Spiritual growth won't be achieved if Christians refuse to study God's Word. But once they do, they have to take things up a notch by putting what they've learned to practice.
But how does one study God's Word? Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church offers a couple of tips. But before reading the Bible, believers need to adopt a willing attitude, he said. "God has so much he wants to show us, but we must be willing to look into his Word with open eyes," he wrote on his website.
Once their hearts and minds are ready, believers would be ready to develop an effective Bible study.
The first step in doing this is learning how to ask the right questions.
"Learning to study the Bible means learning to ask good questions from the text. There's no limit to how many questions you can ask of the Bible, because there's no limit to its wisdom and insight. The deeper you dig, the more gold you'll find," he said.
Next, Warren said people should write down their observations. If people don't write down their observations about the Bible, then they won't be able to study it, he said.
Warren said that true learning begins when Christians apply God's Word. He said this is the ultimate goal of Scripture — to change one's life for the better.
"We never settle for understanding alone. We want to apply the biblical principles to our daily living. All of our Bible study efforts really don't have any value if, in the final analysis, we don't become more like Christ," he said.
He said Christians should study the Bible systematically. They cannot read one passage and jump to another one haphazardly, because doing so will only make them confused. "You can study it systematically by studying it verse-by-verse, book-by-book, topic-by-topic, or theme-by-theme," he suggested. The opposite of that is the old dip-and-skip method, where you just open up the Bible and put a finger down where you want to study."
Lastly, Warren said it would significantly help if Christians read the Bible over and over again. The pastor said that there's always new insight to glean on from God's Word, and the more people read the same passage, the more they'll get out of it.
