If you lead a Bible study or teach the Bible in any capacity, and if you love God and his word, you want the Bible to come alive for your people. You want their hearts to catch fire as they read, listen, and engage.
The bad news is that we cannot do anything to make the Bible come alive. The good news is that we don’t need to make the Bible come alive, because the Bible is already living and active.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
The best way for us to “make” the word of God come alive for our friends is to recognize and act like it is already living and active.
Active in You and Others
If the Bible is indeed active, then it will change us as we encounter it. In particular, as we prepare to lead Bible studies or teach the Bible, we should be different people because of the text we have been preparing!
The most powerful evidence of the truth of the Bible is often the leader’s own testimony of its transforming power. Like all Christians, we should be growing in our love for God, growing in our love for our neighbors, growing in the fruit of the Spirit. We should not put ourselves as the focus of our discussion, but we should plan to testify to the ways God has been at work in us.
Sharing will not look like victory upon victory. That’s not my experience of walking with God, and I don’t hear that from others. Rather, the Bible works in us in many ways—to teach, to reprove, to correct, and to train us in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16). Once we stop trying to be impressive, we can share about both the ways God is correcting us and the ways he is training us in righteousness.
Ideally this sort of discussion will help to create a culture within a Bible study group. Eventually, everyone will talk about the ways God’s word has been changing them.
What Do You Expect?
When we teach the Bible, our expectations influence our actions and interactions. Are we expecting people to be bored by the Bible or transformed by it?
Some leaders break out the bells and whistles. They think that if they jazz up the setting, or the presentation, or the activities, then people will really pay attention and get a lot out of the Bible study. However, this approach is doomed from the start. It presumes that the Bible is (at worst) boring or (at best) inert, and that what God really needs is a good carnival barker. If we expect people to be bored by the Bible, they will be.
A better approach is to recognize that the Scriptures are sharp and powerful. They may not affect every person the same way at the same time, but God’s word will accomplish what he wants (Is 55:10–11). If God’s word is at work within believers (1 Thess 2:13), then we should act as though that were true! This approach will affect the way we read the Bible out loud, how we ask questions, and how we pray for our friends.
The Living Word of God
How powerful is the Bible? To what degree is it living and active?
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; (1 Peter 1:22–23)
The word of God is living. It is abiding. It is an imperishable seed that brings new life to the dead. And it works mightily in God’s people.
We dare not act like it is boring or harmless. And we dare not presume that we can make that which is already living come alive.
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