WordPoints

In preparing today’s reading from “Reaching Forward” to be sent out by email, I was reminded that on that page I had quoted Thomas Kinkade. Kinkade has been known for his paintings, but he has also written some great books, from which I have profited immensely. In today’s reading, I quote him as saying, “The human soul hungers for beauty — to experience beauty, and to create beauty — just as powerfully as our bodies hunger for food. Our souls wither when they are beauty-deprived.” I believe that to be true, and I believe Kinkade said it very well.

The problem is that Kinkade has, apparently, departed from his earlier principles and convictions. At least he seems to have been living inconsistently with those convictions, if the news reports are true. As I prepared today’s reading, I had to ask myself, “Do I still quote Kinkade, now that he has dishonored the truths that he used to be known for?”

Well, if I removed the quotation from Kinkade because, as one person said, “he has turned out to be a hypocrite,” I would also have to remove any quotations from Solomon, who became a wicked man and departed from his earlier way of life much more dramatically than Thomas Kinkade.

As a hopeful person, I cherish the thought that Solomon may have returned to God before he died, and likewise, I have chosen not to give up on Thomas Kinkade just because his foot has slipped. I hope that he will repent of whatever wrongdoings he has gotten himself involved in.

But here is what I have decided: the truth is still the truth, even if someone has quit living it. And if someone spoke a truth in a particularly apt way, then those words still stand, even if the messenger has fallen. The beauty and power of the truth do not depend on the personal faithfulness — or the eternal salvation — of the messenger.

And come to think of it, I am mighty glad it’s that way. Aren’t you?

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

Most of us would agree that Bible study is important. We simply don’t study the Bible as much as we ought to. But even when we do study, we often fail to get all that we should from the text.

Perhaps, as busy people, we underestimate the need for preparation. What about you? If you’ve increased the “quantity” of your Bible study, but haven’t seen good results, perhaps you need to work on the “quality” of your study. There is, after all, much to be said for learning HOW to study the Bible.

Here are ten suggestions that will help you get more out of the time you spend studying God’s word. And if you think you’ve advanced to the point where you don’t need these tips, just ask yourself how often you really APPLY these to your own study. Be honest!

1. Read larger sections. We tend to get bogged down in the details of Bible study to such an extent that we lose the bigger picture. There is much to be gained from backing up and reading larger portions of the Bible at one time. Whenever possible, we need to read an entire book at one sitting, especially the letters in the New Testament which were meant to be read just as we today read a letter that we receive from a friend.
2. Use multiple translations. Regardless of which translation you use regularly, get several of the better translations and compare these as you study. When it comes to translations, there is safety in numbers. What is unclear in one translation is often clear in another.
3. Look up unfamiliar words. It’s amazing how many people will come across words they don’t know in the Bible and never make any effort to find out what they mean. Keep an English dictionary and a Bible dictionary handy, and use them every time you need to. God’s word is too important not to know what the words mean.
4. Outline the books. You don’t have to do the kind of detailed outlines your teachers made you do in school. Just learn to see the major sections of each book and how they fit together.
5. Engage all three parts of the mind: INTELLECT, EMOTIONS, and WILL. God gave us all three parts of our mind, and we need to use them all. When you study, bring your emotions and your will to the aid of your intellect. Having learned intellectually what God says, feel emotionally as you ought to feel about it and then use you will to do what you ought to do about it!
6. Study to learn more than what the text does not say. We certainly need to be able to refute false doctrine. But we need to know more about each passage than what it does NOT say. The question is: what DOES it say? And especially, what does it say to ME? What is God saying that I myself need to hear?
7. Look for three things: INFORMATION, INTERPRETATION, and APPLICATION. When we study, we need to get not only the “information” (what it says) and the “interpretation” (what it means), we also need to look for “application” (how we can use what we’ve learned).
8. Bathe your study in prayer. Prayer is the Number One thing we can do to help ourselves in any endeavor, including Bible study. Without a prayerful attitude, Bible study can actually be dangerous. So pray before you study, while you study, and after you study.
9. Be patient. Much of what we need to learn takes time. We must be willing to go over the text again and again and again. Patient repetition, perhaps stretching over many years, is what will yield substantial results. Don’t give up. Just go over the text carefully, put it away, and then go over it again later. Keep doing this for the rest of your life.
10. Be honest and courageous. When we study God’s word, we must strive to lay aside our preferences and preconceived ideas, and be willing to LEARN whatever the text actually says. And having done that, we then need to have the courage to DO what we should about it.

The ability to get quality results in Bible study is not an inborn trait — it is something that can be learned. And the truth is, most of us have a lot to learn about even the simplest aspects of searching the Scriptures; we’re hardly more than children in our study skills. Let’s decide to do better. Which of these ten tips can you make the best use of?

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

I recently talked with a young woman who is as intensely focused on her career goal as anybody I’ve ever met. She has a very specific objective (quite big), and she is pursuing the accomplishment of that goal with intelligence, skill, passion, commitment, and hard work. “I am GOING to do this,” she said, and there was not a trace of doubt in either her voice or the look in her eyes. I’ve never seen a person with more “drive.”

This young woman has put all of her eggs in this one earthly basket. She has invested so much of herself in this goal that if she should not make it, I wonder if she could handle it emotionally. When I asked her about that, she laughed. “I don’t consider failure a possibility,” she said. “Contingency plans are for wimps.”

As a Christian, I couldn’t help but think of James 4:13-15: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’”

Those of us who are familiar with that verse try to have a better attitude about our earthly plans than this young woman, don’t we? We’ve trained ourselves to say “If the Lord wills” at the end of any sentence that contains a statement of our plans. But do we realize what we are saying? Do we really believe that our plans are contingent on the Lord’s will?

I am studying Ecclesiastes right now in my private Bible study, and I have been more strongly impressed than ever before with Solomon’s realistic admission that we are not in control of what happens in this world. We don’t KNOW what is going to happen, and we can’t CONTROL what happens. To try to do either one — know the future or control it — is as futile as trying to “shepherd the wind.”

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make plans or that we shouldn’t pursue our plans enthusiastically. But it does mean that after we’ve done everything we are capable of doing, our plans still may not materialize. Even when we’ve done everything exactly right, the Lord may keep us from reaching our objective. He may have other (and better) plans.

Anytime you and I reach a goal that we’ve been pursuing and things turn out as we wanted them to, that only happened because God ALLOWED it to happen! Nothing happens except by the Lord’s permission, and in our case, He might just as easily have withheld His permission. We could have done all the same things and if He had chosen to do so, God could have brought about a very different result.

So let’s understand that our plans really are CONTINGENT on whether the Lord allows us to complete them, and on those occasions when we HAVE completed them, let’s be very careful in talking about what “we” did. The truth of the matter is, we reached the result ONLY BECAUSE THE LORD ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN!

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

In Ecclesiastes 1:2, we come face to face with a bold statement: “VANITY OF VANITIES, ALL IS VANITY.” What does this mean?

Think first about Paul’s statement in Romans 8:20: “For the creation was subjected to FUTILITY, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in HOPE.”

Next, consider the CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL as they are described in Genesis 3:14-21. In the Garden of Eden, there would have been nothing “futile” about Adam and Eve’s existence, but outside of Eden things would be very different: they would no longer be living in an environment where their desires could be fully satisfied. The LIMITATIONS that God placed on the world outside of Eden meant that, as long as the world remained, human beings would live out their earthly lives in FRUSTRATION, no longer able to get what they needed from this world or accomplish anything of lasting importance here.

In other words, our NATURE and NEEDS have not changed since the Garden of Eden, but our ENVIRONMENT has! God has changed the world such that (no matter what we own or enjoy or accomplish) this world will no longer fully give us what we try to get from it: the satisfaction of our God-created needs. As long as we live here, we have no choice but to endure lives that are to a great extent UNFULFILLED. The decision that every human being must make, therefore, is how to DEAL with that lack of satisfaction, and the decision we make will either lead us back to God or lead us farther away from Him.

In story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9, we have an early example of mankind trying to GET AROUND the futility to which God had subjected the creation. These people were saying, “We refuse to accept that our accomplishments are limited; we will solve our problems, satisfy ourselves, and build an empire that will LAST.” But God said, “No, you won’t. I have subjected the world to futility, and you are not going to change that.”

I’m afraid things haven’t changed much since the early chapters of Genesis. Like the Babel-builders, we also place our confidence in human “progress.” But we (Christians as well as unbelievers) live outside of Eden just as they did, and the things that we can’t do far outnumber the things that we can. Despite our “Yes we can!” attitude, God is saying “No you can’t. I will not permit you to iron every wrinkle out of your lives in this world. When Adam and Eve sinned, I subjected this world to futility, and there is nothing you can do to take the frustration out of it. I want you to ACCEPT the frustration of this world.”

So there is no use denying it: LIFE OUTSIDE OF EDEN IS A FRUSTRATING, DISSATISFYING BUSINESS. God intends it to be that way; His desire is that this kind of world will turn us back in His direction. So what about you? I’m talking to Christians here, not non-Christians. If you are a Christian, have YOU accepted the “vanity” of the things YOU cherish in this world? Honestly now, have you? If you haven’t, I suggest that you get busy working on it.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com