More Than Doing: Categories for Applying God’s Word
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Read Part 2.
What Am I Supposed to Do with This?
“Why is our time in God’s Word not as life-transformative as it should be?”
After a few moments of silence, a couple of folks in my Bible study class replied. “I’m too easily distracted… My mind wanders… I’m not consistent… My kids wake up early and they need me right away.” These are, of course, common reasons why we struggle with Bible reading. No doubt we all can resonate with these answers. Especially moms with young kiddos! But one response in particular stood out to me. A new believer who recently started reading the Bible said, “Sometimes, I just don’t know what to do with what I’m reading. I’ve been going through the book of Judges in my devotions, and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to apply this.”
In her response, this dear sister affirmed a simple but important truth: God’s Word was meant to be applied. Reading, hearing, or talking about the Bible is not enough. We must apply God’s truth to the trenches of life. Without application, there will never be transformation (James 1:22-25).
Although my friend rightly understood the importance of applying the Scriptures, she also expressed a common misunderstanding when it comes to Bible application. Most people think of applying God’s Word almost exclusively in terms of doing. “This is what the Bible says. Therefore, I need to do it.” Obviously, we need to do what the Bible says. Obedience is essential to the Christian life. No Bible-believing Christian would question that. But how do we do Bible texts like those found in the book of Judges? How do we do narratives, historical accounts, chronologies, prophetic literature, or Old Testament laws written for the people of Israel? How do we apply God’s Word when there’s nothing in the passage for us to do?
Categories for Applying God’s Word
Bible application is far more than doing. I have found the following categories helpful in applying God’s Word to daily life:
Thinking
Mark Noll famously stated, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Sadly, rooted thinking, even within the church, has fallen on hard times. We’re more concerned with how we feel than how we think. The Bible, however, makes it clear that renewing our mind is indispensable to growing in grace (Ro. 12:1-2; Eph. 4:22-24). God’s Word provides us a worldview that enables us to see life from a Godward perspective. We may not be able to do a lot in a book like Judges, but there are weighty truths about God, man, and our need for a Righteous King that have profound implications for how we think and live as the people of God.
As we read God’s Word, we should ask ourselves:
How do the truths of this passage shape the way I think about God, myself, and life in a sin-cursed world?
Feeling
Biblical truths that capture the mind inevitably shape the heart. The Scriptures not only change our thinking, but our affections as well. We can’t read the Psalms and ignore the fact that God’s Word touches the full gauntlet of human emotions. Jesus Himself rightly understood that the truths of God’s Word fuel God-glorifying joy (John 15:11). How can we not be moved when we read and contemplate the glories of God’s love for us in Christ?
As we read God’s Word, we should ask ourselves:
How do the truths of this text inspire greater gratitude, love, humility, and joy in Christ?
Living
James states, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (1:22). The truths of Scripture are not merely to be admired, but actually applied to the nitty gritty of everyday life. God’s Word should transform our values, priorities, pursuits, passions, and decisions. Applying God’s Word impacts what we do with our time, talents, and treasures. There’s no area of life that should not be submitted to and transformed by the Scriptures.
As we read God’s Word, we should ask ourselves:
What attitudes and actions need to change because of the truths I’ve studied from this passage?
Praying
The Bible should fuel our prayer lives. In his book on prayer, Tim Keller notes, “Our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. [We] speak only to the degree we are spoken to… The wedding of the Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God” (55, 56).
Godly saints throughout the centuries have recognized the power of praying the Scriptures. When asked what the secret was to his fruitful prayer life, George Muller responded,
“My practice [in the early days of his Christian life] had been to give myself to prayer after having dressed the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditation, my heart might be brought into experimental, communion with the Lord…
The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give [myself] to prayer but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less to prayer.”
As we read God’s Word, we should ask:
How should I respond to this passage in prayer (ex. worship, repentance, thanksgiving, petition)? How do these truths influence the way that I pray?
Conclusion
May the Lord grant us both the grace and wisdom we need to apply God’s Word to how we think, feel, live, and pray as God’s people.
Rooted Thinking Articles
Reposted from Rooted Thinking.
Micah Colbert bio
Micah is the discipleship and outreach pastor at Community of Grace Church in Buffalo, NY. He is also the author of two outreach books: Good News for All Nations and Discovering Hope. Micah enjoys reading, coffee, hearty conversations, and time spent with his wife and four children.
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Good thoughts, but we should examine our Bible study expectations, too. In particular, we often assume that if we read, studied, meditated, and can’t identify a specific life-changing result, there was no fruit. But it often doesn’t work that way. It’s about saturation, making biblical perspective and principles a deep and pervasive part of who we are… how we think, what we value, etc.
So sometimes we set people up for disappointment by encouraging them to think there have to be identifiable outcomes every time—or even most of the time.
Psalm 19:7ff has a great little list of things the Scriptures do for us. If we are in them, they are doing that, whether we can identify exactly how or not.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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