I’m a strong believer in the accessibility of Scripture, that God’s Word can speak to anyone. Because we have the Holy Spirit, Who guides us into truth (John 16), we don’t need fancy commentaries or well-designed devotional books to help us know what the Bible is saying.

I’ve been working on a series of blog posts to share more about what I have personally learned to help me study the Bible. This topic of discussion comes up often with others, and I certainly don’t have all of the answers yet (or ever will), but I want to share some things that have significantly impacted my relationship with the Word and thus my spiritual growth.

A Bible teacher in high school used to remind us over and over that “the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible.” I am pretty sure it was a fill-in-the-blank question on every single test that semester. He meant that the Bible is self-sustaining. When we don’t understand a passage, we should search Scripture to find other passages that support it and help us digest it more fully.

As someone who loves to learn and study, though, I do appreciate being able to use those sorts of tools to give me a deeper understanding, whether it’s through knowing the historical context or the meaning in the original language or the way it connects to another passage in a different part of the Bible that I never would have recognized on my own. Various Bible studies have encouraged me and helped me learn through what God has taught someone else. The Bible has unending layers, of a sort, and tools help us go deeper and deeper within those layers of learning and interpretation.

But my first step in trying to understanding a passage is not to go to someone else’s words. It’s to spend time digging in to the passage itself, praying that the Lord would reveal truth to my heart.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:12-13)

There are a lot of people who don’t feel confident in being able to open the Bible and gain what God has for them. And often, when I talk to those who feel they are in a dry season with God, their explanation is that they try to read the Bible but can’t get anything out of it right now.

I have been there too. But I knew that the Bible was living and active (Hebrews 4:12), so there was no way I could blame the problem on the Word having gone stale; rather, it had to be something to do with me.

As an aside, we do often go through what some refer to as a “desert” season in our spiritual life, and sometimes this is a place where God chooses to leave us in order to strengthen our faith. It’s not always a result of our sin or our attitude. However, what I am talking about is a boredom or an apathy toward the Word because it doesn’t seem to be doing anything in your life, so you give up trying to read it.

Then, through a combination of things I was reading and people I was talking to, I realized that my problem was my perspective when I went in to read the Bible. I was looking for what it told me for my life.

There seems to be a phenomenon, especially within middle school and high school groups, that attempts to convince pre-teens and teens how fun it is to read the Bible. The motive is good – help them desire to get into the Word! But the reason I most often heard growing up is that the Bible is a love letter from God to you, and who doesn’t want to read a love letter??

I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school, and my crushes never liked me back, so I found comfort in the fact that Someone would write me a love letter, and Someone would care for me just as I am. After disappointing Friday nights and dashed Valentines’ Day hopes and lonely high school formals, I would retreat back to my room with my journal and write to Jesus, asking Him to fill that void in my life.

Now this is a tangent, so don’t get lost, but I am not totally bashing this concept. It really helped me grow through singleness to recognize that Jesus was the One Who could fulfill me, and it was only as I accepted this and rested in Him that I was ready to meet Eric. A relationship is made up of two broken people, and as wonderful as my husband is, he’s not perfect, and he doesn’t complete me or satisfy me the way Christ can. And Eric has to live in that place, too, where his ultimate desire is for Christ.

But back to the Bible being a love letter –
Eric writes me love letters from time to time. I married a sappy man who knows how to make me feel loved, albeit a little awkward in a giddy way, by writing pretty words and telling me how much he loves me.

And the thing is, those letters are all about me. About how much he loves me and how beautiful he thinks I am and how much it means to him when I serve him in different ways. He praises me and makes me feel good about myself, makes me feel valued and loved.

And while God does love us, and while He did pay the ultimate sacrifice because He wants us to share in eternity with Him, I’m not sure that the Bible is a love letter to us because the Bible is not about us. And when we are looking for ourselves constantly in Scripture, we will often come up dry and confused, because we can’t find ourselves on every page.

I get why youth pastors and other leaders communicate this to those kids. At that age, you are so self-centered. I know I was! All that mattered was whether or not my friends were inviting me to sleepovers, or how I did on my Algebra test (and if it was the top grade in the class), or what people thought about me. The world ended after high school, so of course every little thing was a life and death matter! And when you tell someone that there is a love letter waiting for them, of course they are going to want to read it, because who doesn’t want to be praised and adored? Kids need to know that the Bible is relevant to their lives, and this is a great analogy to help them dive in.

But that can then set us into a pattern for the rest of our lives as we keep looking for how the Bible serves us and our desire to be affirmed. The Bible is about God, first and foremost. It has implications for our lives, and it talks about how we should live, but all of that is in light of Who God is. And I think if we take the time to recognize Who God is, we will find that we experience the depth of His love even more.

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21)

We will come away discouraged from reading our Bibles, and especially from studying the parts that are more difficult, if we are only looking for the application–“What does this mean for my life?” I believe that the first thing to look for in Scripture is what it says about God and Who He is. Look for what the passage says about His character and His actions. What is true about God?

For the junior high Bible curriculum I taught this past school year, students learned to look at the Bible as one story with the plot outline of Creation, Fall, Redemption. The Creation and the Fall happen within the first couple of chapters–and the rest of the Bible is God’s process and fulfillment of his promise of redeeming the world, ultimately through His Son, then through His Spirit working through us to share the Gospel with others and to bring Him glory.

He is on every page of Scripture, and as we learn to look for Him in everything we read, we will see how much he loves us, and we will grow more deeply in our knowledge of him, our love for him, and our relationship with him.

To read more in this series, here are the links for the following posts.
Part Two: Meet My New Teacher, Sherlock Holmes.