Video Transcript: Studying Logically

David - In the last lesson, we were talking about the importance of prayerful  dependence on the spirit. And when we come to the Word of God and so, so  now to pick up from that, so after time, on your knees even before the Lord  saying, Lord, help us to understand this word, and you sit back out, okay? Then  you open up the word. And there's a whole process for setting this word that,  that we need to be responsible in. I think one of the most common things that  sometimes people do, especially with two people, or three or four or five or small group, people, they'll they'll read a pass description and say, Okay, well, what  does this mean to you? What does this mean to you? Or what does this mean to you as if it has all these kinds of different meanings? Now, Scripture definitely  has different applications, how it plays out in our lives. But Scripture has a plain  meaning like a text means something. And it doesn't mean something today that it didn't mean 2000 years ago when it was written. And so we really got to be  responsible to say, Okay, what does this text mean, when it was written to  people in the first century, and then we kind of kind of picture like building a  bridge, okay, we understand what it means in their context. And we begin to  build a bridge and say, Okay, now how does this apply in our context today? But, but that takes work, and we can't be intellectually lazy in that picture.  

Francis - Yeah, because a lot of times people almost separated, like, well, that's  not very spiritual, and then sit there and dig in and study it, you know, like a  textbook intellectually. But I would argue that because I, you know, I think it's an  act of worship, to have so much reverence for his word that you're going to  study it, and not to just think of it, it's easy to get into school mentality, like, oh,  it's work, it's work. It's work rather than thinking, No, this is an act of worship.  God tells me to love him with all my heart, soul and my mind is an act of worship loving God, I'm going to use this mind, you've given me that to work hard, we're  commanded to, you know, we're commanded to study to show ourselves  approved, people that don't need to be ashamed, because because we've  worked,  

David - yeah, we just rightly dividing the And just to point out the opposite. If we  don't do that work, this is dishonouring, to God to take his word. And to skew it  to mean things. And it's not it never was intended to mean because, and that's a dangerous tendency that we have the the people you're discipling have, there's  always a tendency to take the word of God, twist it, to conform to what feels  more comfortable to us, to what we kind of adjust the Word of God to our  preferences, or our traditions or our lifestyles, and that is a dangerous thing to  do. So we've got to continually say, Alright, how can I adjust my preferences and my lifestyles and my traditions to the word instead of the opposite, and this  does, to not do that is to dishonor God to do that is to bring great glory. 

Francis - And again, this lesson requires you to know your disciple to go okay is  he or she the type of person who maybe is lazy and doesn't want to put the time  in so comes up with excuses. And wow, that's not very spiritual, you know, or is,  is your disciple more nuts and bolts, and all they want to do is just study it  

intellectually, and they're not leaving any room for the spirit. And there's there  not that urgency that we talked about in the last lesson of I need the Spirit and,  and so it's really one of those things where you've got to know the person and  know what they need. And, again, it may be that they're so new and studying the Word of God, that you may want to take a break and go, you know, let's go  through a Bible study methods book. You know, there's a lot of great books out  there that just help you understand, just from the work aspect, the intellectual  aspect, how do I understand the history behind this book and get a good study  Bible or something, to help understand the purpose and when the author wrote  it, and, and how to interpret the Bible correctly.  

David - This is so key in making disciples, for going to teach people to obey  everything Christ has commanded us, then we need to teach people to be able  to open this book, on their own in dependence on the spirit, ask questions and  understand this word. They can't always to be dependent on that there's a place  obviously, for teachers in the church, but they can't always be dependent on  somebody else. In order to really understand this word on a daily basis. They  need to be able to self feed in a sense, again, all in dependence on the spirit.  And so you're really in teaching them to study the Bible, that that's so key, you're equipping them, to know God to love God to worship God to be able to then do  that in other people's lives, teach other people how to study the Bible. And so  there's a there's a beautiful blend between last last lesson in this lesson  prayerfully obediently, logically, wisely studying the Word and so look for ways to model that and to equip the person that you're leading to be able to model that  for other people as well