Obstacles to Effective Bible Study
You may wonder at this title – effective Bible study. Isn’t all Bible study effective? Well, to a certain extent, yes. But also no. We would all stop every now and then at work and ask ourselves what the goal or objective is for our activities, and then if we have reached or are moving to obtain the goal. Why wouldn’t we also do so with Bible study. So to determine the efficacy of Bible study, we need to start with the objective.
Objective of Bible Study
We study our Bibles to know and love God, thereby becoming more like Christ. Ephesians 3:16-19 says, ‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
We know the love, at least in some small part, when we come to Christ. We grow in our knowledge of him and of his love for us, and that love changes us. We are conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) through this knowledge, its indwelling. The only way for all this to occur is for us to spend time with God: in prayer and his word. This takes us back to the question of how effective our time in the word is.
Are we effective in our studies?
To understand if we are effective, we then need to ask ourselves if we know God more now than before, if we love him more, and if we have changed and become more like Christ. Again similar to work, this evaluation may be at regular intervals or following a specific study.
It may be useful to ask more specifically, what we have learned about God and how we have changed. Ideally, learning about God and spending time with him will increase our love of him, however it may be that a study confuses us or opens more questions and doubt – so we need to dig in and address those in order to be effective. We also hope to see that we have grown more Christlike following study, however life circumstances or biblical misunderstandings and doubts may also cause us to harden our hearts.
Effective study can be hindered by various obstacles, including only increasing knowledge, having an idol, or having a hardened heart.
Obstacle: Increase knowledge
At times, each of us may have studied the Bible simply because we know we must. We may also study the Bible to demonstrate that we ‘know’ it, as trivia to be quoted at the right moment. We may indeed increase our knowledge by doing so, but if we do not ponder the Word in our hearts, it cannot change us. Though we have the objective to know God, only knowing him without the subsequent love and change, we are like the resounding gong of 1 Corinthians 13:1.
Obstacle: An idol
This may seem obvious, if we have an idol we will not grow in love and Christlikeness. But I think we often struggle to identify an idol when we study the Bible; it’s as if the act of study fools our brains into thinking that God is the focus instead of something else.
If we find that we study what we already believe or we use the Bible to gain something else, we need to check our study. In other words, if we use the Bible to defend our choices or to exert control over others, we may have an idol of winning battles or staying the course we are on. Instead, God challenges us constantly, that is how we change.
Another example of an idol is when we limit God or have a mistaken idea of who he is. If we believe that he is a rule-maker and rule-enforcer we may have the idol that God doesn’t want us to have fun or enjoy life. Then we read the Bible with that filter and miss the words of life and joy.
Another limiting of God that we may do is clinging to false idols, such as worry and tomorrow, doing instead of being, or things instead of relationship. The worldly way, and very tempting way to deal with things is to fret; we don’t trust God in all, maybe in part. Many of us also keep busy for God, instead of being still with him and working with him, leaving no time to know and love him, let alone be more like him. The last is valuing things over relationships, especially our relationship with God. It is sometimes easier to focus on the physical or material goals and not the love goal. All these can make effective Bible study nearly impossible.
Obstacle: Hardened Heart
Hardened hearts come to study the Bible when we have been hurt or let down. Our own pain can be one of the biggest issues in knowing and loving Christ. It may be a friend or family member who has hurt us, it may be the church itself. Our natural response to pain is closure, to God, to friends, to everyone.
We may also pray for things we want and when they do not come or do not come on our time schedule, we turn away from God. Out of habit we may continue to study the Bible, or at least read it, but our hearts become disconnected from the words.
Destroying Obstacles
Each of these obstacles may lead us to have head knowledge of God, but not heart knowledge, and certainly not change. The antidote to these hindrances is unfortunately not easy, but is simple. One is to read the word and do it, carrying out the ‘law that give freedom … will be blessed’ (James 1:22-25). The second is to prepare our hearts to hear from God, the truth of his word, eliminating all filters.
The word of God can and will work in our hearts when we ask. As Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, ‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.’ God will work with us, and this brings us to the second point about spending time with God: prayer.
Our sincere prayer to have effective Bible study, knowing and loving him more that we may be confirmed to his Son, will be answered. God yearns to draw near to us and will certainly respond to your search for him. Lean into his promise: seek him and you will find him (Deut. 4:29, Jer. 29:13, Act. 17:27, Prov. 8:17, 35).
