Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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You Can Lead with Influence

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Innovate 4 Jesus recently re-published my article “You Can Lead with Influence.”

When a teacher has influence, students seek a relationship outside of class and ask advice on topics outside of the curriculum. When a manager has influence, employees pitch in on projects without being asked. When a pastor has influence, Christians find any excuse to join his Sunday morning coffee hour conversations. When an older sibling has influence, the closeness lasts well into adulthood. In each case, we follow influential leaders, not because we have to, but because we want to.

An aspiring leader might start off with this vision for influence, but over time the rookie’s eagerness can fade into a fog of authority and experience. Experience assures the leader that entrenched behaviors can’t be broken, touchy people need more leeway, and elder meetings must be boring. Thus, forfeiting influence, the former idealist starts to rely on his own authority to get results.

Consider the difference between authority and influence in this simple illustration. An authoritative parent might compel his teenager to keep her curfew. But only an influential parent can trust his daughter won’t sneak out when he’s asleep.
The article goes on to explain from 1 Thessalonians how the recipe of influence has two key ingredients: humility and hope.
Check it out!

Read Mark Learn

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In April I attended Together for the Gospel and got a pile of free books. Since the free books numbered more than I could ever read, I gave many of them away.

Read Mark LearnTwo volumes on the stack almost got passed on to a more available master, but were snatched from the fire at the 11th hour. These were the two Read Mark Learn volumes—one on John, the other on Romans—published by Christian Focus in partnership with St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.

I almost passed over these treasures like an angel of death on the fourteenth day of the first month. My initial perusal revealed them to be a series of Bible studies, and, well, I need more Bible studies like Solomon needs more wives:

I find something more bitter than death: the woman [substitute “Bible study guide” for “woman” and you’ll catch my usual disillusionment] whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. (Eccl 7:26-28, ESV)

I read one short study from the volume on John’s Gospel just for kicks. And boy, am I glad I did.

I read another and another. After 5 of them, I couldn’t stop raving over them to my wife (you should have seen the spittle in my beard!). After only 2 or 3 more, I was ready to purchase a volume on every other book of the Bible. But I searched online and could find only John and Romans. I spoke with a representative from Westminster bookstore, and he could find only John and Romans. I went on the Christian Focus website, and still I could find only John and Romans.

The bad news is that they have volumes on only John and Romans. The good news, however, is that I finally found this page on St. Helen’s’s website, which has a long list of studies on many other (though not all) books of the Bible—all available for free. More bad news, though: John and Romans cost money. Sorry.

What is so good about these Bible studies?

  • They are short: only 10 pages or fewer per unit of text.
  • They consider context. The book’s historical context, the unit’s literary context, and the entire Bible’s gospel context.
  • They concisely trace out (and focus on) the author’s flow of thought.
  • They identify a main point for each section.
  • They connect every passage to Christ.
  • They get specific in application.

I’m not sure I can think of anything else I would ask for in a Bible study.

The only problem I can see with these studies is the threat of addiction. Just be careful not to read them until after you study the text for yourself. But if ever I was tempted to ignore my own standards for such things, now would be the time.

Check it out!

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Disclaimer: If you click the Amazon links in this post and buy stuff, you’ll support this blog at no extra cost to yourself. This may enable me to buy more copies of Read Mark Learn to give out to my friends.

John Piper’s Look at the Book Preview

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John Piper is preparing to launch his “Look at the Book” initiative to teach people how to study the Bible. If this first video is an accurate sign of what’s to come, then we’re in for quite a treat.

If you have any question about what it looks like to sit down with nothing but the text of Scripture and simply observe, interpret, and apply—I could not recommend this 10-minute video any more highly.

http://vimeo.com/101339957

Why I Write

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My goal on this site is to help ordinary people learn to study the Bible. I pursue that aim through a few practices:

  • On Mondays, I demonstrate Bible study skills on a particular text of Scripture.
  • On Wednesdays, I link to other pages on the Internet that either demonstrate good Bible study skills or lay the ground work for good Bible study skills.
  • On Fridays, I usually back away from the text to reflect on the skills themselves. Currently, I’m explaining methods for leading effective Bible studies.

All three practices fit into a larger model for teaching people how to study the Bible. But as each post comes and goes, and we focus on very specific skills, we can easily lose sight of the model.

That’s why I occasionally write brief posts like this by way of reminder.

And that’s also why I created a table of contents page for my series on Proverbs 1-9. It’s gone so long that the forest has been long since overgrown with trees. This table of contents will let you know all the main topics I’ve hit so far, and it will let you know what remains before the series finishes. I didn’t link to every post but only to the first post for each segment of text. From that post, you should be able to click through to the next post and the next if you’d like to read through a particular section.

I’ll activate the last few links as I finish those posts over the next few months. Please let me know if you have any ideas for making this page more useful!

Bible Study is Hard Work

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Desiring GodAt Desiring God, Jen Wilkin asserts that Bible study is hard work. She asserts that it doesn’t come easily or naturally to anyone. She accuses us of giving up or seeking a shortcut when progress is slow.

Being a student of any subject requires effort — the process of gaining understanding is not easy and can often be frustrating. Depending on the subject, learning may be enjoyable, but it will not be effortless. Learning requires work.

This is as true of learning the Bible as it is of learning algebra. We think that learning the Bible should be as natural as breathing in and out; if knowing God’s word is so good for us, surely he would not make it difficult for us to do so. But learning the Bible requires discipline, and discipline is something we don’t naturally embrace. Because learning the Bible is a discipline, patience will play a much-needed role in our progress.

What do you think?

Check it out!

Observing John 3:16

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Will Humes (2009), Creative Commons

Will Humes (2009), Creative Commons

Douglas Smith has some helpful observations on the Bible’s most famous verse (John 3:16). In my summer Bible study, I may ask the group to make 50 observations on this one verse, as it summarizes much of the Bible’s message.

There is so much life-changing truth packed into this verse that, according to some stories, evangelist Dwight L. Moody’s life and ministry were changed by sitting under the preaching of a man who preached from John 3:16 throughout daily meetings over an entire week!

Check it out!

Idolatry is Embarrassing

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Idolatry is not only stupid and offensive to God; it is embarrassing. Check out this post by Ryan Higginbottom on Isaiah 20 and how embarrassing idolatry is. It’s a good example of finding the main point of a text and applying it specifically.

Those same soldiers in whom Judah had hoped were paraded naked through the streets by their captors. What a display of their weakness and frailty! What a dramatic point about the foolishness of trusting in them! You can almost hear the heavenly narrative: “Instead of me, the Lord of hosts, you trust in these guys? Really?!”

Check it out!

 

Everyday Application

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Bible application is exhausting. Must we do it every time we study the Bible? Must we constantly add one more thing to our to-do list?

Desiring GodAt Desiring God, David Mathis says it depends on what we mean by Application. If we mean that we must come up with something new to do each day, then no. We’ll never be able to keep up. But if we mean that we must be changed in our thinking or desires, then yes.

Rather than dictating specific actions, he wants to see us formed into the kind of persons who are able to “discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).

In Scripture, we see the Lord. As we see, we will become amazed. In our amazement, we reflect and meditate until the word is written on our hearts. Then, over time, we’ll see gradual and specific change in our lives.

Mathis is on to something, though I’ve used slightly different language for it. I suggest the 3 spheres for application as a helpful model: Head, Heart, Hands. Yes, change should occasionally hit our hands and produce new behaviors or action steps. But we must not neglect the other two spheres, where we address our thinking and character. Head and Heart application rarely produces doable behaviors, but it makes us into the kind of people who are more attuned to the Lord and his commands. Such people will then see behaviors change over time.

But can we confidently say there’s something for us to apply in every passage? Absolutely!

Yes, take every word as spoken to yourself, with this essential anchor in place: Seek to understand first how God’s words fell on the original hearers, and how it relates to Jesus’s person and work, and then bring them home to yourself. Expect application to your life as God speaks to us today through the Spirit-illumined understanding of what the inspired human author said to his original readers in the biblical text.

Mathis shows us how to follow this plan to bring the Bible home to our hearts. I recommend the article to you.

Check it out!