Start Where You Are. Expect Something Wonderful: On Being a Student of The Bible

When I was a kid, I loved dot-to-dot puzzles. As I connected the numbered points in sequence, I anticipated a shape revealing itself on the page. Eventually, the connections would reveal something wonderful. It was such a simple joy to experience as a child!

I gave my three-year-old grandson a beginner’s dot-to-dot book for his birthday. He’s learning to draw lines with a marker so the book’s erasable pages will give plenty of practice. As I stuffed it into birthday bag along with a baseball glove and a bat, I thought of how Cade is just beginning a lifetime of connecting dots—of learning, growing, and maturing into a man. 

We all spend our lives connecting dots and coming to greater understanding of many things. We see with the passing of time how all that we go through—our stories—shape us into the people we have become. 

I started taking the Bible seriously when I was a teenager. The first verse I underlined in a Bible was Romans 8:18:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

It seems a heavy verse for a kid, but in it was an affirmation I needed. It affirmed that pain is painful while allowing hope’s assurance to sit beside suffering. The scales had fallen off. I had awaked to pain that is a part of every human story. One day the pain would be eclipsed by glory beyond my imagination. My faith was strengthened.

This morning I sat with my Bible open in my lap like I’ve done most days for over forty years now. The “Big Blue” has wide margins and no “helps” as they say in Christianese. This is the Bible that will see me to the veil. I’ve marked on it’s pages for over 20 years now.

As the years have passed into decades, I realize the more I’ve studied the Bible, the more I understand that it holds a depth of riches beyond my ability to grasp. I’m fully persuaded I will never mine all the treasures of its pages. This realization hasn’t discouraged me; instead, I find myself drawn in again and again, finding more answers and more questions most days. (If you are wondering, questions are good!)

Some days what I study doesn’t seem familiar. On other days, I turn to chapters and verses I’ve digested many, many times. The beauty of studying for so long is now so many dots are connecting. The ah-ha moments come almost daily! What I see is wonderful!

I do not believe this process has been random, these lines connected, meeting me coming and going on the onionskin thin pages of the Big Blue. I see the path marked and noted in various shades of ink. No, these are not haphazard connections. I see that clearly.

This picture of God through his Word that is emerging in my later years has held me as I have endured the pain of grief in recent months. I see how the Holy Spirit has been my Guide as well as my Teacher. As I’ve criss-crossed back and forth from the New Testament to the Old, I see what God has done. The lines have connected creating a prism. The Light shines through the ancient stories and truths as it illuminates the grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Is it no wonder Revelation 4 describes the throne in heaven as having a rainbow around it? The Word of God refracts the Light of the World as He sits enthroned—Jesus, the Word made flesh, worthy above all to receive honor and glory and worship.

No filter, refracted light from a bevel on a mirror to the door frame trim across the room.

There have been seasons in my forty years of seeking God in his word when the Bible has come across to me as dry. The most I could do during those arid times was to show up. What I learned was that as much as God wants to speak to us through the words of the Bible, his priority is always relationship. In times when I was in danger of —or actually—letting the study of God’s Word be more important than the living of God’s Word with Him, He pulled back. He gives revelation when we can receive it. This is a mercy that I now understand with the gift of years.

Studying God’s Word is a discipline and never a duty, a requirement to be checked off a to-do list. The opportunity to sit with the Holy Spirit in God’s written word is an act of sowing to the Spirit. Our hearts are strengthened as we take in the words that give life and we bear fruit in turn. We are blessed to bless others, and more importantly, to bring glory to God. As Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3, “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (ESV)

My encouragement if you are reading my words today and struggling in your relationship to Jesus or his word: Keep showing up! There will never be a time when you can close up the Bible and say, “I’ve got it.” I believe the longer you show up, and the more open you are open to hear and receive God’s revelations revealed, the more it will amaze and humble you that He has not revealed these things to the wise, but to little children (Luke 10: 21-22; Matt. 11:25-30)—people like you and me that have come to know Him as our good, good Father—-those who love a good dot-to-dot puzzle.

In these days when so many are grieving the loss of influence of the church, we can take heart! We still have God’s word and when we study it, it lodges within. It should have our attention and devotion. The Word alive in us sows assurance of God’s faithfulness and care. We can be those who are ready to give an account for the hope that is within us. We can say with confidence, God is faithful. His word will not fail.