Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God –   Matthew 4:4

These are words that I have heard again and again from Christian preachers, friends, and books. The word of God is important, imperative and equally indispensable as food. As a result, most Christians I know have some sort of routine to ensure they have their ‘daily bread’. 

“I wake up at 5 am to study God’s word”

“I read devotionals during my lunch”

“I’m a night owl so when everyone at home is a sleep, I jump on the app and read the bible”

These are all good things and I’m not too sure whether God cares when we read the word. But I do believe God cares about how we engage with his word – after all it is His word. 

Introduction

Pastor Denzil Larbi opened the study, he emphasised how much we need the Holy Spirit to help us when we read God’s word. He said it is so important for Christians to know the Word of God for themselves and not through others. The Spirit is available to all God’s children, He is our Great Teacher and will give us an understanding of the Word of God. It reminded me of when Jesus was teaching some of his followers, He  ‘opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures’ (Luke 24:45).

Workshop

One of the workshop leader, Reverend Ben Twumasi showed us a letter from his post and asked us who do we think sent the letter? Unanimously we said ‘the NHS letter!’ but to our surprise the letter was not from the NHS but a gas bill. We were confused and in some way dissatisfied because what we believed we would find was not there. Our speaker revealed that this is often our approach to God’s word. We pick a book from the bible we consider to be the most important and read it only to find that we do not actually understand what is inside the book. The characters and themes are not only confusing, they are also not always directly relevant to our current situations. It is important that we do not approach God’s word blindly. We should research into the author and the authorial intent before studying God’s word, that way our study would be more fruitful. Find out about the author. For example, did you know that John wrote the Gospel of John so that everyone would believe in who Jesus is? (John 1:6), unlike Mark, Luke and Matthew who wrote their Gospels to show people what Jesus did? This is a perfect book to study if you want to get to the heart of who God is.

We then read through the passage and asked ourselves: What stood out to me? What surprised me? Afterwards we read through a commentary on John 1 that not only addressed our questions but highlighted words and phrases we had not even considered. For example, we noticed that John was baptising people. We thought about the significance of baptism pre-Jesus. In the commentary we learnt that the Jews baptised people who were not ethnically Jewish but wanted to be a part of the nation. Therefore, when John the baptist called for everyone including Jews to be baptised it was extremely offensive. This adds weight to why the Jewish leaders questioned John the Baptist’s authority with great anger.

• Commentaries are an invaluable resource when studying God’s word. 

After the workshop we came together and fed-back on what we had learnt. My favourite part of that discussion was when we explored the importance of application. Is application necessary? Will there always be an application after bible study? We were reminded again of the importance of prayer. When we began our study we asked the Holy Spirit for help and so we should expect the Holy Spirit to lead us in our application. Perhaps He will lead us to repent? To praise Him? To go and speak to someone? Be expectant. 

• The Holy Spirit will help you apply what you have learnt. 

I’m really excited to delve into God’s word for myself. There are a lot of things I do not know but I am now more confident in how to approach studying God’s word. This workshop also showed me how much fun it is to study the Word with other people!