Listening to God in prep 1
This transcript has been automatically generated
Um, okay, why don’t you turn to Psalm 19, um, in your Bibles? Uh, let’s start there. I’m gonna put my, my phone on aeroplane mode.
Great. So we’re going to spend this morning thinking about how to study the Bible, I think, is the, is the aim. And so how to read the Bible carefully and how to understand it. And Mary’s going to be taking most of our time this morning and helping us to think those things through. And hopefully this will be preparing you to be better at preparing for your SLOB studies, to be better at your quiet times, listening carefully, to be better at weighing sermons as you hear them, and to be better at helping your members to read the Bible for themselves.
That’s the aim for this morning, I think. Is that right? But before we do that, um, we thought it’d be really helpful to begin with the Bible And to begin with something the Bible says about the Bible and why the Bible is so good. And so my aim, as we begin our time together this morning, is to persuade you that the Bible really is wonderful and, and to say something about how we ought to expect to respond to it as we study it, as we read it this year. So first of all, let’s pray.
Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, we want to praise you so much for your words And we thank you that it’s good. We thank you that it brings life. And we want to pray that you would be helping us now to realise how precious it is. And we pray that we would be those now and throughout this year who read your word penitently and faithfully and who speak what you want us to say.
And we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen. Psalm 19, let me read it. To the choirmaster, a Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, their voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes throughout the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there’s nothing hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey. And drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Well, the theme of the psalm is, is speaking, it’s revealing, it’s declaring something about God. It’s there in verse 1: The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge. It’s there again in verses 7 to 11. It’s all about speech about God, God’s speech in fact in the Bible, which leads to understanding.
Verse 11: By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. And it’s there again in verse 14: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord my rock and my redeemer. 3 different kinds of speech about God. The theme of the psalm is speaking about God, and my aim, I think the psalmist’s aim, David’s aim, is to persuade you that the Bible kind of speech that you have in your hand is really wonderful. But the first speaker is not the Bible, the first speaker is creation.
Verse 1 again: And the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their report to the end of the world. In them he set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. At first glance, you might say, well, if your aim is to persuade us that the Bible kind of speaking about God is the best possible kind, that the Bible is so good, well, it’s a funny place to start. Because it turns out, and I’m sorry, this is not a very St. Helen’s thing to say, you don’t need a Bible to hear speech about God. What’d he say? You don’t need a Bible to hear speech about God because it’s everywhere.
Wherever you go. Verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork. It’s everywhere. The heavens, as wide as the heavens, as high as the sun, anywhere where you’re under the sky, you are surrounded by speech about God.
And it’s all the time, it’s constant. Verse 2, day to day pours out speech. Night to night reveals knowledge. A constant stream of chatter about God everywhere you go. And what the psalmist, what David says abstractly in verses 1 and 2, he says vividly in verses 5 and 6.
You’re wondering where you’re going to see the glory of God? Well, look at the sun. Verse 5: In them he set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. There it is in the morning, bursting out from one side of the sky and sprinting like Usain Bolt, if that’s allowed, across the heavens, heat everywhere it goes. You’re wondering how the sky above might proclaim His handiwork, His needlework, if you like?
Well, look at the heavens. It’s rising from the end of the heavens, its circuit to the end of them. And the whole sky spread out a tent for the sun to run across day by day. Wherever you are, in Hong Kong or Singapore or China or Tasmania, whether it’s before the missionaries arrived or after, anywhere that the sun beats down, and the sun even beats down here in England, anywhere that the sky stretches out you’re hearing speech about God. Of course you are, because the whole universe is a result of speech.
In the beginning, God spoke and He said, let there be light. And so everything that you see, the sun above and the sky spread out and everything underneath the skies, which is everything that you’ll ever see, everything that you see is the echo of those words, in the beginning.
That’s the first speaker, but there is a problem. Verse 3, there is no speech, nor are there words, their voices not heard. The ESV’s made a little bit of a mess of that verse, I’m afraid. The point is not that there is nowhere where their words are not heard, which is a double negative, nowhere where their words are not heard, The point is that there are no words. There is, in a sense, no speech.
Well, there’s lots of speech. Day to day pours forth speech, but no discernible speech. There’s lots of speech, but no words. No words, because of course, when you see the sun burst forth, you don’t know God. You might think that He’s glorious, but is He good?
The heat beats down, but is it to help you or to harm you? Are you supposed to be in a desert or an oasis? God is great. He must be great. I mean, the heavens are spread out like a tent.
But what does He want? What does He want you to do? To bow down to the sun and say what a glorious sun it is? To build some sort of replica of the heavens and say how amazing they are? What does He want you to do?
How does He want you to behave? What does He want from you? And so we need a second speaker. The first speaker: creation. The second speaker: the Bible.
Verse 7: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Straight away, it’s obvious that David has a very high opinion of the Bible. He says it’s perfect and sure and right and clean and true and desirable and sweet, sweeter than honey, richer than gold.
He loves it because of what it does. It revives. The sun might give its heat everywhere, but the law of the Lord revives the soul. And it makes wise, and it rejoices, and it enlightens, and it endures, and it is desirable, and it feeds. It’s a bit like the sun, in fact, shedding light everywhere that it goes, and full of joy, but not just full of joy itself, giving joy to the people who read it.
It’s obvious that he loves the Bible. More than that, doubly striking, he loves the bits of the Bible that you probably don’t, because he’s talking about the law, isn’t he? And it’s obvious that he is talking about the law. He says the law of the Lord, his testimonies, his precepts, his commandments, his judgments, his rules. Of course, that was David’s Bible, as in David didn’t have the New Testament.
He didn’t have John’s Gospel. No, he had the first 5 books of the Bible. He had the Pentateuch. He had the Law. But nonetheless, even if that is obvious that that was his Bible, it is striking, isn’t it, that he read Leviticus and he thought, this is amazing.
This is life-giving. This brings me joy. It’s the Law. I wonder whether that’s always our response. To Leviticus.
I wonder whether that’s always our response to John’s Gospel. And the reason that he loves the Bible so much is because the Bible does exactly what creation cannot do. It tells him what he needs to know God and what he needs to please God in a relationship with Him. You see the same thing from a few angles. Number one, There’s what the Bible does.
It makes him wise. It enlightens him. It gives him understanding. And then there’s what the Bible, the law of the Lord, is. It’s right and it’s perfect and it’s pure and true.
Why make such a big deal of that? Is it because he just wants to say, well, the Bible is really reliable? Well, yeah, sure it is, but it’s also a contrast with creation. You see, what you learn from creation is uncertain and unsure. But what you learn from God’s law is sure and certain and endures forever.
You see it from a third angle when you think about who gives it, because he changes the name of God halfway through, doesn’t he? And so, verses 1 to 6, it talks about the glory of God. But verses 7 to 11, suddenly we start to hear about the law. In capital letters, which means that we’ve switched. We switch from a generic name of God, any creator God, someone who made the heavens, who we happen to know is, is the Lord himself, to the covenant name of God, the name that God gives to his people, the Lord, Yahweh.
All the world, whether they realise it or not, hears the noise of creation. All the world hears the noise of creation. But only His people hear His covenant name, the people who have the law. It’s relational. And of course it spells out what God wants from us.
Verse 10: More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is Your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. What does God want you to do? Well, creation, you can’t tell. And the Bible tells you what He wants and what He doesn’t want, how to be warned and where to find rewards.
And of course, if that was true for the psalmist, for David, who hadn’t yet met the Lord Jesus Christ by that name and who was living on day 4 of the story, and hadn’t seen anything of the glory of the cross or the Spirit, at least not in reality. Well, how much more is that true for us? And this book is wonderful. It should be full of joy and riches, honey and sweetness. It’s where we know God and it’s where we know what He requires of us.
David’s aim, my aim at the start of this session, is to remind you how good your Bible is. And whatever you do this year in terms of studying it, this is a reasonable response to the things that you’re reading, even the sticky bits in the overview. Which would be a great place to stop, wouldn’t it? Except that there’s one more speaker in the psalm. We’ve had creation, we’ve had the Bible, But the third speaker is David, verse 12. Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
I think there are two things going on here. The first is the appropriate response to verse 11. Verse 11, moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. If we know, we’ve heard the warning, if we know what the Lord requires, if we’ve listened to his commandments and his law and his rules, well, it’s a very natural prayer, isn’t it? Verse 12 to 13, there’s no error in God’s words, His law is perfect and sure and right and pure and clean and true, but there probably is error in us.
And so, declare me innocent from hidden faults, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins, let them not have dominion over me, then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. It’s natural, isn’t it, when you have read God’s Word and understood what He requires, Well, to pray with penitence and to ask for his help. And that’s a right response. And I hope that that’s what we do as we study the Bible this year, that we understand what the Lord requires of us and we ask for his help and perhaps for his forgiveness. But the second thing is speech, verse 14: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Because the great thing about having the second speaker, the Bible, is that it teaches a third speaker, David, what to say. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. If he just had creation, he wouldn’t know. But he doesn’t, he has the law of the Lord, and so maybe he can say something true about God. Which hopefully is an encouragement to you as leaders.
Why is it that you want to work hard at studying the Bible? Well, because it might give you something useful to say. You’ve got nothing useful to say if the Bible doesn’t give it to you, but maybe the perfect and sure and right and pure, clean and true more precious than gold, sweeter than honey, Word of the Lord, if you study it repentantly and with God’s help, maybe it will give you something acceptable to say that might help the people in your group. Well, this morning we’re going to think about studying the Bible with a view to leading better Bible studies, I hope, but we wanted to start here because we can’t study the Bible right if we don’t understand a few things first. Number one, it is the most extraordinary gift.
It is the most precious thing that you have, and it is the most wonderful thing that you’re going to be looking at this year. It’s extraordinary, number 2, because it calls us into a relationship with God. In a way that creation never could, wonderful though it is, even in Ashburnham, and that could never call you into a real relationship with God, and yet this book does. It calls us to obedience, 3, to God, to a right response to him and what he requires, which is a reason to read this book with real joy. I mean, it is a miserable thing to be dealing with the gods and not to know what they want from you.
But we’re not in that position because the law of the Lord is perfect. But that means, doesn’t it, that number 4, we’re going to want to read our Bibles now and the rest of this year with real humility. And number 5, we’re going to want to pray that as we read it and understand it, we would be able to say true things about God as well. The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handy works. Handiwork, but the law of the Lord is perfect.
And so may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Mary, is it okay if we pray for just a minute or two in pairs? Is that okay?
Great. And then Mary will interrupt. Okay, let’s turn to— let’s turn to pray. Maybe include a prayer for the session. Great, great.
Um, cool. So, um, what we’re going to be spending the next couple of hours doing is thinking about how we can listen to God in our prep. You’ll find an outline in the handout booklet on page 18.
I’m going to start off by having a bit of a discussion. Hopefully you’ll remember a few months ago receiving a letter asking you leads in IGG. If you didn’t receive that letter and you’re here anyway, um, welcome for putting yourself forward. And the letter told us some of the things that are involved in being an IGG leader, and right at the— right at the head of the list it said personal study, minimum 3 hours per passage plus time writing the study. And I’d like to have a discussion how that— how that made you feel, or how that makes you feel when think about it.
And when you think about spending 3 hours of personal study on each IGG passage you’re going to lead this year, what excites you and what do you expect to struggle with? So let’s spend a few minutes on that in pairs.
Anyone have any highlights from your discussion? Any particular things that excite you or excited the person you were talking to about spending time in the passages this year? Yes, so having done the overview last year, I’m really excited to see how Jesus fulfils the Old Testament. Super, thanks.
What else?
One excited person on an IGG leadership team.
How it’s exciting to think that you get to have more time to dig into the passage. So sometimes you can read a first section and think, I know what that means. But then when you really try and explain it, you’re like, oh, I don’t actually know what exactly is meant by that. And you have the time to be able to go and find out and get a deeper understanding of what’s going on. Great.
Thanks, Laura. One more exciting thing.
Sure. Um, I think one thing we discussed was how prep doesn’t have to just be an academic process, but we can use it as a way to reflect on the passage as well and make it very devotional. So it’s not just about doing the hard work, but also at the end taking a step back, reflecting, and hearing God’s voice. God speak to us. Wonderful, thanks so much, Aaron.
I think that’s really important. After I, um, sent Michelle my handout with the title Listening to God in Prep, I slightly regretted the word prep, uh, because it’s not— that’s not just what we’re about, right? We’re not spending these hours reading God’s word just so that we can prepare to give good answers in SLOB or to lead a really good Bible study. We are ultimately first and foremost wanting to listen to the words of our gods. And so yeah, that’s why probably a different word to prep would be better.
And what about, what about struggles? What were some of the things that you discussed that you expect to struggle with in reading for yourself or the person next to you?
Yeah, it’s too hard, like can’t get, can’t get past certain barriers. Thanks.
Yeah, I think if you’re, if you’re sort of not in the zone, you can kind of think once you’ve done 40 minutes, you 3 hours stretches in front of you as an eternity. What are you gonna do, just read through the whole of John 5 times? Okay, I’m done. Bible overview, you’ve got slightly further to go before you hit that wall. Any other struggles?
Maybe one more. I feel too familiar as well.
Yeah, great, great. Nothing, nothing more to learn. Um, I think these are, these are all very realistic things. Um, I hope that this session will be helpful at, I guess, addressing 2 areas. Firstly, um, our attitudes helping us to be excited at the prospect of hearing God speak as we prepare this year.
And secondly, in terms of our, our skills or our, our abilities in understanding God’s word when we, when we sit down and start spending those hours in personal study, actually being able to, to, to make some sense of things, to, to not just get stuck on verse 5, um, or to not run out of things to think about. After 40 minutes. And so I hope we’ll be excited after the session and that also we’ll be equipped to make good use of the time we spend in prep. Um, first of all, gonna spend a couple of minutes just thinking about what is the Bible, laying a bit of a foundation for this stuff. Um, 2 things on the handout.
First of all, the Bible is unlike any other book because it’s written by God. And that’s basically something that Gwilym has just helped us to see from Psalm 19, so I’m not going to say loads about it. And the Bible is not like any other books that you’ll read this year. It’s not like any, uh, social media feeds or podcasts that you’ll listen to or any other speech that you’ll engage with this year, because it’s written by God. And so the implication of that is we should listen carefully and submit to it.
This is a bit of a fill in the blank on the, on the handout. The Bible’s not like any other book because it’s written by God, so we must listen carefully and submit. Um, I’ve got a— this diagram’s gonna go somewhere past here. Sorry, this, this thing would be really useful if I had a pocket or if it had a clip. Um, so the Bible is God speaking, um, and he’s got a, a purpose for us.
And we’re going to talk a bit more about this idea of, of God speaking with a purpose, but I think Willem helped us to see that earlier just when he was comparing the difference between the sun speaking, creation speaking and God speaking. We can, we can learn some things from seeing creation, but we don’t know what, what God wants us to do. We can see that there is a God, but we don’t know about the relationship he wants to have with us. We don’t know how he wants us to respond. And but God has written the Bible so that we can know him.
He’s written with a purpose, and he’s made clear that purpose for us. So the Bible is completely unique, not like any other book. Or speech you’ll engage with this year. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s blasphemous to say the Bible is actually a lot like any other book in many ways. Why is that?
It’s because it’s written by human authors. It’s written by people like John or Moses or Isaiah or James, people who lived at a particular time, who spoke a particular particular language, who were in a certain situation speaking to other people, people who had personalities, who had literary styles. Um, and so the implication of that is we need to be able to read. Um, we— the Bible is like any other book because it’s written by human authors, and so we need to be able to read. We need to be able to understand what is this human author saying.
And for what purpose is he saying it? Um, I mentioned this idea of purpose before. I think we can sometimes think that this idea of an author’s purpose is a bit of a weird Bible study thing, that normally we, we don’t talk about purpose, and then suddenly a Bible study comes out and we’re, we’re asking you to think about what’s the author’s purpose, what’s the, what’s the purpose of the book, what’s the the purpose of the passage. Um, I don’t think that is a weird thing. I think that’s just a basic communication thing.
We all speak with a purpose, we write with a purpose. Every communication has a, has a reason to it. For example, this, this session, I said at the start my purpose for this session is— I wonder if you remember— to help us be excited about reading God’s word. And feel equipped to read God’s words. Um, let’s, let’s test that out.
Turn back to your neighbour and just raise any example— something that you said recently, something that you wrote recently, some piece of communication that you made recently. See if you can work out what your purpose was in saying that thing or writing that message.
Let’s have, let’s have one or two examples just in case one group struggled. Anything, something your neighbour said that was really interesting or embarrassing? Jen? Last night at the dinner table, we got everyone to go around and say their names and what they were doing in London, and the purpose of that was so that Mark Crosby could know the names of some of the girls of Joanne.
Interesting. The author’s purpose is not always what it seems to be on the surface.
Thanks. One other example, maybe? George? Breakfast this morning, Aaron said to Glenn, they only gave me one hash brown, and his purpose was to tell Glenn that he wanted to go for seconds.
Super great.
Okay, we are, we are very purposeful people. Um, cool. So, so the, the Bible’s no different. The Bible’s written by human authors who, who wrote with a purpose, uh, to make the readers think something, to make the readers do something. Um, and of course I’m not saying 2 contradictory things here, so we can put this together on our diagram.
Could do with some more hands. So, um, God speaks with a purpose for us. Well, God’s— God speaks through human authors.
So the author’s voice is God’s voice. The author speaks with a purpose to their original reader, their original hearer. That’s what OR means. The purpose for them is the purpose for us. And so I guess we can draw some equivalencies.
The author’s words are God’s words. Words, um, the author’s purpose is God’s purpose, that God’s purpose for the original reader is his purpose for us. And so I think these, these ideas— it sounds a bit abstract, don’t worry about it, and we’ll, we’ll land it as we, as we go on. This is just a helpful way to think about the, the process by which God communicates with us today. Um, I think if we, if we use some examples we can see that the authors of the Bible, they were aware that they were speaking as God’s mouthpiece.
We’ll start in John because a lot of us are teaching John this year, and we spent some time thinking a bit about John yesterday. Um, John, he knew that he had been commissioned by Jesus to be his mouthpiece. We spent quite a lot of time thinking about that yesterday in Gwilym’s session. That Jesus gave his Spirit to the disciples so that they would— so that their words would in future be his words. That today the voice of the Lord, uh, the Lord who’s bringing in the new creation, these words are heard as we read John’s Gospel, as we listen to the voice of the disciples.
Um, does someone want to read John 15? Verses 26 to 27, just to ground that in one particular reference. John 15:26-27. But when the Helper comes, I will send to you from the Father the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you will also bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning.
Thanks. So, um, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, comes to the disciples to bear witness to the disciples about Jesus, and then the disciples in turn bear witness by the Holy Spirit to Jesus. So people like John, people like the other apostles, they were aware that they were speaking as God’s mouthpiece. They’re speaking the words God to people. Um, and of course, from John, it’s, it’s clear that, that John is aware he’s speaking with a purpose.
Um, can anyone remember some of the things that we said yesterday about God’s— about John’s purpose, about God’s purpose through John? Why is John writing his book? Um, chapter 20, 32 to 31, that we believe Jesus is the Christ. Yeah, great. I don’t know if people heard that.
Chapter 20, uh, he’s writing so that people would believe Jesus is the Christ. We thought a lot about this idea of decisions yesterday. John’s writing to encourage people to make a decision to believe that Jesus is the Christ. Um, and so I guess, you know, we can— in a, in a sort of mini world, you can see that the author John, he’s writing his book with a purpose for, for people, probably mostly Jewish people at the time. He’s writing with a purpose of making them believe, or to keep believing, that Jesus is the Christ, to keep making that decision to choose Jesus over everything else.
Um, but of course, that’s, that’s also what God wants to say to those people. And of course, it’s what God wants to say to us and to the people in our IGG groups. Um, what about the overview? You might be thinking, if you’re teaching overview, does this have anything to say to you? Uh, and of course I think the answer is, is yes.
And most, most basically because every book of the Bible is written by a person who has a purpose in the same way that, that John is. And but also I’m getting more and more excited about the idea that the whole Bible story is written with a purpose, and that the, the Bible authors knew that they were communicating as part of a, a line of revelation that didn’t begin and end with them. So if you take Genesis, how does Genesis begin? In the beginning. And the author of Genesis knew that he was writing the start of the story, and he makes references to things that would happen in the latter days.
He knew that he wasn’t just a a book in and of himself. And prophets point to things that are yet to come while looking back to promises that God had already made. And so the, the purpose in the overview might even be bigger than just the purpose of the book. They might be writing to move on some aspects of God’s story. Um, that’s a fun thing that I want to think more about.
And so kind of drawing some of that together. Our task when we’re— when we’re reading God’s words is to listen carefully to the author’s purpose, to listen carefully to what the human author is saying, um, and to, and to submit to that, because that’s how we hear God’s voice, God’s words. Thankfully, God has spoken to us in human words. He’s not just given us the sun, he’s not just given us a lake, um, he’s spoken to us in a book And thankfully, we understand human words, and we know how to read. Or do we?
How good are we really at reading? I want to tell you a story about my niece. She’s called Annie. She’s very cute. When she was 2 years old, she just turned 2, we went on a holiday together, and I was amazed that Annie wanted to read to me her book.
Blue Kangaroo, her favourite book. And we sat down and opened the book, and I turned the pages, and she read the book to me word for word. I thought, this is amazing. The genius gene is in there somewhere. But of course, that’s not what was going on.
Annie couldn’t read at age 2. It’s just that it was her favourite book. She’d heard it so many times, she was so familiar with it. That she knew the words to say as we went through every page. And my fear is that sometimes we’re a bit like that with the Bible, that we, we think we know what it’s going to say already before we read it, because as someone said earlier, we’re maybe very familiar with a particular book of the Bible, or we just think we’re very familiar with God and what he’s like.
And so we know what we expect it to say before we’ve even started reading. And so when we read, actually all we’re doing is looking for it to confirm what we think it already says. Like with, with my niece, if you change the words on the page, she’d still read it the same way. Um, what about us? If the, if the words in the Bible were slightly different, would we actually, uh, would we notice?
Would we, would we be willing to have our minds changed? Um, I think this is partly an attitude thing, it’s partly a reading habits thing. Um, another exercise: turn to, turn to your neighbour, and this is confession time. Tell them, when was the last time you spent at least an hour reading nonfiction without checking your phone every 10 minutes? When was the last time you spent at least an hour reading nonfiction?
Maybe don’t count the Bible in that.
Nonfiction, like not a novel.
Okay, okay, confession time over.
We’re not going to feed back on that one.
Wow.
How was there so much to say on that one? Surely it was a number. Anyway, maybe it was so long ago you were trying to remember, oh, like, you know, back when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. What year was that? How long ago was that?
I mean, it’s slightly unfair for me to ask that question. A lot of you know that I don’t think I’m very good at reading. I’m certainly not as good at reading nonfiction as I’d like to be. That’s one of the aims that I generally have out there for my life. And this book, I found it quite helpful in noticing how bad I was at reading.
It’s called Lit: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. And the author of this book quotes someone else. Who noticed, started to notice that he was becoming not a very good reader. I think the interesting thing is that maybe he used to be and things are changing. So he says this, reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being.
In order for this to work, however, We need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise. So, do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying that reading is merging with the consciousness of another human being. It’s letting someone else’s mind get inside your mind, trying to understand what someone else thinks, why have they written what they’ve written. He says, the consciousness of another human being.
I guess when we’re reading the Bible, the stakes are even higher, because what we’re trying to merge ourselves with is the consciousness of God. We’re trying to hear what God is saying. But in order to do that, we need to block out all the other noises that might be competing with the book in front of us for our attention. And he finishes off this quotation by saying, uh, that for many of us, it is more important to react than to think, that when we’re reading, we always want to do something with what we’ve read. We think, oh, that’s really interesting, I want to share it.
I’ve noticed that I often take photos of things that I’m reading and send the photo to someone. Like, I can’t even be bothered to type it out or to put it into my own words. I’m just going to take a photo and send it on, maybe even without stopping to think about that thing. Or perhaps it’s the opposite. I disagree with it, and so I want to, I want to tell someone that.
So we’re very, we’re very good at reading superficially, at browsing or surfing or skimming, going along the surface and looking for details that we find interesting or controversial or that confirm the things we already think. Arts, but we often struggle to think deeply. The author of this book thinks that maybe our internet reading habits have a bad influence on us in that respect, because the internet is always encouraging us to, to read on to the next thing, to click the next link, to, to do something, to share something, to retweet something. And the, the author of this book gives us some advice which I’ve printed on the handout. He He says, ask yourself the next time you read, when you come across a provoking or perplexing portion of a book, what are you more likely to do, react or think?
When you’re tempted to react, stop and simply think and meditate about what you’re reading. Let’s, let’s get back into our pairs and have a little chat about that. There’s a question on your handout: how should the process of reading a Bible passage differ from the process of reading a Facebook news feed or WeChat moments or an online article? A couple of minutes. I’m not gonna— I’m not gonna do feedback at this stage, but I guess it’s likely you talked about 2 different things.
One would be your reading habits. Um, I’m gonna talk a bit more about some useful reading habits for reading the Bible in a minute. But I guess another one, another area would be our attitudes. Um, our, our attitudes to reading the Bible should be different to our attitudes to reading whatever pops up first on BBC News. And I think that’s maybe likely to be our main obstacle to reading the Bible well, not just our habits but our hearts.
The Bible, as we saw, is written by God, but our sinful natures want to suppress God’s truth. We don’t want to listen to God and to submit to God. We often read our own ideas, our old ideas, into a Bible passage because we don’t want to change. We don’t want to change our thinking. We don’t want to change our actions.
And so this whole idea of learning to read, it’s not just about skills, it’s first and foremost about an attitude of humility. So here’s some questions that it would be useful to ask ourselves at the start of a new year, at the start of a prep session perhaps. Do I expect to have to change my mind on things this year as a result of what God says to me in the overview or in John?
Do I expect to have to change aspects of my behaviour as a result of what God says to me? Do I want this? Do I want to change? Or do I hope that the results of my prep will be to confirm the things that I already think and do?
Um, cool. So there’s some things on, on our attitude. Attitudes. In terms of how we use our, our personal study time and what might be some of the things that, that help us use the, the 3 hours or 5 hours or however long it is you want to spend, how to use that time well, um, I think it’s useful— I’m going to give some suggested stages. This isn’t just about habits, it’s not just about skills.
I hope it’s also helping us keep thinking through our attitudes as you go through these things. You’ll see on the handout that I’ve laid out a kind of, um, suggested process. It’s, it’s a suggestion. It’s something that will hopefully help us to slow down and to really take seriously what we’re reading. Um, it’s a little bit like, like Henry was sharing with us yesterday.
He gave us the idea of a GROW prayer to help us pray. It’s not that that is necessarily the best way to pray or always the right way to pray, but it is something that helps us to slow down and to really pray, to really think. Um, and similarly with this process, uh, there’s, there’s some bits that I think it’s helpful to have in the order that I’ve given. There’s some bits that will kind of blur together, and there’s some bits that the longer you spend reading the Bible, they’ll become more and more intuitive, and you don’t necessarily need think, okay, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. But it’s basically an attempt to, to map out what often happens when we really slow down and read something that God has written through a human author.
Um, first step I’ve written is to pray. Uh, Henry helped us think a lot about this yesterday, but I think it’s still worth us spending a bit more time here and thinking, why is it that we pray before we read the Bible? And what is it we should pray before we read? Because I think it’s easy for this to feel a bit token, like, I, I know I should pray before I read the Bible, and I almost always do, but it’s often just something that I think, oh, I’d better pray, otherwise, like, oh, I don’t know, I’ve done the wrong thing. Um, so let’s spend a bit of time really thinking about that.
And maybe if this half of the room starts off chatting about why do we need to pray before we read the Bible, and this half thinks about what should we pray before we read. If you finish talking about that, flip it around and discuss the other one. So why and what. Uh, great, let’s come back together. Let’s start off here.
Why, why is it a good idea to, to pray before we do our personal study of God’s word? Hopefully lots of ideas. We need God’s help to understand his words. Thanks. We need God’s help to understand his words.
You were saying that it was related to what you just said about the fact that actually it’s a spiritual battle when it comes to reading the Bible because we’re sinners and our natural instinct is to suppress God’s truth. We need spiritual help when we come to read the Bible if we’re going to have it challenge our thinking and change our hearts and our wills. Yeah, thanks. We need spiritual help because it’s a spiritual battle. We don’t want to read the Bible.
We’re saying there’s a sense in which you don’t need God’s help. Well, no, no, no, that’s not right. You don’t need to pray before you read the Bible. It’s not like praying makes the Bible into God’s word or something. The Bible is still powerful, so if you just sat down and read the Bible, it could still get through to you.
But we do need God’s help us, and, and, and therefore the Bible tells us to pray before we read the Bible. It’s like if you read Psalm 119, there’s lots of prayers that we’d understand and prayers for light and things. So yes, yeah, it’s helpful. It can still get through to us, but we need God’s help for it to get through to us. Is that partly like saying we need to pray before we read the Bible in the same way we need to pray before we do anything?
Like, you could say we don’t need to pray about anything because God will do it anyway, but of course we pray because of all the reasons that we thought about yesterday, because of who God is, because of who we are. Maybe. Um, cool. There’s probably lots of other ideas as well. What about, uh, the content of our prayers?
What could we pray before we sit down and read the Bible? Pray that we won’t look on our phone or Instagram. Yeah, great. Pray we won’t look at our phone or Instagram. And maybe even broader than that, pray against all kinds of distractions.
I’m— I don’t even need a phone to be distracted when I’m reading the Bible. Like, all kinds of things distract me. Like, oh, what am I gonna eat tonight? Oh, where am I gonna go next? How am I gonna get there?
Uh, transport angst. I don’t know, all kinds of things. So yeah, pray against distractions.
Anything else? I think the same is pray for good attitudes and thankfulness. Yeah, pray for— okay, yeah, 2 things I guess. Pray for our attitudes, pray for thankfulness. I guess before that, like, give thanks.
Let’s be, let’s be really thankful and praise God for his words before we read it.
Anything else? This side, this side, you can all join in. I think pray for humility, that we will be waiting to be changed by God’s word as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, humility so that we’re willing to be changed.
I remember I said that once to someone and they challenged me. They said, is it that you’re willing to be changed or is it that you want to be changed? And there’s, there’s a kind of difference, isn’t there? Willing is like, well, maybe I don’t need to be changed, but if I am, then I hope I’ll be willing to do so. Whereas wants to be changed is I expect that I— of course God’s word needs to change me, um, and I want it to happen.
So I, yeah, I very much agree with Uh, I pray I use the Bible. Go on, I or you? Incline my heart to fear your name. No, incline my heart to your words, as your testimonies. Open my eyes so that I might see wonderful things in the Lord.
Unite my heart to fear your name. Satisfy me with the steadfast love. And you got that from a John Piper book, but he got it from— yeah, I mean Genuinely, Psalm 119 is a great help to pray before we prep. Like, you could pick— I don’t know, if you think, how will I ever read the whole of Psalm 119? Maybe pray 2 verses, uh, each time before you open the Bible, and it’ll not only get you through Psalm 119, it’ll give some great things to pray.
Um, I think sometimes we can pray like in the middle of our prep when we find it difficult, not just the start. Thanks, Rose, that’s really helpful. We can pray in the middle of our prep, not only at the start, especially when we find it difficult. We might be like, I’ve got to verse 5 and it’s really hard. Um, great time to pray.
Or alternatively, I got to verse 5 and it’s so wonderful. God, I’ve just seen this thing about you and I praise you. Or verse 5 is is the complete opposite of what I’m like and what I’m doing. So I’m sorry, God. Lots of things we can pray through that.
Yeah, that’s why this is, yeah, not, not a strict linear progression. Um, cool. Actually, I should have said at the start that you might have noticed that this— some of you will think, oh, this, this outline looks a bit familiar. Um, I’ve tried to make it have some similarities between the session that Gwilym led for us last year on how to lead a Bible study. Um, hopefully Gwilym hasn’t repented of that session yet.
Um, that’s, uh, one of the things he said was that when we, when we’re doing a Bible study, uh, the— what we’re doing is we’re, we’re thinking and speaking together about the Bible. And I think that’s kind of what we’re doing in our prep as well. Like, certainly thinking, maybe speaking— if you, if you’re, if you’re praying, you’re speaking to God. Or it’s often useful to, to chat to someone else at some point during your prep, not exclusively chatting to someone else. Do you spend some time by yourself?
Um, and I think that, yeah, having that kind of structure for our prep that is similar to how a Bible study might run helps us quite smoothly go from thinking about how we prep to thinking about how we write a Bible study. So while this session is mostly focusing on the time that we spend before the Bible study, I hope that this stuff will be useful for us as we think about how to lead a Bible study on Wednesday nights. Um, hence the, the, the title for stage 2: get familiar with the text. And it’s so important just to, just to know what it’s actually saying, not just skim through and think, oh yeah, it says whatever I remember it saying last time I read it, or whatever it said in my children’s Bible. And there’s some stories in the Bible that I interpret a certain way, and I’ve only just realised that it’s because that’s how my children’s Bible interpreted them, and I’ve just always assumed that, that they were right.
Um, but sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t. How do we get familiar with the text? This— it’s not a— it’s not difficult. We we read it, and then we read it again, and then maybe we read it again. And I think it’s what— at some point it’s really helpful to read it out loud.
Wherever you’re prepping, it may be more— some places might be more appropriate than others to, to actually stop and read it out loud. But reading out loud helps us to slow down, to, to notice things. We think about, how do I pronounce that? What tone should should I say that in? It’s helping us think about the meaning.
Um, and I guess most of, most of the Bible was originally written to be listened to, not just sat down and skim read. So it helps us to read it rightly. Um, read, read, read, read in context. Remind yourself of what’s come immediately before. I think it’s often helpful to reread the, the previous passage.
Reread as much of what’s come before as, as you feel like. Consider where you are in, in the overview. Consider where you are in, in John and his structure and his story. So get familiar with the text, and then that kind of blurs into the next stage, um, observe freely, or trying to answer the question, what does it say? So you’ve read it loads of times but what’s it actually saying?
Um, and observe freely, I think, just expresses that we want to notice lots of things about the text, and we want to let the, the passage teach us what to look out for. And so I think it’s, it’s sometimes helpful to have a list of things to look out for, and I think the prep book does this really helpfully. So, so I, I would say at this point, use the prep book. If you’re doing overview and you don’t have a John Prep book and you want to see what I’m talking about, um, Julia, can you give one of these to people doing overview? I basically photocopied the relevant pages from the John Prep book, and it’s got some, um, kind of general questions to ask of any Bible passage, but also some John-specific questions, some things that it’s more useful to ask of John than any other book.
And You might be thinking, how did George know? How did George know that those are the questions that John, uh, that would be particularly useful for John? And I think the answer is not just that Willem told him. Um, it’s— the answer is that this comes from reading John a lot. It comes from letting John teach us how to read John.
So it’s probably not an exhaustive list of the important things to look out for. As you read through John, you’ll notice things that are key to reading John that aren’t on our list. Um, wonderful, great. I hope that’s what we’ll do this year. Um, think of, think of the process of reading John as, as learning to live in John’s world, learning to swim in, in John’s sea, getting to grips with how John expresses himself, how he writes, how he communicates.
And for those of us doing overview, we get to explore lots of worlds, and we get to swim in the sea of Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus. Um, it’ll be fun. Um, I think it’s a particular thing that we notice when we spend time in, in John, but also in most of the overview passages is, is that we’re, we’re dealing with the world of story. Um, it’s quite, it’s quite different to Romans. If Paul wants to say something to the people he’s writing to in Romans, he, he says it.
Um, sometimes it’s quite hard to work out what he means, what he’s actually saying, but at least you know that the thing he wants you to get is the thing that he’s telling you, and he’s trying to tell it straight. He is telling it straight. Sometimes my thinking is not straight enough. To understand him. And whereas John, it’s not always so straightforward.
It’s a bit like some of the examples we gave earlier. It’s a bit like— what was it Glenn said? Something about hash browns.
Or Mark, he didn’t want to ask someone’s name, so he asked for everyone’s name. That’s not because John’s British and he’s being indirect because he’s embarrassed. It’s because he thinks that that telling something through a story is actually more effective. So that’s where it’s, where it’s maybe a bit different. And so we’re trying to let John teach us how to understand the, the things that he records and the, and the story that he’s telling.
Um, observe with a pen in your hand or lots of different coloured pens or highlighters. Um, underline things that look important or things that are repeated lots. Uh, draw lines linking things that seem like they have connections. Uh, draw question marks next to things that are difficult to understand or surprising. Uh, draw other symbols that, that help you in ways that they might not help me.
Um, and slow down to, to, yeah, ask yourself questions to, to just really slow down and engage with the words in front of you. Um, I think even at this stage, the question why can be really useful. Just ask why about everything that you see there. Why has John included this sentence? Why has he worded it in this way?
Why has he used this word and not that word? Why has he put things in this order? Why has he included this detail? Why did he include this place name? Why did he include this number?
Another good question to ask is, do I actually understand what it’s saying? Um, someone asked a question yesterday about the speeches in John’s Gospel. How do we, how do we understand, uh, what Jesus is actually saying? And, um, I think one of the answers that Willem gave was you just got to work at it. I think that’s, I think that’s true.
We’ve just got to slow down and, and maybe even try and write it out line line in, in your own words to, to work out, okay, have I actually understood what he’s saying? And there’ll be equivalent bits in the overview as well where we just think, actually, I don’t really understand what that sentence means. Why don’t I have a go at stopping and putting it in my own words? So observe freely, slow down, ask all kinds of questions. Let John or Moses or whoever teach you what questions to ask.
Um, but then once you’ve noticed all kinds of things, and number 4, try and focus your thinking. Think about what does all of this mean. Take all of your observations and ideas and, and weigh them up. Start to think why about the passage as a whole and not just the details. Take the story that’s in front of you and think what’s the meaning of this story?
Why did John, or whoever, why did the author write it? And to help us answer that question, think about what seems to be really important. What are the main things? What are the main themes? But which of those is most emphasised?
How do those different themes fit together? And why have they all been picked together? Um, and at this stage, it’s really useful to, to zoom out and consider the— well, if you’re in John, to consider the whole section of John Are you in 2 to 4? Uh, are you in, as part of that, chapters 1 to 10? Um, consider it as part of the whole book as well.
Um, consider it as part of the whole Bible if you’re, if you’re doing the overview, but actually also if you’re doing John. And John knows that he’s, he’s not the first book, he’s not, he’s not, he’s not the beginning. Um, he’s he’s writing at the end of history. He’s writing to, to help his reader see that Jesus is the one fulfilling everything that’s come before. So, um, think about it from that kind of wide-angle lens.
And I think, yeah, I think that’s a really important thing, whether we’re reading John or the overview, to think about what we’re reading in light of Bible categories. Um, whatever you know of the rest the Bible, think about, is there, is there a link between that and the passage that I’m reading right now? And as we get more and more familiar with the Bible, this becomes easier and easier, which is why it’s such a privilege to do the overview. And it’s also why we’re always learning more and more about what the Bible says, because we’re, we’re always understanding it more and more as a whole and more and more on its own terms.
Um, I guess going back to, to what we mentioned at the start, this idea of the author having a purpose, um, a good kind of sharpening question is to think about how does this particular passage— so maybe like John chapter, John chapter 5— how does this contribute to the author’s overall purpose? Um, what would, what would be lost if the author hadn’t included this passage. And so when we consider the author’s purpose, it’s useful to think about the book as a whole. It’s not that like John had one purpose for chapter 1 and then, oh, suddenly, oh, better say something about this, a different purpose in chapter 2, and then first half of chapter 3 he’s got something else, second half of chapter 3 he’s on to something else. He’s writing the book as a whole to help people to make a decision to believe in Jesus as the Christ, but every passage is making a particular contribution to towards that purpose.
So that’s what we’re trying to work out as we, as we, as we focus our thinking. Um, maybe an example from Romans, which a lot of us looked at last year. The book as a whole is doing something about encouraging people to get behind Paul as he takes the gospel to the nations, but it’s not that every passage is doing that in exactly the same way. Maybe one passage is convincing the reader that Paul’s gospel really is for all nations, for all people. Maybe another passage is defending some aspects of Paul or of his gospel.
Maybe another passage is more straightforward in telling them this is, this is what you should do in light of that. But we take all these things as, as, as driving towards one big purpose for the book. It helps us not only understand what that passage is doing but to understand how we should respond to it. And we’ll say more about our response in a minute. Um, cool.
I’ve said quite a lot about that. Sorry, went on a bit. Um, but I think at this stage, when we’re— when we’ve— when we’ve started to focus our thinking, this is the point where it’s often helpful to bring in other sources. For example, common trees, or other books. Um, I think we don’t want to bring them in too early because then it kind of blinds us to observing freely what the passage is saying and thinking about it for ourselves.
If I bring in Don Carson, then immediately I think, well, of course he knows better than me. And so I kind of— it puts blinders on me and I’m unable to see anything apart from what Carson has told me. Um, but it is useful bring in different voices. And I would, I would suggest come to commentaries with specific questions, not looking for the definitive answer to everything. So if you’ve spent maybe 2 hours reading the passage and you’re, you’re still stuck on question 5, you thought maybe it means this, maybe it means that, oh, I’m not very sure.
At that point, once you’ve done some thinking and thought of some ideas and thought of it in the context of the whole passage, it’s useful to give Carson a call and say, okay, Don Carson, what do you think about verse 5? Um, it’s useful to listen to more than one voice. Maybe Carson thinks one thing and someone else thinks something else. And at this point, it’s also maybe useful to think about your SLOB group. And maybe you’re in a position where you can talk to your SLOB group before SLOB, or maybe you just know that this one person in your small group is certainly going to challenge your thinking in a particular way.
This person always says that the passage is about that. Well, like, have them in your heads and listen to their voice and think, okay, what would they say about my ideas? Um, would they challenge me to have a slightly different perspective? Or how can I persuade them that the idea that, that I’ve come up with is actually what this passage is saying, um, and not, not quite what they think. Um, cool.
And then I guess step 5, summarise, is, is just drawing together the, the things that we’ve already thought. Um, I’ve written main point and contribution to John’s overall purpose. Uh, that’s what the prep book tells us to do. I think that’s a helpful thing to do. Obviously, if you’re doing the overview, uh, you won’t talk about contribution to John’s overall purpose.
And I think it’s worth spending time on a summary. And it’s easy to think, oh, I should probably have some kind of summary sentence and, and dash something off, um, or to think a summary sentence has to include everything that, that you thought. But the process of, of coming up with a summary sentence is useful because it, it forces us to make decisions about what’s really important. And it might be that you’ve come up with lots of ideas and seen lots of things, so you might want to write out a long summary sentence and then think, okay, if I had to shorten it, how could I shorten it? Maybe 2 different versions of a shorter sentence, and weigh them up and think, okay, which one, which one resonates better with the passage as a whole?
I think on summaries it’s worth saying it’s not about being reductionistic, it’s about being clear. It’s not about losing lots of ideas that are true and important, it’s about letting all these ideas push us to say one thing clearly. And I’ve— in the years that I’ve been a SLOB leader, I’ve asked people to write a whole range of different lengths of sentences. I think, you know, some people will have been asked to summarise everything in 7 words Some people will have been given 10 words. Some people will have been given 20 Chinese characters, which is very generous.
Um, maybe sometimes I’ve asked for 2 sentences, something summarising the main points in 10 words, something summarising the, uh, the main reason why it’s there in 10 words. The number of words is not the main thing, but I think do try and give yourself some kind of word limit because if you write a 50-word summary, it’s not a summary, it’s just a stream of consciousness. And the reason why this is important is I always take my summary and I write it at the top of my Bible study, and that helps me think about, okay, if we— I hope we’ll see lots of things in this study, but if we only see one thing, if we only really pray in one thing and apply one thing, I want it to be this one because this is the thing that that God is saying to us. This is the purpose with which our God is speaking to us. Um, and that then leads us on to our response.
Uh, so what, what should we do with all these things? Um, I think, well, Rose said something earlier that was helpful, that we might pray throughout the study. I think it’s the same with response. We’re often responding throughout the study. It’s not that you’ve sort of got to go through all all these stages and hold yourself back.
Can’t respond, can’t respond, can’t respond because I’m not entirely clear on the purpose. And, well, actually, I’m still not sure if my purpose is right. Maybe I shouldn’t respond in case it’s wrong. I’ll wait till after SLOB and then wait to see what my SLOB leader says. And if they’re right— oh, but maybe they’re not right.
Maybe I’ll wait till Guillem’s done the review talk and then I can respond because then I really know what it’s saying. No, of course, of course, that’s not what we do. We can respond at any point in the process.
Um, I think my, my confession is I often skip this out of my personal study time. I, I think, I think I want to wait. I want to wait till I’m clearer on the passage before I spend time really letting myself be challenged and thinking through how I’m going to change. Um, so one of my resolutions for the coming year is that that when I— whenever I sit down to do personal study, I want to spend good time thinking through how this passage ought to change me, my thinking, my living. Um, maybe I think I’ve spoken for too long.
Let’s, let’s, let’s do another little discussion so that if you, if you stop listening, come back now because you’ve got to speak. Um, turn, turn to the person next to you and think, why, why is it worth considering our before we come to SLOB? You might think, I’ll consider my response after SLOB. Why is it worth thinking about our response before coming to the SLOB study?
If you want to do some feedback on that, we can do it during coffee time. And then just a few things to help us think about how we, how we think through response.
Firstly, it makes sense to respond in line with your summary of of the author’s purpose. That’s what God wants for us. But also let your response be informed by the texture of the passage, the, the feel of it, how John or Isaiah or Ezekiel, how they’re writing it. And building on something that Henry said yesterday about something about God speaking to our will, hearts, and lives, um, response begins in, in our heart. Well, Henry said it begins at our will.
I guess that’s true. As we hear what God says, we change our minds. That shapes our, our hearts. Maybe I’ve taken our minds and hearts together. Um, and so it’s often useful to spend some time working through how a passage should shape our thinking, how it should shape our worldview, with questions like, why is it important to know this?
Do I really know and believe it? What is there in my life that shows that I believe it, or that shows that I don’t believe it? And, and why do I fail to fully know it or believe it? Um, but then it’s not enough to stay there. We, we need to think about how should this change in our thinking impact out into all kinds of areas of our lives.
Um, and just a note on why this is important, it’s because as leaders, our example is one of our most important teaching tools. And I think back to when I was a student and the, the different ladies who led my Bible study groups when I was a student. And as well as benefiting from the things that they taught me, I still remember things about their examples. I remember one leader who’s now serving God in war-torn parts of Africa to, to try and translate the Bible there, one leader who went to New Zealand uh, to do Christian work. One leader who sat us down at the start of the year and said, you guys are the most important things in my life this year.
You’re more important than my job. Um, so yeah, we small group members will remember the, the example of our leaders. Uh, it’s almost coffee time. It’s almost coffee time. Uh, final, final step in this is to pray.
Um, we said a lot about prayer at the start, but it’s worth spending time, um, by ourselves praying in the passage for ourselves, for the rest of our SLOB group, for our group members, and to pray in the particular response that we’ve been considering. Before we go for coffee break, I’d love to hear, are there any other tips that people have? We’ve got lots of leading experience in the room. So are there any other things that people want to share that they found useful themselves in prep or heard other people say that you think would be worth passing on, how to spend this time well? You said something earlier.
I found reading different translations helpful. I’ve got the privilege of reading both Chinese and English. I highly recommend reading different translations. Read both Chinese and English, or some other combination if that doesn’t suit you.
Sometimes I find writing out the passage really helpful because it forces me to spot stuff I just skip over. Writing out the passage, yeah, that’s a really good way of slowing down and reading it.
Yeah, I think 3 hours is a very long time. To keep together.
And in terms of thinking about stuff, you will think about stuff much more if you think about it for more days. And so rather than doing 3 hours, I might say, why don’t you try and do an hour very early in your week, a long way away from stuff, and then maybe 2 hours later on, or your Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that maybe means like being intentional with your diary, like thinking now for the year as a whole, where are you gonna do your prep slots so that you don’t realise, oh, SLOBS tomorrow, I’ve just got to do an all-nighter and cram in the hours that way.
One of the things that I think, like, why response is helpful is it forces you to consolidate everything you’ve thought about in the last, like, hour or so. And, um, for those of us who are very busy and find it hard to find time to prep, like, if you, if you only have, say, half an hour or for, like, I don’t know, 10 minutes at one stop, but I want to go, um, I, I strongly recommend, like, spend like at least 5 minutes of that 10 minutes like responding in prayer, because that’s really when like the rubber hits the road and it forces you to take all the thoughts that you gathered and like try to kind of nail it down somewhere. And it’s helpful for you personally but also for the purposes of study. Yeah, so that— yeah, that’s just— that’s really helpful. So it’s not that our thinking about the passage stops when we start As we respond, we are still thinking and drawing conclusions and working out what something means.
Great. Let’s have a coffee break.
Yeah. Summary doesn’t mean like an engineered summary where you try to suspend all the rules of the English language and get as many words Yeah, great, great. Yeah, yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s really helpful, the idea of making, making choices, making, making decisions, and leaving out certain ideas. So you might, you might write down— what I often do is I write down all the ideas that I think are really important sentences, and I realise I can only— one of— only one of them can be the main point, or maybe I need to combine 2 of them and sort of make a, make a new thing that isn’t any of these 3 things. It’s not about trying to include everything in, in one sentence, and that— I think that process of choosing one thing to focus on is itself part of our thinking about the passage.
Um, because we’re, we’re forcing ourselves to ask that big question: what does it mean? What does it actually mean? What’s, what’s the reason why God has said this thing through this author? Kill your babies. Kill your babies.
Ask Rose about that one later. Um, let’s have a coffee break.
