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Bible Study: The Importance, Passion and Power

Personal Bible study has been one of the driving passions in my life since I became a born-again believer over twenty-two years ago. The Lord drew me to Himself through a coworker who also shared this passion and preached the gospel to me for five years until one day the Spirit grabbed my heart and I listened. My new faith in Christ changed my life from one of total indifference to the things of God to an insatiable hunger to know more.

An interesting and ironic twist to this story is that I soon began attending an independent Bible-teaching church with solid evangelical doctrine, that differed from that of my friend on several crucial points. These differences drove me to begin to study the Bible for myself very intensely during that first year as a new Christian. Within a few days I had gone from drinking three or four hours almost every night after work, to studying the Bible for about the same amount of time. And I am convinced that it was this personal Bible study that caused me to grow spiritually rather quickly, as well as laid the foundation and set the direction for the rest of my life since then.

At the time that I was saved I was working as an engineer and my wife was working in a bank, and by the world's standards we were heading down "easy street" — even though in reality we were headed for disaster. My wife was actually saved as a direct result of her own Bible study that had as its original intent disproving what she was hearing about the Bible from both me and our new pastor. However, in another one of those "classic scenarios" she came to faith in Christ within a few weeks of trying to disprove biblical Christianity through actually studying the Bible for herself.

Within a year of our salvation, we knew that we wanted and needed even more formal Bible study and training, so in 1985 we enrolled in the Word of Life Bible Institute in Schroon Lake, New York. That was another very special year of intense Bible study that continued to increase our passion for the Word of God and demonstrated the power of the Word of God to change our lives.

Many of our teachers were Dallas Theological Seminary graduates where the motto of the school is "Preach the Word" - and that these men did, week after week. It was during that year as a twenty-six year-old Bible institute student that I knew that I wanted to be able to handle the Word of God like these men. This led us to DTS in 1986 to get further training and day after day the passion and power of Bible study continued to be evident in our lives. Studying under men like Howard Hendricks, Mark Bailey, Stan Toussaint, Tom Constable, Dwight Pentecost and many others convinced me that this was what I wanted to do in the lives of others - to help other men and women learn to study the Bible for themselves - and in such a way that they, too, could pass this on to the next generation.

As a result, we have had the privilege of being missionaries in Hungary with Word of Life for fourteen years, to found the WOL Hungary Bible School in 1994 and to impart the importance and skills of accurate Bible Study to students from Hungary and over 25 different countries around the world. What a privilege to share the passion and power that comes only from the Word of God; faithful Bible Study that is the only source of everlasting life and everlasting change in a world where everything changes but the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our only hope.

David James