Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

Copyright © 2012–2025 DiscipleMakers, except guest articles (copyright author). Used by permission.

You are here: Home / Archives for Love

One Very Good Reason to Read Your Bible

By

Tim Challies writes of “One Very Good Reason to Read Your Bible.” And he’s absolutely right. This is about the best reason I can think of.

One of the great dangers in the Christian life is living first for self. One of the associated dangers, then, is seeing personal devotion as a practice that goes no further than my own mind, my own heart. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Your intimacy with God, your knowledge of God, your time with God, works its way outward to everyone around you. The good you can do them every day is the good of spending time with God.

Challies expands on how your daily Bible reading will benefit your spouse, your children, your neighbors, and your fellow church members. If you think you are not smart enough, or you are too busy—or if you ever struggle with finding the Bible too boring or Bible study too complicated—please lift your eyes off yourself and consider the good God would have you do for those around you. There is too much to lose if you don’t read your Bible.

Challies’s article is excellent and worth full consideration. Check it out!

It’s Worth It to Know Your People

By

I used to meet with a guy to study the Bible. He was a quick learner and teachable, and he became a good friend. In general, our Bible study was not extraordinary, but quite good nevertheless.  I remember, however, the day the Bible study went from being merely quite good to being great.

The girl of this young man’s dreams had just broken up with him. He had the guts to meet with me anyway; in his place, I would have chosen to stay home in bed. Instead of having our regular discussion, I took him out and bought him the tallest mocha he could handle. Then we walked it off along a busy road and spoke of life, love, hurt feelings, and how God’s word spoke to us in those painful moments. Our time in the word paid back many dividends that day and launched us into weeks of richer study than we had yet enjoyed together.

According to the Lord’s perspective, no Bible study will succeed unless the leader loves the participants (1 Cor 12:27-13:13). In this case, I did something anyone would do, which was simply to listen, encourage, and enter this fellow’s life. Most of the time, however, I’m too stingy to pay the cost of loving others. Love feels like an interruption. It requires more forethought or creativity than I’m willing to invest. And it takes me away from other, more “productive” tasks on my to-do list.

Jerm (2008), Creative Commons

Jerm (2008), Creative Commons

One of the best ways to love the people in your group is to get to know them. In a pristine world, we might be motivated to do this simply by knowing it’s what God wants us to do. But God has no problem motivating us to obey with the promise of reward, so neither will I.

When I struggle with the call to invest in relationships with people (Mark 1:17, 1 Thess 2:8, 2:17-3:13), I try to remember why it’s worth it. In particular, why is it worth it to build relationships with people outside of the Bible study meeting?

  1. It makes your application more relevant. When you know what’s going on in people’s lives, you’ll be more equipped to help them make specific application.
  2. It shows them Christ. When people know their leader cares for them personally, it’s easier for them to believe Jesus cares for them.
  3. It sharpens your insight. You’ll know their highs and lows, and you’ll be able to steer the Bible study discussion toward those very things they have on their minds.
  4. It bolsters your credibility. When they know you care about them, they’ll trust you. When you speak hard truths from God’s word, that trust helps the truth sink in more deeply.

Of course, we should love people because God wants us to. And he made the world to work in such a way that everyone benefits from honoring him. When you struggle to believe love is worth the inconvenience, remind yourself of how much more you have to lose than a bit of time or forethought.

One Vital Behavior Determines the Success of Your Teaching Ministry

By

Have you attended a Bible study with a leader who had no people skills? Have you been to Bible conferences where the speakers refused to hobnob with the proletariat? Have you taken a Bible class where everything you heard was true and precise, but you wondered if the professor had ever interacted with a live descendant of Adam?

What you do outside your Bible study meeting is just as important as what you did during it. You can reinforce the lessons you taught, or you can undermine them with your own hands. You can guide softened hearts into beneficial spiritual disciplines, or you can subsidize the calluses that deaden people to the very truth you proclaim.

It all depends on whether you live to serve the teaching, or whether the teaching exists to help you serve others. This goes for small groups, youth groups, Sunday school classes, and sermons. It goes for conference talks and classroom lectures. It even goes for 1-on-1 mentorship. Your teaching ministry matters, but it will be counterproductive if you don’t care about the people you teach.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Heb 13:7)

One Vital Behavior

I’ve spent many weeks focused on the mechanics of leading a Bible study. I’m a firm believer in a strong ministry of the word, and I affirm that bad (shoddy, false, ignorant) Bible studies are costly and dishonoring to God. But I also deny that the ministry of the word is limited to the truthful and precise words that pour from a leader’s mouth. The ministry of the word is incomplete apart from the love and mercy that pour from the leader’s heart.

Therefore, to all who want to learn how to lead a Bible study, I commend one vital behavior above all others: Love your people. Get to know them. Learn their names and their histories. Find out what in life encourages them and what discourages them. Ask about their disappointments, dreams, and values. Make sure you understand them before you disagree with them. Find out why they come to the Bible study. Ask them regularly how they think it’s going and how you can improve. Ask them what God is teaching them through it.

You’ll never be able to do all these things during the meeting itself. Love requires investment; a price must be paid. You’ll have to spend time with them (both in groups and 1-on-1). You’ll have to learn what they do for fun so you can learn to have fun doing it with them. You’ll have to express your love in ways they feel loved, which won’t necessarily be the same ways you like to express love. I write “you’ll have to…you’ll have to…you’ll have to…” not because your righteousness depends upon it, but because love has the inscrutable power of compulsion.

The Cost of Failure

Simon Webster (2011), Creative Commons

Simon Webster (2011), Creative Commons

The success of your Bible study—or of any teaching ministry—depends upon this one vital behavior. Is that a naïvely bombastic claim? I think not.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-2)

I’ve performed in orchestras when the gong and cymbals crashed at just the right time. Few earthly experiences are as moving as such powerful musical climaxes.

I’ve also performed in orchestras when the percussionist dropped the cymbals on the floor during the concert. Few earthly experiences are more embarrassing, more useless, or more counterproductive.

It is good for us to earnestly desire teaching gifts and to diligently develop teaching skills. But let us never forget: There is a still more excellent way (1 Cor 12:27-31).

Please Don’t Try to be Profound

By

The first mistake of rookie preachers or Bible study leaders is trying to be profound.

I remember my first study. I had convinced two J/V football players and a skateboarder from my freshman hall to discuss the Bible with me. They didn’t know Christ yet, and I wanted to be the one to win them to him. Good teachers had influenced me deeply, and I wanted to influence others the same way.

We met two or three times, and I gave it all I had. But all I had wasn’t good enough. They lost interest and stopped showing up.

Profundity Strangles Influence

Now I don’t mean to suggest that my overzealous attempt to influence was the only factor in their lack of interest. I simply want to suggest that we get in trouble when we put things in the wrong order.

We teach the Bible because we want to minister to people. But people are like wet bars of soap, and you know what happens when you squeeze too hard. Teaching the Bible so you can influence people is like getting married so you can have sex. You’ll feel really good about yourself for a little while, but you won’t be either satisfied or effective for very long.

Chuck Olsen (2009), Creative Commons

Chuck Olsen (2009), Creative Commons

Because I love to get a “Wow” response from people, I turn to my ingenuity to produce new heights of “Wow.” I can even do this in the name of Christ and succeed for a time. But I’ve shifted the attention from the Lord to myself, and the endeavor is destined to implode because I’ve disconnected myself from the vine.

Dependence Produces Love

For this reason, the first practice for preparing effective Bible studies is to depend on the Lord. Jesus explains godly dependence in John 15:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5, ESV)

Countless mystical interpretations have been given for what it means to abide in Jesus, but the context leaves little doubt:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. (John 15:9-10)

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)

I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide….These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (John 15:16-17)

Jesus describes the flow of vitality and power through the following grid: The Father loves Jesus→Jesus loves his disciples→The disciples love others. The disciples get the power to love by abiding in Jesus’ love. Jesus gets the power to love by abiding in the Father’s love. Thus, if anyone in the chain unplugs from the sequence, he loses power, and his fruit dies. In other words, he’ll fail to love.

So what does it mean to abide in Jesus? It means that we abide in his love. We grab hold of it and never let it go. We remind ourselves of his love by thinking and speaking of it incessantly.

What is Jesus’ love? It’s not a mystical or emotional experience, but the act of laying down his life to make his servants into his friends (John 15:13-15). It’s the message of the gospel.

What does it mean to bear fruit? It means, of course, that we love others by laying down our lives for them.

Love Unlocks Joy

What does all this have to do with leading Bible studies?

When we try to be profound, we’ve disconnected ourselves from Jesus’ love. We’ve turned from the message of his death for sin, and we’ve turned to our own need to be needed. The solution to this problem is to get reconnected to the vine, to depend on the Lord and his love.

Trusting in Jesus and his love for us frees us in a few ways:

  1. We’re free to discover more than create. What cleanses people is not our love for them but Jesus’ word to them (John 15:3). This removes the pressure of having to create a brilliant lesson, study, or sermon. We can simply discover what Jesus has already spoken in the text and then speak that very message to others.
  2. We’re free to repeat the same things over and over. We don’t have to come up with something nobody has ever heard before. This removes the pressure of having to think perfectly on our feet. We can simply abide in Jesus’ love, telling the old, old story time and again.
  3. We’re free to lay down our lives to serve. We don’t need to get other people to make us feel good. This removes the pressure of having to evoke certain responses or outcomes. We can simply shape our studies in a way that will serve these people at this time.

Compared to profundity, love is not only more honoring to God; it’s also much more fun. It eliminates anxiety and produces satisfaction. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).