#StinkinThinkin

My dear husband had a great mind and loved to study the Bible. He would sit for hours on the love seat in his little office and pour over the Scriptures with all sorts of concordances and dictionaries to help him understand. He would take notes and underline and star stuff. Frequently, he would ask me what I had studied that morning. I would always retort that I had not studied, I had only read the Bible.

Way back in the 90's I tried to read the Bible through in a year and was not very successful getting through it. Then came 9/11 and I determined to do it. I succeeded and every year since have done so. I just read it. I really don't love to study unless it is for a cause - cause I have to lead a class or prepare for Sunday School. I do research passages that speak to me during reading time and look words up from the Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew to gain a better understanding of what it meant back when it was written. I, too, underline and star stuff in my Bible.

We Christians have not been successful in communicating God's message to the world. We have not been good students of the Word and the world, because of our negligence, has steadily deteriorated in ethics and morals. I have been reading a wonderful book called "Love Your God With All Your Mind" by J. P. Moreland. He reasons that we must have some objective truth to believe in for the self is a very poor site for finding meaning. How can we "destroy speculations...raised up against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:5 ) or develop a well-reasoned theology that helps us form our ideology unless we have studied.

In a way, we dethrone God when we do not take His Word seriously and use our minds to evaluate it and understand it and apply it. God values His Word and has said "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35

What did you study, today?