The Missing Ingredient

 

How do you treat Scripture? How do you read the inspired, authoritative and holy Word of God? When you open its pages and read verse after verse, chapter after chapter, book after book, how do you see it?

Do you perhaps treat it like a textbook to work your way through or is it instead a treasure to search out?

If you read the Bible like a textbook, it may explain why it feels laborious, boring and dry at times. As tasteless as cardboard. The words have no meaning; knowledge is gained but wisdom is not.

Do you know what is missing in many Christians’ lives when it comes to their reading of the Word of God? The missing ingredient may very well be not the time needed to read it, but curiosity!

We need to be more curious about the Bible and the treasures that lie beneath just a surface reading. The Bible is a book of hidden treasure. Its pages are filled with wisdom, comfort, truth, mercy, justice, grace, instruction, correction. But if we are reading our Bibles like we would read a textbook, we won’t find the gold that lies within.

The Hebrew people have a word for their searching of the Scriptures. It is called midrash. It has the idea of seeking out or inquiring deeply. Investigating, exploring and studying.

We need to approach Scripture with the same relentless curiosity. It’s the kind of searching that has you coming back again and again, always finding something new.

Now, don’t get mixed up with what I’m saying. There is no new revelation to be had. The canon of Scripture is complete, and we will ‘technically’ not find anything new in it, but as we search diligently, we will uncover truths that we haven’t seen before. Passages we didn’t realise were in the Bible will come to light. Promises we were unaware of will jump off the page at us. But this will only happen as we read our Bibles consistently, and with a heart that is seeking, searching and teachable.

The missing ingredient to make Bible study more irresistible is not more time. It is more curiosity.

Let me break this down a little more for you.

Think about one of your favourite hobbies. If you’re anything like me, you have a few to choose from. Have you got one in mind?

Right. With this hobby, do you study it once and then move on? No. Not if you are truly interested in it, you don’t.

You revisit it. You research it. You study it. You learn about it. You watch tutorials on it. You practice it. You share your discoveries with others that love it too. You connect with people with like passions for that hobby.

And that is what true curiosity is all about.

When it comes to God’s Word, there is always more to learn. Ask any Pastor or veteran Christian who has any humility about them. They will tell you honestly that they are always learning new things from God’s Word that they didn’t know before. They are regularly finding treasures in the pages of Scripture.

They believe the promise found in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 2:1-7 KJV - My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.

My husband is an avid treasure hunter. Whether it’s swinging a metal detector over a local showground or park searching for coins or picking over rocks in a dry creek bed looking for a particular gemstone. He’s always on the hunt for a treasure. And his passion has spread to most of his family and we all, the grandkids included, are now treasure hunters always on the lookout for a great find. We search diligently, hoping to find that ‘pearl of great price’. (Matthew 13)

When we bring that analogy over to the Bible, the question isn’t whether the Word of God holds deeper treasures. It’s whether we are willing to take the time to search them out.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. It doesn’t take hours of study! What? No. It is not long hours, head down, nose in the books, hour after hour. (Although that would be ideal)

It is a consistent curiosity.

It’s a heart that is humble, teachable and always eager to dig deeper, searching for the meaning, the understanding, the correct interpretation. Never content to just read casually.

You know those times when you sit down to read a Psalm or two, and find yourself stuck on the third verse, because you came across a word that didn’t seem to fit the context, which then lead you to looking into the meaning of the word, and then on to a commentary to help make sense of it, which then had you searching cross references and before you know it, you’re waist deep in a treasure box you never saw coming.

The Bible will become alive to you when you stop just trying to get through it and let it get through you.

One old preacher put it so well when he said, “What makes the difference is not how many times you have been through the Bible, but how many times and how thoroughly the Bible has been through you.”

What if you approached just one verse this week with a treasure hunters’ persistence instead of a ‘homework obligation’ mentality?

What if instead of just reading through your chapter a day, you took the time to slow down and dig a little deeper? What if you looked at each word in the verse, studied its context, its author, its time in history, its cultural significance, its true meaning and interpretation? Do you think that maybe your curiosity could unearth a treasure worth more than gold?

It’s worth a shot! The Bible comes with a promise to reward those who diligently study it and its author.

Hebrews 11:6 KJV - But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Gold is a precious and rare commodity. It’s not easy to find. You have to spend a significant amount of time and effort searching for it and extracting it.

Gold does you no practical good unless you work it out or the mine or the creek or the soil or the rock.

And so it is with the Word of God. We need to work it out. We need to read it. Study it.

Just like gold will do us no good unless we dig it out of the ground, the Bible will do us no good unless we dig into it and apply it and most importantly, obey it!

We are blessed with so many resources at our fingertips in the age we live in, that we really have no excuse for not becoming treasure hunters of God’s Word.

I dare you to become an avid student of the Word. To make Bible study a new favourite hobby. To research, to discover, to learn, to love and to share.

Ask God to open your eyes and heart so that you will have understanding and knowledge and wisdom.

Success begins with following God’s Word. But we can’t follow God’s Word if we don’t know it. And we won’t know God’s Word if we don’t read it. And we won’t find the treasures it holds unless we read it with a relentless curiosity!

May we say along with the Psalmist,

Psalm 119:18 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

Stop reading it like a textbook and 

read it for the book it is.

The inspired, living Word of God!