend, don’t miss out on these important benefits of personal Bible study, even when your schedule is full, even when you’re tempted to let this spiritual discipline slide for a few days. Remember to feed your soul with God’s Word so you can stand firm when the Enemy attacks and when life grows difficult!

If you’ve never made a habit of personal Bible study, and you aren’t sure where to start, I highly recommend going through Arabah Joy’s Bible Study Methods course.

Why her course? Because Bible Study Methods is both doctrinally sound and personally practical for believers of all ages.

While you can find a lot of information on the internet about various methods, this course not only tells you how to do each method, but the worksheets contained walk you through them step-by-step. In addition, the videos contained are perfect for more visual learners, especially when it comes to learning how to do a more in-depth study (like a Greek key-word study). Not only are the teaching videos helpful for visual learners, but they make it easy for users to go back and quickly review steps when they haven’t used a particular method in a while.

I truly appreciate that this course doesn’t focus on one “right” method because I know from experience that there are many ways to study God’s Word for yourself, and different methods appeal to different people! In fact, through the Bible Study Methods course, I discovered a new method that has quickly become one of my favorites! 🙂

Finally, Bible Study Methods incorporates something for everyone – from the beginner to the more experienced student of the Word, the seven methods explored in this course can take as little as 15 minutes, with little to no prep-work or special resources needed, or as long as hours, days, weeks, even months (if you want to do a more in-depth topical or word study).

We’ve used this tool in our church plant to teach new believers and even mature Christians how to really dig into the Word for themselves, giving them the confidence to cling to sound doctrine even when challenged. By practicing these methods, they are learning to rely more on the Holy Spirit to teach them truth rather than relying on others, an encouraging sign of maturity.

These are just a few benefits of Bible study, friend, but there are many more (keep an eye out for more in an upcoming post)! Whatever method you use, and whatever tools you use, the most important thing is simply to make time to open the Bible and let the Holy Spirit teach you, friend.

Make plans today to study God’s Word for yourself!

Jen 🙂

Why You Need to Study God’s Word for Yourself

November 5, 2018 by jstults Leave a Comment

My fun-loving pastor (who also happens to be my husband) really enjoys teasing others to the point that I’m convinced teasing is actually his primary love language. One of his favorite jokes in church settings is to use the eleventh commandment to his advantage.

When speaking to a church member recently, he said something along the lines of, “You know the eleventh commandment says ‘Thou shalt volunteer five hours a week until the work on the church building is completed.’”

The usual response to one of his eleventh commandment statements is surprise, often followed by confusion.

Those who know his teasing ways well are quick to catch on while others question whether or not there is an eleventh commandment, but many just accept what he says as fact. He IS a pastor after all, so he must know what he’s talking about, right?

Of course, my husband is quick to point out his own teasing, but in our current world, not all would-be deceivers are benevolent. In fact, most are quite the opposite – most set out to deceive us in order to lead us away from God’s ways and toward our own destruction.

From the story above, you can see how blind acceptance of what another person claims to be true about God’s Word can be a real problem for God’s people. Confusion over God’s truth has been a problem since the very beginning when the serpent in the garden used a portion of God’s very words to deceive Adam and Eve.

When Christians are unfamiliar with what the Bible actually says, when they haven’t dedicated time to learning biblical truth for themselves instead of just believing what they’ve been told, they become easy targets, sitting ducks. If you fail to study God’s Word for yourself, you set yourself up for a failure of faith.

How can you recognize or contradict false teaching if you don’t first have a foundation of truth?

How can you overcome spiritual warfare and answer Satan’s lies with truth without knowing where in the Bible to find it?

How can you lead others to walk in truth, too?

3 Vital Reasons to Study God’s Word for Yourself

As Christian women, we must choose to prioritize the practice of real Bible study so that we have what we need to stand firm when doubts come knocking, when trials threaten to overwhelm us, when Satan tempts us, and when the world attempts to manipulate us.

1. Stand firm in your beliefs.

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. Colossians 2:6-8 (NASB)

We want to be captivated by Christ and His truth, not taken captive by false teachers or worldly wisdom.

*This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please visit the About page. Thank you for supporting the ministry of this site!

We need to be more like the Bereans, who when they heard the gospel, examined Scripture daily to see if it was really true (Acts 17:11)! The only way to grow in your understanding of Christ and how to follow Him is to study God’s Word for yourself.

I’ll never forget the lesson I learned about this truth during my first biology class as a freshman at a Christian college. Since I spent much of my growing up years as a missionary kid, I lived a fairly sheltered life. So I was surprised to discover that my faith-professing biology professor at my Christian college believed in evolution. In fact, not only did he believe in evolution, he actively worked to convince us that real faith, strong faith was compatible with this belief, also.

He even insinuated that to believe otherwise was either to be ignorant or to have weak faith.

In the months that followed, I felt increasingly conflicted. I valued academics and knowledge, but I also valued my faith. I wondered if what I believed about God being the Creator of the Universe was really true or not.

It was a mini crisis of faith for me, and I was on my own. My parents were still serving overseas – literally halfway around the world.

At some point I realized that choosing what to believe was totally up to me now. I had to decide for myself what to believe about the beginnings of our world, and I could only do that by studying the Word. So that’s what I did. I studied the biblical account of Creation. I studied what critics said about a seven-day creation model, as well as what Christian scientists said about it.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I either believed God’s Word or I didn’t, and if I didn’t, well then my entire salvation was a lie because a virgin birth is just as “scientifically impossible” as Creation.

I came out of that crisis with a firmer belief than before because instead of relying on what my parents and other Christians claimed to be true, I had studied it out for myself. I’ve never questioned that particular doctrinal belief since then. Instead of being susceptible to the persuasive words of my professor, I could stand firm in my belief because it really was MY belief, not just teaching passed on to me by someone else.

2. Grow into a mature believer.

Here’s the truth, friends: we most certainly can and should learn from other Christians and leaders in the faith. In fact, that’s likely how believers who are young in the faith gain much of their knowledge initially. But at some point, we have to grow up in the faith and quit relying on others to tell us what God’s Word says.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Hebrews 5:12-14 (NASB)

At some point, we must choose to dig into the Scriptures and discover truth for ourselves, and we CAN do that with the help of the Holy Spirit! Don’t content yourself with mere milk, friends, when the banquet of the entire Bible is yours to feast on!

If you don’t study God’s Word for yourself, then your faith is only as strong as your trust in what others say. Living on second-hand knowledge is choosing stunted growth.

If you want to be a strong Christian women with confident faith, you must begin by studying the Bible.

3. Experience the abundant life He has planned for you.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at the spiritual discipline of personal Bible study and the promising benefits that are ours for the taking!

The Benefits of Bible Study series will lead you to understand not only the importance of studying God’s Word but also the blessings of it, as well. What you may not realize is when you study God’s Word for yourself, you reap rewards beyond acquiring knowledge and understanding – bonus benefits, so to speak. Likewise, there are some not-so-pretty consequences for lacking an understanding of the Bible.

Failing to spend time in Scripture is like turning down a gift! Who does that, right? 😉

At the end of the series, I’ll be offering some practical tools and resources to help you learn how to make God’s Word a vital part of your everyday life – through Bible study and meditation, scripture memorization, and so forth. So plan to stick around, and invite your friends to join us, too!

For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15:4 (NASB)

Let’s be women of the Word!

Jen 🙂

Archives for November 2018

5 Promising Benefits of Personal Bible Study

To know the truth and recognize what is false.

To help us discern right from wrong by giving us knowledge and the guidance we desperately need in this fallen world!

To avoid sin and the destruction that follows.

To help us obey!

To give us freedom.

3 Vital Reasons to Study God’s Word for Yourself

1. Stand firm in your beliefs.

2. Grow into a mature believer.

3. Experience the abundant life He has planned for you.