ARME 12: Triafalgar, IN - Sept 2012

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ARME Bible Camp

Wes Peppers

How to Study The Bible Part 1

Father in heaven, we're delighted to be here today, and we're delighted to be at Army, and we're just so thankful, Lord, for the messages of heaven we've already received.

And I pray, Lord, that during these next 2 hours, that we would have very much of an instruction on how to study your word and that we would take these tools and methods and as we learned them, Lord, they would not just be nice things that we learned at Army but stayed at Army, but that they would become real in our lives, that would become real in our hearts.

And as we open Your Word, and as we study to show ourselves approved before You, I pray, Lord, in a special way that You would just refresh us with Your Spirit.

You would give us fresh insights and new thoughts.

And Lord, biblical messages that would change our lives radically.

Lord, we need revival, we need the Holy Spirit, we need a fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

We know that all revivals have been started by earnest prayer and sincere study of your word.

So we ask today, Lord, at Army, that this would be a revival.

And Lord, we pray that this would be the last Army.

Not because we don't like army, but because we want Jesus to come.

And we pray today, Lord, that in our hearts we would be ready.

So we look to you, Father, during this hour, and we pray for your spirit to come.

Give us understanding, give us wisdom, give us clarity of mind.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, that all God's people say, Amen.

What I want to share with you this afternoon, I like to call finding the pearl, digging deep into the treasure of God's Word.

And what I'm going to share with you, I'm not going to tell you a bunch of stories, I'm not going to entertain you, I'm not going to preach a sermon to you, but what I'm going to give you are practical instructions, practical methods that you can take with you back home wherever you are and you can begin applying these in your lives.

In fact, you don't even have to wait until you get back home.

And I believe that these things will be a benefit.

I hope that they'll be a blessing to you.

And we're gonna look at a lot of nuts and bolts, so I'm gonna really pray that you guys don't get lost, and we have a lot of information to cover in 2 hours, but I hope that it'll be logical and clear for you.

So we're just going to go ahead and get started.

I wanna share with you an interesting statement that I just came across not too long ago.

When a man is too busy to spend time with God, he is busier than heaven ever intended him to be.

If you have found yourself to be too busy at different times to spend time with God through prayer, through Bible study, and I would also add to that, witnessing for Jesus, then you are busier than heaven ever intended you to be.

He wants us to dedicate a portion of our day, every day, to spending quality time with Him.

How much time should you put into Bible study?

I always say, as much as it takes to know that you've been in the presence of God.

As much as it takes to know that you've experienced his spirit.

Well, when I first became a Christian, I just wanna share with you my own experience.

All my hopes and dreams of becoming this big NFL football star were crushed when I tore out my knee.

And I had all these different things going on in my life.

And I looked around at the world and I said, man, if This is really what the world is like, why would I even want to be a part of it?

And so I thought about suicide, and as I thought about suicide, God began to bring to my mind the concept that I needed to study the Bible.

And at that time, I was an atheist, I thought, study the Bible, why would I do that, right?

Why would I have any desire to study that book of fables and fairy tales and a bunch of garbage that all of my professors who have PhDs spend a third of their class making fun of?

But finally I agreed, because the more I tried to put that thought out of my mind, the more it grew.

All right, and so I began studying the Bible trying to prove it wrong.

And that was the greatest blessing of my life.

And let me tell you, friends, if you will search the Bible with all of your heart as the Bible says in Jeremiah 29, 13, God says He will be what?

And if you put all of your energy into it, you will find God and you will find that pearl.

So after I came to know Christ, I began to study the Bible.

And I was living alone, I only went to class 3 to 4 hours a day, I had no job, so I had all day long.

And for about 2 years, I spent 8 to 10 hours a day studying the Bible.

I didn't touch Ellen White for the first year, I just read the Bible, I read the New Testament about 15 times.

And let me tell you, here's a universal principle, that the more time you put into your personal devotional life, the more you're gonna get out of it.

The more time you spend seeking to draw near to God, the more you're going to experience Him drawing near to you.

And so what I'm gonna share with you today are some things that I use in my own personal study.

These are some things I've developed myself, some things I've borrowed from other people.

Don't think that every thought that I put up on the screen is my own.

Okay, if you'd like to know where some of the resources are, I can give those to you.

But we want to ask the question, how shall we study the Bible?

How many of you have a very, you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of the Bible?

How many of you would like to know the Bible more?

Here's an interesting statement I'll share with you.

It's from the book, I believe, Education, page 189.

It says, in daily study, the verse by what?

Verse by verse method is often most helpful.

Let the student take 1 verse and concentrate the mind on an ascertaining the thought that God has put into that verse for him.

And then dwell upon the thought until it becomes what?

1 passage thus studied until its significance is clear, is of more value than the pursual of many chapters with no definite purpose in view and no positive instruction gained." How many of you have ever sat down and you open the Bible and you read like 10 chapters and you're like, yes!

And you get to the church on Saturday and say, man, I read 10 chapters.

And someone looks at you and they say, I read 20.

And someone looks at them and they say, I read 25.

And then Somebody else says, what did you learn in reading 10, 20, or 25 chapters?

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How to Study The Bible Part 1

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