Do you want to empower your Bible studies and your devotional life? Learn how you can make your Bible Study and prayer life exciting and meaningful! 

IMPACT Copenhagen 2015

<p>Do you want to empower your Bible studies and your devotional life? Learn how you can make your Bible Study and prayer life exciting and meaningful! </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Empower Missions

Christian Hjortland

How to Study the Bible and Empower Your Devotional Life- Part 2

Father in heaven, I thank you that you once again can be with us.

I ask that you may speak to us and again send us your Holy Spirit for understanding and direction.

So we left off yesterday by first of all talking about how to study the Bible and empower your devotional life.

And we started looking at 7 ways to, or 7 points or steps to empower your Bible study.

And we talked in the beginning about organize and prioritize and then surrender.

And now we're talking about digging deep.

And We talked about the importance of asking questions as you're studying.

And I give you, we went through 3 phases and I showed you an example from John.

I was at John chapter 10, I think verse 27, and how we can apply it.

We have to ask ourselves, what is the text saying?

Try to understand the original intent of the writer and what God wants to communicate through it.

Ask yourself, do I need to hear the warning?

How does it speak to me in my situation right now?

And there are several other methods and I could have even included more things here, but for the sake of time, You know, I'm just gonna mention some of them.

You can do a topical study based on a topic and dig deep in, you know, to look up texts in the Bible, what the Bible is saying about, let's say you want to look up the topic prayer or you go to how can you pray, how was Jesus praying, how was the disciples praying and the prophets and so on.

And you'll get a deeper understanding upon a certain topic.

And maybe, well, so basically you can analyze your topic by digging deeper and then well of course this will also avoid to build a doctrine upon just 1 text or 2 Bible texts that some people are doing.

But we need to look at the Bible as a whole and look at a certain topic, look up all the things said about the topic to get a clear understanding.

If you take the topic of hell, if you look up a few Bible texts about hell and build a doctrine upon it, you can misunderstand it.

If you look upon all of them together, it talks about hell.

Because you will find out that the majority of Bible texts are so clear what is happening when we die and in the ultimate, you know, you can just go to John chapter 3 verse 16.

For so God loved the world, that he gave it his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

So that means he will give everlasting life to those who receive his Son and believe in him.

But those who don't, what will happen to them?

Perish, does that mean eternal torment in hell?

So only with the simple text is that, I mean you can see what you know, what is all about, what the gospel is about, but also what will happen with the lost.

Anyhow, we can make a word study, which is actually very important.

I often look up words, you know, Because Greek and Hebrew is such rich languages.

It's not like Danish or English or whatever.

It's very deep and even the names have a meaning in the Bible.

When we talk about Daniel, which means, what does Daniel mean?

And it's so exciting when you start to look closer.

Let's take, I mean, if you, let's say you take the word love.

The word love in English and in Danish, I mean, it's only 1 word.

How many words of love do you have in the Greek, in the Bible, you know?

So if you go to study what they actually mean and look at them in context, you will get an understanding.

Wow, this is different dimensions of love and they have a gap which exceeds them all.

But if your topic is prayer, for instance, look up, search, I mean, use your computer, search, you know, searching the Bible for, for instance, the word, well, then you need to look up, obviously, the word pray.

Praying, different forms of it, prayed, prayer, ask, asking, intercession, crying or cried, supplication, petition, and you know, so you need to look up some synonyms to get if you want to to find all various you know where it talks about prayer and make a thorough study.

Often when we are sitting down to do our devotions, often we're you know we can come from from joking around in 1 moment to the moment of praying.

That's going to be hard to be focused or studying God's word.

I heard that for Muslims, for instance, they have some certain preparations before they're praying.

And that preparations can help to get focus.

We talked about earlier how you can get focus when you wake up in the morning.

I mean, we joke around in 1 moment, and then we go and read.

I mean, we have other things in our mind.

If you read a love letter from someone, I think it's very likely that you will read it more than once.

You will read so you'll make sure you don't miss any word or anything between the lines.

What if we treated the Bible in the same way?

We treated it as a love letter to us personally.

Then we have, it's a quote from Christ's Obelisk on page 111, where the white says, it is essential for young and old not only to read God's Word but to Study it with wholehearted earnestness, praying and searching for truth as for a hidden treasure.

Those who do this will be rewarded, for Christ will quicken the understanding." And You know, this is what we do.

I mean, sometimes we read it, but she says, but we shouldn't not only read it, we should study it.

Like searching for a treasure, I mean that's digging deep.

And we should put it like this, we don't read the Bible to fulfill a daily obligation.

We should study the Bible and spend time in the world to know God and understand his love for us and his plan for us so that we can learn to become like him.

It's only when we treat it like that that we will be blessed.

But if we treat it like an obligation, something I just have to do, we're not gonna get blessed.

In Education, page 260 and 261, it says, many, and this is quite profound, Many, even in their seasons of devotion, fail of receiving the blessing of real communion with God.

With hurried steps they press through the circle of Christ's loving presence, pausing perhaps a moment within the sacred presence, but not waiting for his counsel.

They have no time to remain with the divine teacher.

With their burdens, they return to their work.

These workers can never attain the highest success until they learn the secret of strength.

They must give themselves to think, to pray, to wait upon God for a renewal of physical, mental, and spiritual power.

Not a pause for a moment in his presence, but personal contact with Christ, to sit down in companionship with him.

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How to Study the Bible and Empower Your Devotional Life- Part 2

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