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Bible Study

What are the most important words ever written? What is the most meaningful book on the planet? What is the only book that tells us what God has been doing on planet Earth for thousands of years? It's the Bible! That's why Bible Study is important? There are thousands of books and courses out there telling us how to be successful, but they often don't even know what success means. Bible study provides the answers.

Are billionaires who can't even keep one good marriage successful? No, not in the overall sense! They usually do no Bible study at all. Are Hollywood stars that live degenerate lifestyles successful? No, not in their private lives! Bible study is not even on their list of favorite things to do. Real success includes a balance of success in both personal and professional life. Bible study tells us how to be successful in both personal and professional life. But even that is only a temporary success.

More importantly, Bible study tells us how to be permanently successful beyond this life, by overcoming life’s biggest obstacle, death. We may end up being one of this planet’s most successful people in both family and professional life, but that success dies with us unless we are also successful beyond the grave. Bible study will provide the answers to life's most important questions. Who can save us from death? That is only possible through the One who was God with us, the Immanuel, Jesus Christ. We can spend hundreds of dollars on programs and literature that purport to teach us the meaning of life and how to be successful. Usually they are full of empty, meaningless words.

Even some Christian preachers seem to want us to focus more on what they have to say than what God inspired in the pages of the Bible. It seems that too many televangelists especially do not take time for Bible Study. Otherwise their preaching would be much different. Personal Bible study is an important key to discern between good and bad preaching. The most meaningful words that you and I will ever say are when we quote the Bible. They will be around long after all the words we have ever said in our entire lifetimes will have been long forgotten on earth. When a preacher hurries through a quote from the Bible to get to his words, it is obvious to everyone that he thinks that what he has to say is far more important than what God inspired to be written by over 40 authors over 40 generations. Nothing ever written or said in all human history is more important than the Bible and the most successful preachers are those who faithfully teach us what the Bible has to say, rather than those who teach us more meaningless urban legends, myths and wacky fads.

How can people be fed when too many preachers seem only interested in what sells to a materialistic public, or what titilates a worldly audience? Bible study! A lifetime habit of personal Bible study will provide protection from urban legends, heresies and shallow popular religious fads.

I once spent hundreds of dollars on a CD series put out by one of those success gurus who advertise on television. The presenter was super enthusiastic and his hard sell told me that his material was going to give me the answers that I needed for success in life. When I listened to his material I was profoundly disappointed! It was mostly empty-headed fluff and gimmicks. One single Bible Study in the book of Proverbs contained more meat than this very expensive hyped-up success series. One single personal Bible study of a parable of Jesus Christ taught me more about living a full life now and life after death than a thousand theories put forth by success gurus who have neither experienced God, nor pay attention to one of the most important success book ever written. Bible study provides the depth that these hyped up, hollow success books promise but don't deliver.

Preachers often come in two extremes: 1) over-excited preachers teaching very little substance and obviously very little Bible Study in preparing their shallow content and 2) uninteresting but faithful Bible preachers who have great content and yet strangely seem uninspired by what they are preaching. What a sad disappointment! The Bible is the greatest book ever written and Bible study ought to excite us. Preachers who teach God's people about Bible study and whose personal depth of Bible study produces deep and exciting preaching of the greatest book every written is what the Christian church needs.

We need a great army of preachers who will combine the best qualities of the two extremes: great research skills in Bible study providing real content in their sermons PLUS genuine excitement about the fruit of that Bible Study, the greatest message on planet earth today!

Submitted by Ian Grant Spong