I am not your most learned person when it comes to the Bible. Its been a process over time just to get me back reading this doctrine. I guess my own experiences from listening to others has kept me away from schooling myself on what message the bible has to say. Even today when i speak of the bible i say it with hesitance because I am afraid what others maybe thinking and because i dont have the full knowledge and understanding of the pages within. The progression to educate myself is moving forward and I am finding these clues and insights in the words that are opening this chained mindset i used to have. Brimstone, fire, hell, condemnation and fear were all apart of my visual conception towards the bible. My exposure growing up wasnt always the truth that is within the words. Man and the world has a way of creating their own spin on defining the messages and words inside the bible. Its definetly not something you pick up every few months and start to read again. It needs to be a daily read so the information can start to sink in. Like anything in life you need to practice and review over and over again until you begin to understand and see results.
Recently I purchased "The Sermon on the Mount" by Emmet Fox which was written in 1938, and if ever there was a poor mans guide to unlock the barricades and falsities we have constructed about the Bible, this is it. It has inspired me to look deeper into myself and reevaluate my thought process. I realize now i have allowed the world and all its opinions lead me into a variety of mindless and deceptive thought patterns. My excitement to learn and read the content of the bible is at a higher level now. It has become my escape when life is turning up the heat and trying to navigate me from peace.
In Emmet Fox's Sermon on the Mount there is true awakings where you will say yes i see, i get it. You will understand that how we think, what we think is the creation of the lives we live. There are many parts to this book that i could refer to but i will leave one that stood out for me today.
"With a new difficulty of any kind, it is the reception that you give it mentally, and the attitude that you adopt towards it in your own thought, that completely determine its effect upon you. That is what matters. What matters to you, truly, is not people or things or conditions in themselves, but the thoughts and beliefs that you hold concerning them. It is not the conduct of others, but your own thoughts that make or mar you. You write your own history for tomorrow and for next year by the thoughts that you entertain today. You mold your own life destiny day by day, entirely by the manner in which you react mentally to experience as it comes. Right reaction is the supreme art of life, and Jesus compresssed the secret of that art into a sentence when he said: Resist not evil."
A very informative article on Bible study. Basically, the Bible says, "But when He the Spirit of Truth comes He will guide you into all truth"
(John 16:13) This is the first and most important fact of Bible study, without the Holy Spirit, there will just be a "learning" but no understanding. To receive the Holy Spirit one must receive Jesus Christ verbally and spiritually and in faith.(John 14:6, John 3:16, John 1:12).
Secondly, there is the need for prayer and meditation before study, to ask for spiritual guidance and revelation from God. This revelation comes from reading the "rhema" word or the deeper insight for the believer at that moment. The literal word or "Logos" can be read as is, but the meaning behind it is the rhema.
Thirdly, a concordance, study guide (booklet or devotional book) plus a journal will help the student to make his Bible study complete.
Keeping a journal helps because the student can jot down the Scripture that makes an impact on him that day, and he can write his own thoughts about it, and how it can apply to his situations for that day.
I have not come across this book Emmet Fox's "The Sermon on the Mount"
as a basis to guide in Bible study, and It sound to me a humanistic approach considering his view "you mold your own life and destiny day by day, entirely by the manner in which you react mentally to experience as it comes." Studying the Word of God requires communication with Him and not self-education. And the last part, God said "Resist the Devil, and He will flee from you." (James 4:7)
If we "Resist not evil" that means we will be evil too.
Cynthia Baello