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Why Bible Study is So Important to Me

I was the teacher; she was the student, but, as I read her paper, our roles were reversed. Elise wrote, “I found myself, reading the Bible, not out of guilt, but because reading the words brought me joy, peace, and healing.” The statement hit me with such an impact that I put it into my PDA, but the questions remained. Why do I read the Bible? Why do I study the Bible?

My father started reading the Bible to my brother and me at night when the three of us were small enough to fit into one bed, but I’m not sure I’d call that Bible study. For me Bible study goes deeper than Bible reading and involves more concentration, focus, and work. (The work is often pleasurable but sometimes not so.). I find that both Bible reading and Bible study are necessary and my childhood experience illustrates the difference. At some point, Dad stopped reading to us. I suspect that the reading stopped when the stories ran out—probably somewhere in the middle of Exodus but will never truly know.

I grew up in a church that taught me a lot about religion and had lectionary readings from the Bible but didn’t read the Bible much. About the same time that the church started to turn more toward the Bible, I did so also but for very different reasons. It was an accident that put me in the hospital in 1966 that put me on a more deliberate and intentional journey with Jesus than in my growing up years. In the midst of this renewal of spirituality, I received a Bible for being the top student in one of the Sunday School classrooms during my senior year of high school. Eventually I would leave the church of my childhood for the church of my adulthood because Bible study (using that very Bible) convinced me that I needed to do so.

I have a reputation for orderliness and thoroughness. Those who live closest to me (my wife and children) will tell you that this is more a goal than a reality, but these two characteristics do drive me in much of what I do. As a result, for many years my Bible reading/Bible study consisted largely of various plans for getting through the Bible in a prescribed manner. I could read the whole Bible in one year (three chapters a day and two more one day a week), or the gospels in one quarter (89 chapters in 90-92 days), or Psalms and Proverbs twice a year at a chapter a day, etc. etc. etc. These plans plus becoming a Bible teacher on the collegiate level did me much good, but something was missing. I was feeding my head but starving my heart.

In the last five years, my Lord has been taking me on a journey that enabled me find the heart that Jesus gave me, to be the person that Jesus wanted me to be, to be my true self. I have discovered that Bible reading and Bible study have almost a magical effect on me. No matter what I am reading or studying I get a blessing. Sometimes I can tell you what the blessing is, sometimes I can’t.

It doesn’t make any difference if it is the Psalms, the Gospels, or 1 Chronicles, God’s word blesses. It doesn’t make any difference if it’s the NIV, NRSV, NASB, KJV, or the Complete Jewish Bible, God’s word blesses me. I can be a formal translation or dynamic, I am changed. I can hold a leather-bound Bible, a hard-cover edition, use an computer program or find it on my PDA, God’s word feeds my heart, soul, strength, and mind. It can be in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, French or English (all of which I know a little bit about—some less than others), the word that became the Word incarnate becomes incarnate again in me.

So I say thank you to Moses, Samuel, David, Matthew, Paul, James and John who gave me the Word of God in written form. I say thank you to Elise and to Keith, Brooks, Rob and the rest of the gang on Tuesday nights all of whom showed me what the word is like when it lives in people. I say thank you to the visionaries and programmers at Logos, BibleWorks, Laridian, and Olive Tree who have enabled and enriched my Bible study and made Bible reading far more exciting. I say thank you to Zondervan, Thomas Nelson and the rest of the publishers who populate my bookshelves and impoverish my wallet. In all these cases I received more than I gave.

Whether this essay gets published or not I say thank you to Logos for giving me the opportunity for reflection on the grace of God which has made it all possible. The hour or so I spent in God’s presence is worth far more than $30 of credits.

Blessed be God the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. And blessed are we who can say that from our hearts.

Submitted by Mark B. Regazzi