How I study the Bible

In the beginning of my journey to seek God with all my heart I thought that I had to read the word only and that was enough to seek God with all my heart. But as I recalled What Jesus said in the temple “You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. 40 But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Jn 5:39–40. Here Jesus is saying that these people were seeking God with all their heart so that they could find Him. Life with God and knowing the Father is eternal life, But they had an incorrect interpretation of what eternal life was and thought that the reading of the scriptures in and of themselves was eternal life. I made this mistake and I believe that it is part of the yeast of the pharisees and sadducees that Jesus was speaking of in Matthew 16:5-12. This yeast is the deceptive teaching that God is not a personal God and that He doesn’t care about you and only wants your actions and not your heart. It is the deceptive teaching that reading the Word of God is enough and the hidden belief that all there is to God is just reading of the Word. Reading the Word is incredibly important and cannot be removed from any Christians life, but it is not in order to have eternal life, eternal life comes from knowing the Father. So the way we must read the word is to go to the one that it speaks of and as Jesus to guide us as we study His word. Don’t look to the Word but to the one who spoke the Word for life, His Words will bring you life as you read them but don’t forget that He wants to have a relationship with you! How to put it into practice: When I go to read the word, I need to see that time differently. Instead of going to it thinking it will give me eternal life, I need to go to Jesus, the one it speaks of in order to have eternal life and He reveals Himself to me through His word. Pray before you read, or more simply put. Speak to Jesus before your time the word, bring your cares that are going to distract your mind to Him and let Him bear all your burdens for He cares for you. Trust God to take care of you, you are God’s children (Matthew 7:11) and God will always take care of His own (1 Timothy 5:8). As you cast all your cares to God at the start of your time with Him and you take every thought captive that tries to get you to worry about your circumstances, you will have the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guarding your heart and mind.