How Are We Going to Study the Bible?

Objectives of Bible Study in General:

1- The Lord says, “My words are spirit and life.” Therefore, we read the Bible to feed our spirits and take a life from it.

2- We read the Bible because the Bible is a special letter from God to me. I open my heart and my ears to His directions and messages to me personally.

3- We read the Bible to know our family, the church, the unseen body of Christ, the children of God over the ages.

4- We learn a big deal about ourselves when we read about people’ experiences, because the need of human being are the same, the human being in general is the same. Yes, the culture is different and each person is unique. But, in general we have a lot in common.

5- It is a time well spent with God. When reading the Bible with the feeling that it is from Him, we can have a great dialogue with Him while we are reading. At certain point, we find our heart push us to leave reading and pray. Readings that lead to prayers are the most spiritual readings.

6- In the course of knowing our family in the Bible, we may need to know more about personalities, cities, cultures, history, laws, and other things. All these will lead us to look for more information, not for the sake of information or to become proud of our knowledge, but humbly to know our family and how devoted they were to follow their footsteps. Eventually, this will lead us to glorify God who kept them in His fear and love, and give us hope in His guidance and protection.

7- Knowing our family could lead us to admire some of our forefathers and establish a good relationship with them and take one or some as our intercessors.

8- Reading the Bible will lead me to great spiritual paths that eventually will do the following:

a- Burning love to my Lord in my heart

b- Complete commitment of my life to Him

c- Refuse all the pleasures of this world after we tasted the great pleasure of the life given by our beloved Lord

d- Longing to heaven where we dwell with our Father forever

e- Sensitivity to sin. It disturbs too much our life when we approach it. We knew that it bears the seed of death in its paths.

How Do We Approach the Bible?

1- Humbly: Since we know that in it the secrets of life, which are spiritual, we approach the Bible in humbleness praying that He opens our eyes to see the hidden life in His words.

2- In Obedience: Since this is the message of my beloved God to give me healing and life, I will obey it, no matter how hard or unacceptable for me the message is.

3- In Prayer: To ask God to open my sinful eyes to see the spirituality of His words.

4- In Enthusiasm: I should not delay reading it every day. This is my life. It is my love story with my Savior.

Special Bible Approach for Evangelizers:

In addition to the above objectives of reading the Bible, we as evangelizers approach the Bible to sit under the feet of our dear beloved Lord to learn how to evangelize. The human soul is like a great forest, very complicated to go through to know how to reach its heart. In the Bible, we meet God and learn from His wisdom how to approach the human soul, how to touch it? How to lead it to the Lord? What makes human heart inclines to the Lord?

We need to see human soul in her dealing with the Lord, and the Lord – in return- how does He deal with it? It takes great humbleness to sit at the feet of the Lord to learn. Then, what we learn we don’t use it for our glory, but rather for His glory. He is the great Master, and we are just channels that He uses to reach others.

The great evangelizer, no matter how he/she learns and no matter how many souls he/she attracted to the Lord, still think that he did nothing, and he/she still learning under the feet of the dear Lord.

In addition, the evangelizers feel a bigger need for spiritual food to feed themselves and those who hear them too. Their obligation to live in the spirit to be able to communicate the message of the Spirit of God to others lead them to spent more time with God and to be more humble than all others to be ready to receive His grace.

The other aspect in the evangelizer life is to be ready to answer others’ questions in a spiritual effective way. To do that he/she would have to study the Word of God in a deeper way, putting more efforts to learn on a daily basis. With all the learning he/she might have, he/she still approach the Lord in tears asking to work in their weaknesses, to strengthen their weak words, and to open the hearts for His message.

How will the evangelism class study the Bible?

1- We will start with the first book in the New Testament, the Gospel according to Matthew. Then we will continue from one book to another until we end the New Testament.

2- A passage from where we study would be posted in the Evangelism Message Board each day.

3- Class members need to read it, meditate on it, and if possible share with others what they have found in it, by posting comments on the Evangelism Message Board.

4- I encourage everyone to go back to ‘Evangelism Links’ to find links for “The early Fathers Churches and Scriptures,” or simply click the following link to find Bible commentaries written by the Fathers of the Church: http://www.mcgill.pvt.k12.al.us/jerryd/cm/fathers.htm

5- Next lecture I am going to talk about Bible Study Tools. These tools will help you to find more information about personalities, cultures, cities, history, or other informationFeel free to post your questions on what you read