Why Study the Bible?

Episode notes:

Today's program consistented of the following episodes:

"Growing in Hunger"

"The Light"

"The Value of Reading God's Word as a Family"

"A King, a Fool, and a Wise Woman"

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Dannah Gresh: Many of us have excuses for not reading the Bible. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth realizes sometimes we just don’t understand what it means.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I will acknowledge to you, after years now of reading this book, since I could first read, there are still places. I found some in my quiet time this morning where I’m thinking, What does this mean? I’ve read this many times over the years, and I still don’t understand.

Dannah: Whether you understand it or not, Nancy and I want to help you get into the Word of God and develop an appetite to spend time with Him.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

I don’t know if you know this about me, but one of my favorite things to do is get up before Bob. Well, the getting up early part, that’s always been hard for me. But then, when I do get up, I curl up in my red chair with a steaming cup of tea or coffee, and I read God’s Word. Somewhere about the twenty minute mark, well, I don’t really even have words for the peace it brings! It’s just something you have to experience for yourself . . . and I hope you do!

I want others to love the Bible, to want more of it like I do. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I appreciate Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth so much. She wants to help women study the Word of God. And doesn't she does it so well. Why does she do it at all? She wants you to have a deeper understanding of and connection to God! 

Now, maybe you don’t love studying the Bible like me and Nancy. Could it be that no one ever taught you how to do it? That was once Gretchen Saffles’ problem. But then, well, why don't I let Gretchen explain:

Gretchen Saffles: When I was in college, I had grown up in the church, and yet I remember thinking, I still don’t know how to study the Bible. I was very grateful to be a part of a local church where I was in college—that’s where I actually met the mentor who called me last week.

We would gather in her home every Wednesday night, and she led us through several different Bible studies. She also had older women from the church come. I remember Miss Shirley, I remember Carrie Beth. I remember all of these different leaders who, at the time, they were way, way ahead of me. And Miss Shirley has already gone to be with the Lord since then.

And Miss Carla, she led us through the book of Isaiah. And I never would have at that time in my life felt confident or comfortable enough to open the book of Isaiah. And yet she called us to a deeper walk with the Lord, and she modeled that for us.

So that was a moment where she, instead of spoon feeding us, she handed us a spiritual fork and said, “Go taste and see that God is good in the Word.” And that’s what I long to do for other women. The more I taste Jesus, the rest of the world loses its flavor, and the more I long for Him.

So, when I maybe want to go to social media to find affirmation or even escape from the hard things in life, any time I even start to go down that road, I’m immediately drawn back to Christ because I know, “This is not going to satisfy me.”

So when I was in college, I longed to study God’s Word, and yet I didn’t know how. And God sent Miss Carla and several other women to help teach me how to study God’s Word. And then I got out of college, and I worked in a local church with students and then in the women’s ministry and with the moms. I realized, “They’re both longing for the same thing. These girls who are in middle and high school and their moms, we all need Jesus no matter what our age is.”

And yet, it can become so intimidating to open our Bible. And that really spurred in me this desire to help women feel confident in studying God’s Word. As a Christ follower, who the Holy Spirit indwells, that we would be confident to open God’s Word and to read it, and that He will change us as we study the Word.

And then, when I became a young mom, that was a new hurdle because I had my child who was up all night. I had my routine, and I somehow thought I would keep it up when I had a child. But as all the moms who are listening who has had a newborn will go, “That does not happen!” And my brain was so tired in the mornings. I wanted to spend time in the Word, but I was exhausted, and my brain could barely take it in.

I started wondering, How do you flourish in a season like this? In a desert season of life where maybe you do have a newborn, or you are caring for a loved one, and you’re their caregiver right now. There’s so many different circumstances I could bring up, but how do we flourish in those moments?

That again sparked a desire in me to implement the spiritual disciples that Christ modeled for us. He walked with the disciples. The living Word, “the Word made flesh,” actually walked with the disciples. He ate with them. He fished with them. He went to different places with them. And so God’s Word actually prepares the way for us to go into our everyday life and live fruitfully.

So in those seasons I started to go, “What does it mean in the moments when I may not be able to read my Bible for a really long time, how do I live a life that flourishes?”

And we see Christ modeling a life of prayer, a life of dependence on God. He modeled what it means to worship, what it means to meditate on God’s Word and to know it so that in the moment when you are in everyday life, what flows from you is the Word you have hidden in your heart.

So those season have taught me the importance of not only reading God’s Word, but memorizing it and talking to God. As I go throughout the day, beginning and ending, and even in the middle of the day, worshipping Him, coming to Him in my moment of need.

Dannah: Yes. I love what you are saying, and my heart is stirring. I feel like, “Can we just stop? I want to go and find my Bible, and I need to take social media off my phone.” I feel such conviction right now.

But what you’re saying is not always easy to apply. I have a daughter-in-law who loves Jesus like crazy, gave birth to two twin girls. Life is not the same. She used to wake up, roll out of bed, and get on her knees and be with the Lord for this extended period of time that just saturated her soul, nurtured her soul, filled up her soul. She’s an introvert, as well as just a woman of God, to go out into the world . . . So the practicality of what you’re saying looks different for these hard seasons.

For Allelia, right now, she has her Bible in the morning. After she’s fed the girls, she opens it, puts it on her kitchen counter, and she puts her finger on one verse. She’s, like, “I can devour this today. I’m going to get my spiritual fork out and feast. The Lord is going to multiply every bite of it in my mouth, but this is all I can do.”

So it doesn’t always look like a deep study, a deep dive, a lot of memorization. It can just be little nuggets that can get you through. Right?

Gretchen: Absolutely. And, maybe it is just that one passage. Maybe it’s one passage you meditate on, because you can’t dive into a ton of different things when your babies are literally eating at the table right then. They’re going to need you, that one word from the living Word has the power to sustain you all day.

God’s grace is sufficient, and His Word is the manna. It is what He provides us with every single day, exactly what we need when we come to Him.

Dannah: Well, when you were talking about Jesus being the Word, I thought, “Oh, how sweet!” You said, “He, the living Word, walked with the disciples.”

When you think about, “Okay, I devoured all I can handle, just this one verse today, but Jesus is going to walk me through this whole day with this truth. He’s going to be beside me when I get up to take care of that aging loved one. He’s going to be beside me when I rush off to pick up my kids after school because I’m one of the sandwich generation moms, and I’m just, like, taking care of people on both ends. Jesus, the Word is walking with me if I can just faithfully dive into it, even just a little.”

Gretchen: Andrew Murray once said, “What a difference it would make if each day, when we woke up, we meditated on the fact that Christ is in me.”

And that is something I’ve been trying to ask the Lord, “Help me to understand and to grasp the fullness that Christ is with us.” When we shut our Bibles in the morning, we don’t leave Him there. As Christ followers, we go with Him into our days, into taking care of our kids and changing diapers and to the grocery story. Christ goes with us. That’s a comfort especially in those seasons of life.

Dannah: That was Gretchen Saffles sharing about how she learned to study the Bible and the dramatic difference it made in her life. 

But why? Why should we study the Word? Here’s a quick thought from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy: It’s the Word of God. It’s God’s heart to us that He's made available to us. It’s unique; it’s peerless; it’s exceedingly broad; it’s the consummation of all perfection. That’s why I’m challenging you: get to know the Word of God.

A lot of people say, “I just can’t understand this book.” I will acknowledge to you, after years now of reading this book, since I could first read, there are still places. I found some in my quiet time this morning where I’m thinking, What does this mean? I’ve read this many times over the years, and I still don’t understand.

But I find that most people who say they can’t understand the Word of God either don’t know God—they don’t have a relationship with Christ, so they don’t have the spiritual capacity to understand the Word of God—or they’re not reading the Word of God. It takes work; it takes effort; it takes desire and commitment. But you dig in, you start to search, and you will find that this book truly is unique. It’s life-changing. You can trust it!

So I want to challenge you: Make that commitment. Start to spend time, if you’re not doing it already, reading the Word of God. You won’t understand it all, but what you do understand will be enough to change your life.

Dannah: I’ll add my challenge to Nancy’s. Make the commitment! Start to spend time in your Bible.

Now, maybe you’re saying, “But I’m a mom! I don’t have the time!” Carrie Ward was a young mom when she started to feel convicted to study God’s Word. She’d grown up in the church, but struggled to read the Bible. She tended to blame this on the fact that she was a slow reader and didn’t like mornings. (I can relate!) 

Then Carrie became a mom and God convicted her heart that she needed to be in the Word. The question was, how would she do that with children to care for? Well, she decided she would read the entire Bible to her kids!

She factored in sick days and other challenges and figured it would take eight years for her to read the Bible to her kids. It wasn’t easy and at times they weren’t interested, especially when they were younger, but, well, this story is worth hearing from Carrie. It’s narrated by our good friend Leslie Basham. Here’s Carrie.

Carrie Ward: There were just a lot of stories through that section that they could act out.

“Goliath looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him.”

That’s the great thing about kids. They sort of put themselves in the story. They don’t just hear it, they turn around and play that way.

"And he said to David, ‘Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?’”

Those dramatic stories in Scripture really pique their interest and their curiosity, and hearing the story and being excited about the story is a good thing, I think.

Graham: “Am I a dog?”

Carrie: David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (1 Sam. 1:44–45 NIV). They wanted to act it out because they thought it was an interesting and exciting thing to watch what God did.

“This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.”

Maggie: “I come to you in the name of the Lord.”

Carrie: This was very encouraging for me, and it was also helping to reinforce what we’d read. It reinforced it in me and I felt like it was reinforcing it in their lives as well, because they would play that after we read it, and it was very encouraging.

That went on for months because that whole section of Scripture is so full of stories that are ready to be acted out.

Leslie: When Carrie and the kids arrived at Psalm 105, it reminded them of the story of Pharaoh and Moses that they had already read back in Exodus.

Carrie: “Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice. Look to the LORD and his strength; seek His face always. He sent Moses his servant and Aaron whom He had chosen. . . . They performed his signs among them, his wonders in the land of Ham” (Ps. 105:3–4, 27–28).

Leslie: When breakfast was over that day, Graham took on the role of Pharaoh. Maggie and Benjamin were Egyptian guards. Emma had arrived by this time and played the role of an Egyptian baby. The curious thing was, no one wanted to be Moses. They all pretended to talk with the prophet who remained invisible.

Graham:  “No! Send him away!”

Carrie: “He turned their waters into blood, causing their fish to die.”

Graham: “Blood, blood! Go get him!”

Carrie: “Their land teemed with frogs that turned up in the bedrooms of the rulers.”

Graham: “Frogs! Brings me Moses! Graaaagh!”

Leslie: Finally Pharaoh very dramatically experienced the death of all the firstborn of Egypt.

Maggie: “My son! My son!”

Carrie: “He struck down all the firstborn in the land, the firstfruits of all their manhood. He brought out Israel, laden with silver and gold, and from among their tribes no one faltered” (Ps. 105:36–37).

Leslie: Then he rallied his troops to chase the Israelites across the Red Sea.

Graham: “They’re crossing the Red Sea! Let’s go after them!”

Leslie: Pharaoh and his servant, his little sister, began the chase across the living room and into the dining room, then “Pharaoh” collapsed, acting as if the waves of the sea were engulfing him. His little sister didn’t remember this detail and kept running.

Graham: No, Maggie, you have to stop. You are drowned in the sea!

Leslie: One day during their morning Bible reading time, Carrie and the kids read about Solomon dedicating the temple. The presence of the Lord descended and filled the temple in the form of a cloud.

Carrie: "When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their services because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled His temple" (1 Kings 8:10–11).

Leslie: That made a big impression on Graham, who was five at the time. He wandered into a bathroom where a hot shower had filled the room with steam.

Graham: There’s a cloud in here.

Leslie: He didn’t understand water vapor. The only way he knew to explain it was by relating it to Scripture.

Graham: I thought God had descended on the temple!

Leslie: Everybody who reads the Bible finds some passages more challenging than others. Carrie found that reading Isaiah with four small children could be . . . challenging.

Carrie: There was a certain mood—you could almost feel it—when we were reading Isaiah for the first time (because there is so much judgment and wrath). It was difficult reading when you, yourself, don’t understand everything that you’re reading, and you’re reading to small children. There was sort of a solemn tone at our table.

Leslie: But then they reached Isaiah 19. After working through some very serious chapters, they were struck with the incredible hope in this passage.

Carrie: It was just like what we had read before, where there was wrath and judgment, and brother was going to be against brother, and there were going to be things about the land like the sea drying up, producing no fish, and that kind of thing.

And so it was feeling like what we had read before. I really didn’t sense how attentive my children were until we reached the middle of that passage, and it says, “But I will send the Savior,” and suddenly my son just jumped out of his chair and yelled, “Yay!”

That’s not in my son’s nature to be expressive like that. So when he came out with a big “Yay” it was like, “There’s going to be a Savior!” I was telling a friend that story, and she said, “Shouldn’t that be all of our reaction to Scripture? That we all give a big ‘Yay’ about the Savior?”

So it was encouraging to see that it was sinking in, but also to see the reaction to the Redeemer.

Dannah: How precious! Don’t you love hearing how Carrie’s kids responded to the stories they found in the Bible? It sure did change one mom's experience in God’s Word, and it could change yours as you get coached up by Carrie to do it with your own kids! Carrie Ward is the author of Together: Growing Appetites for God. 

Speaking of an appetite for God. My dear friend Erin Davis devours His Word and teaches it so beautifully. It always makes me want to feast on it myself. Erin teaches on the Women of the Bible podcast, one of our podcasts here at Revive Our Hearts. 

And today Erin, Kesha Griffin, and Joy McClain are going to whet your appetitite and help you understand how to study. They are beginning to study the life of Abigail from the book of 1 Samuel.

Here’s Erin sharing about some of her discoveries in God’s Word.

Erin Davis: One of the things I love about it is that you can read your Bible every day, and every time you open it you’re going to go, “I didn’t know that was there! I’ve never seen that before!”

Joy McClain: Something new! 

Erin: Or maybe it’s a verse that you’re very familiar with, but suddenly it sparkles like a diamond in the mine. It means something to you that it hasn’t meant before. So I feel like we’re on a little bit of a treasure hunt. 

Kesha Griffin: I felt like that with Abigail.

Erin: I think I might have known she was in there—maybe I’d heard her name—but I certainly didn’t know the story in the way that we’re going to look at the story. So she’s a diamond . . . a diamond we’re going to find!

Let’s backtrack a little bit, because it’s always so helpful when we look at Scripture to take the widest-angle view that we can take. Every word in the Bible is part of a sentence, every sentence part of a paragraph, every paragraph part of a thought, all part of a book . . . and all of that’s part of the whole counsel of God. So we want to be careful not to use what I call “the claw method.”

You know those claw machines that are a total rip-off? Where you put fifty cents in and the claw drops down and, “Oh! I was so close to getting that!” But you’re never going to get it! Sometimes we can do that with Scripture: we can just pluck out a verse or a thought. 

Joy: Just bits and pieces, yes. 

Erin: Bits and pieces . . . and fortunately, all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for instruction (see 2 Tim. 3:16), so even when we pluck things out, they’re still God-breathed, they’re still useful. But as we study the Bible, it’s so good to just take a minute and get as much background information as you can quickly gather. 

I’m interested. Do you use study Bibles? How do you get the wide-angle view before you dig into a passage? Go ahead, Joy.

Joy: I just love to read contextually and get the whole big picture. I read the whole book, get the big picture, then I go back. When I start diving in, I really pay attention to verbs. I think what God is doing, what the Holy Spirit is doing, what is Jesus doing? What the characters are doing?

Erin: I love that!

Joy: I just have found for me, personally, if I really lock into those verbs and see where it’s going, and then I journal, I journal, I journal. I flesh it out. Yes, I like to get the big picture then dive in and just kind of start dissecting. 

Erin: Kesha?

Kesha: Yes, I actually do the same, and I also like to use a study Bible, more so to get the historical context of the Scriptures—background, setting, theme. Then I dive in, just like Joy. So it’s very important to get the context first.

Erin: Yes. A great study Bible will put all that information right up front for you. I’m a writer. I’m creative, so sometimes trying to trace historical lines and figure that stuff out is hard for me. So I’m so grateful to study Bible creators, who put it right there for me.

And so, somebody did the thinking for me here in 1 Samuel 25. I thought we’d just do an overview; there’s an overview in this study. Let’s look at that really quickly on page 9 (my study is all torn up, because I’ve loved it so well). 

Let’s look at who the author is. The Bible does not say who wrote 1 Samuel, but many scholars think that the prophets Samuel, Nathan, (and God) provided much of the material. We always have to list God as an Author. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction” (see 2 Tim. 3:16). 

The book covers about one-hundred-ten years and it takes place in the land of Israel. So let’s put our minds there, what we’re talking about. Let me just read us the first verse, and then we’re going to stop there. 

1 Samuel 25:1: “Now Samuel died.” That’s the first sentence. How’s that for an opener?

Joy: Wow, what an opener!

Erin: “And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him at his home in Ramah.” Now this is a Bible study about Abigail, so we might be tempted to say, “Well, that’s a little detail about Samuel; why does it matter?” But I think it’s worth drilling down there a little bit. 

What do you know about Samuel from Scripture? Who is Samuel?

Joy: Well, he was dedicated, right? He was set apart, even as a little boy. I love that. As Hannah prayed and hoped and believed and trusted that God was going to give her this child. So he was set apart. We all are, really, but he was so purposely, intimately with God’s hand, just set apart for His work. I love that piece about him.

Kesha: And that’s prior to him even being born, right?

Joy: Yes! 

Kesha: And through Hannah’s prayer, that was her promise to God. “If I conceive, I will dedicate this child back to you,” and that’s exactly what she did. So, Samuel is a promise—a fulfilled promise—and so I love knowing that about him, that He fulfilled that promise. 

Erin: So Samuel’s momma was Hannah, and Hannah is the woman we see in Scripture who is praying so hard, so dramatically, with so much emotion that the priest thinks she’s drunk! He comes up to her and tries to calm her down. That’s Samuel’s momma, and Samuel is the baby that she was praying to God so fervently, so boldly for!

There’s a little nugget in there that doesn’t pertain to our look at Abigail, but I just love it. It talks about how Hannah would visit Samuel every year and bring him a tiny coat—a little tunic! [The other ladies make motherly exclamations.] I know! Every mother understands the impact, the meaning of tiny clothes! 

And it’s right there in Scripture. God so cares about the intimate details of our heart! So he’s promised, he’s dedicated to the tabernacle, and he first starts to hear the voice of the Lord as a little boy. He is laying down in the tabernacle and he hears something. He runs to Eli and he goes, “What was that!?” 

And Eli says, like everybody, “Go back to bed, son!”

And then that keeps happening. It’s the voice of the Lord. Joy, would you read us 1 Samuel 3:19?

Joy: I will. “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.”

Erin: What do you think that means, “let none of his words fall to the ground?” 

Joy: I wonder if it was like His promise. God promised, so nothing was for naught. He was faithful to see it through! And how beautiful that is for Hannah that, “God made a promise to me and He fulfilled it; He kept His promise!” 

Erin: Yes, he didn’t have empty words. They kind of went out like darts, and Samuel had this impact on the nation of Israel that is so important for us to set the stage for, before we look at David and Abigail and Nabal.

God’s hand rested on Samuel from before conception until, here, we see him die. Samuel had a reputation of faith, 1 Samuel 3:20 tells us. In 1 Samuel 25, he died, and the nation is in mourning. We need that backdrop because we’re going to see David here in a minute, and we need to know that David was grieving.

Who do you think Samuel was to David? He’s the prophet of Israel, but how would you describe, maybe, his impact on David’s life?

Joy: Like a mentor, a spiritual leader, and just almost like a covering, an authority figure, like someone to emulate, someone to respect and honor.

Erin: Yep. He has served as a buffer between David and Saul. We’re going to talk here in a minute . . . There’s this really dysfunctional tension between Saul and David, and Samuel had been a spiritual intermediary between those. Samuel was the one who anointed David as king. Remember that story?

He goes to David’s house and tried to go through all the brothers, and finally he says, “You got anybody else?” 

His dad says, “Well, yes, there’s David. He’s out there with the sheep.”

And Samuel we see as a man of conviction. He says, “Go get him . . . and I’m not sitting down until he gets here!” 

And the Lord says to Samuel, “Arise, he’s the one!” 

Dannah: Oh, I love seeing people getting into the Word and then hungering for it. Did you hear some of the wonder in Erin and Kesha and Jill’s voices? I want that for you, for me. To just sit in awe of God, to sit and learn.

If you are riveted in this little bit of the study of Abigail, then go to our website, we have a link there to this Women of the Bible episode. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode, "Why Study the Bible."

I loved how Erin set us up to study God’s Word. Did you hear the ladies talking about who wrote the book of Samuel, thinking through who Samuel was and how he was connected to the main players in Abigail’s story. When we start digging and reading the entire book to answer a question for one verse, we are whetting our appetites for more and more. 

Another way to get in our Bibles and whet our appetites is to study the names of Jesus. And what an appropriate time to do that, because we are less than a month away from Resurrection Sunday. 

What are you doing to prepare your heart for Easter? Can I suggest the book The Wonder of His Name by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth? This book will help you prepare your heart to see Him in all His glory.

This softcover book is yours for a gift of any amount. You can do so by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. "Why Study the Bible."

I hope our time today refreshed your want to be in God’s Word. Next week, we’re gonna continue our conversation and take it even deeper. Nancy and Kay Arthur will share some ideas and practical helps on how to take your study to the next level. This is like master class in Bible study. Oh, I can’t wait. It’ll be so good.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause who longs for the day when 1 Corinthians 2:2 is true of him. Blake Bratton whose favorite Bible verse is Philippians 4:8. Rebekah Krause loves Psalm 119, "Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord." Yes, Rebekah, I love this. Thirty years ago Charlie Peacock wrote a song based on Psalm 51, and that song has been in a constant loop in Justin Converse's head most days. Michelle Hill’s favorite go-to Bible passage to study is 1 Peter. My favorite Bible verse is Psalm 25:14. For Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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