Digging In

Have you ever seen Beth Moore teach the Word?  Or Priscilla Shirer?  Jennie Allen? Matt Chandler?  Francis Chan? Buddy Young?  

Their love for the Word is contagious and invigorating.  It makes me jealous.  I want to love the Word like that.  I need to love the Word like that.  It is evident that is what gives them life, energy, hope.  It's what they cling to when the world seems to be crumbling around them.

I sit and watch them teach the Word, and I just want to learn from them.  I want to know how they know all the intricacies of the Word.  It's not just that they know the Word, it's that they know the author.  They know who He is, his character.  They know who they are in relation to him.  They know the great debt that has been paid for them.  They know the abundant life that He gives.

I want that.

A few months ago, I realized the only way I was going to be able to do that was that I was going to find a mentor to teach me how to do this well.  A place to discuss the things I was learning.  I needed someone who would point me in the right direction and show me resources.  I needed someone to challenge me.

I figured, due to the magnitude of their ministries, Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer, and Jennie Allen were out of the question...for now.  I went back to the place I learned the most about the Word.  I called my college ministry director.  He graciously accepted to mentor me in studying the Word.  We meet each week in the midst of the several others he is discipling.

We are digging in.  I decided that I wanted to walk through John, and that was three weeks ago.  I've made it as far as the first verse, and I'm not sad about it.  I have dug deep.  We have explored what a single verse means, how it is interwoven throughout all the rest of the Bible, and what it means for our lives.  I have been challenged, and on many occasions, my brain has hurt, but I am beginning to love the Word deeper than the surface.  

God's Word is deep and intricate.  There is not a place where we don't find Him redeeming us.  There is not a place where He hasn't done something incredible for His people.  Each and every word in the Bible matters.  You can't take just a verse here and there and completely get it.  You have to dig. 

It's about asking questions.  God is big enough to handle them, and he gives us answers.  It's about pulling away the layers of idioms, traditions, and culture.  It's about connecting the dots and figuring out what that means for us today.  We better understand when our questions are answered and we explore a new culture, a new language, and apply those things to our lives.  It's not just about reading and taking parts and pieces here.  We have to be careful not to take the scriptures out of context and use it like a bag of trail mix.  Something gets lost in translation.  We miss the point.

As you dig in to the Word, we can't help but take the entire Word into consideration.  We travel throughout it and connect the dots.  We start making sense of things that used to be so blurry and hidden from us.  We have a better understanding of who God is and who we are in him.  We start digging and pressing into the Savior. You begin to know Him - intimately, and that is the treasure.  Let's find our treasure as we dig in.