I grew up in the heyday of Pharoah-Pharoah, whole milk gallon challenge, attraction-based Youth Ministry.  When I think back on that season in my life I’m bombarded by a onslaught of memories from events and trips, many of which had an immense impact on my life, but surprisingly few of them involve the actual study of God’s Word.  I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had with people over the past few years that end with “I never knew that was in the Bible!”  

This is not just sad, it’s suck-tastic.  It’s been throughout the course of conversations like these that God has stirred up a passion in me for stressing the importance of a foundation of studying scripture.  I have found that while some churches are doing this well, for a large part the landscape of evangelical churches have made a gross and tragic error in not teaching their people HOW to study scripture.  They might supply Bibles and instruct their people to read it, but there seems to have be little to no thought as to developing systems of teaching new believers the practical, profound and necessary implications of a life spent feasting on the Word of God. Isn’t this a huge part of discipleship? Making disciples is a pretty important command isn’t it?  Where are all the series on the necessity of feasting on and delighting in God’s Word?  Where are the songs that passionately sing of loving the Law of the Lord and meditating on it day and night?  Where is the small group curriculum that holds up studies of theology, doctrine, and hermeneutics over the increasingly popular self-help topical ones?  

I really wish I had seen more from the leadership of the church I grew up in the area of developing systems for teaching students and new believers how to rightfully handle the Word of God.  AGAIN, there are many churches who extremely diligent and faithful to the discipling of their people, but unfortunately there are also so many more who are not.  

I have recently begun a series with our students where we are combing through some of the foundational components to studying scripture. Notice I didn’t say reading. That was intentional.  The divinely inspired words of Almighty God were not meant to be skimmed and scanned like you would your twitter feed or favorite blog.  They were meant to be studied, consumed, meditated on, and put into practice.  I want to instill this in our students.  I want to continually stress the gift that we have in the Bible.  God speaks to us in His Word.  That should be profound enough but in His grace God went even further to also use it to encourage, convict, call to obedience, call to repent, and reveal who He is and how He has designed the creative order to work.  Even that description isn’t exhaustive.  I could literally write for months on the treasure that God’s Word is for believers.

Do you delight in God’s Word?

Or is it in it’s more permanent location? (your car, coffee table, underneath your latest issue of WIRED…)