by Joel Hilliker

Have you actually gotten to know your Bible? I mean really gotten to know it? Or is it still sort of mysterious to you? Do you find it hard to understand? Maybe you just can’t motivate yourself to crack it open? But you know you should—and you want to. Could it be, in part, simply because you don’t know how?

You could be right on the verge. Standing on the edge of everything. About to plunge into the awesome depth that is God’s Word in print: the Holy Bible. And once you fall in love with God and studying what He says, it will amaze you how much information is packed into the Bible—immediately relevant to your life, each and every day! After all, it is the very mind of our Creator—and there is no end to the depth you can search out in it!

The basis for Philadelphia Youth Camp, Herbert W. Armstrong College, Sabbath services, holy days, our daily lives, almost everything we do, is the Bible. But direct instruction on how to actually study it is rare.

Here are some important basic principles of how to study your Bible.

Attitude Is Everything

The very first thing, before you even sit down to Bible study, is to check your attitude! Our attitudes must be right if we’re really going to benefit from our study.

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” 2 Timothy 3:16 says. So be ready; the Bible is going to reprove you and correct you. It will show you where you are wrong! “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Being pierced by a sword is not a comfortable process! Generally, when we are wrong, we want to cover it up—that’s our human nature. But the Bible brings those problems and mistakes out into the open and forces us to look at them. If we turn away from that, God will close our minds to the truth in the Bible!

When I went to college, some “Christians” there handed out free Bibles. But these Bibles only included Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament—they cut out 64 books from the Old Testament! Picking and choosing, not reading books that might correct you, shows you don’t really want to get to know God. We can’t study God’s Word à la carte!

There are a lot of people who study their Bibles. Men and women have written exhaustive commentaries on just about every verse in the Book! But they oftentimes don’t yield to what it actually says, and let it change their thinking, their choices, their actions, who they are. And they rely on their own reasoning to understand what it means, instead of admitting that they don’t know the way and must rely on God, His revelation, and His Spirit.

And remember, Acts 5:32 says that God gives that Spirit to those who obey Him.

Do These Two Things

There are two specific aspects of your attitude that you must have right or you will not understand the Bible. You have to repent. And you have to believe. To say that we must repent before we can understand the Bible means that we really have to submit to God’s will, as He reveals it in the His Word. Just accept it and just do it—no matter what.

These two prerequisites come from the Bible, of course. John 7:16-17 record Jesus saying that if we will do the Father’s will, we will know God’s doctrine. To understand the Bible, you must just submit to what it says and just believe what you read and accept the plain meaning. Do not try to interpret it to mean something it does not say! After all, the Bible interprets itself. And it does not contradict itself. You just have to read it with an open, submissive attitude.

The world is full of people who use Jesus’s name, but who totally ignore what He taught in His Word because it doesn’t fit with what they like to think!

Don’t think that you are immune from this same attitude. Don’t become complacent and stop allowing the Bible to cut you like a sword. That’s ignoring God’s Spirit and relying on your human nature.

Always, always remember to have a repentant and believing attitude when you sit down to Bible study. You will only understand it if you are receptive to the reproof and correction God has in it for you. And God will only keep revealing His truth to us as long as we are responding to what He reveals.

One Last Thing

Finally, we must be ready to act on the knowledge we learn! Psalm 111:10 says that we have a good understanding if we do what God commands—if we act on what He says! Knowledge just for knowledge’s sake isn’t really going to help you.

We absolutely must have this proper foundation in place within ourselves when we sit down in front of our Bibles. Then, watch the three floodgates of knowledge, inspiration and happiness fly open!