When it comes to personal Bible study, we must be careful not to expect the Bible to serve our purposes or perspectives, which are not always the same as God’s. For example, we shouldn’t use the “close my eyes and point to a text” method, because this isn’t how God wants to communicate with us through His Word. God is not a puppet on a string, waiting to serve our needs and will. His ways and thoughts are so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9), and so we should never try to control His words to us. Neither should we pick and choose only the parts of the Bible that feel comfortable to us. Instead, we should see the Bible as a whole package rather than reading the easy, familiar passages and leaving out the confronting or challenging ones. If we truly want God to speak into our lives, we must take the Bible as a whole and use sound methods when we engage in careful Bible study, trusting that God will reveal what we need to hear when we need to hear it.

Image © Review & Herald Publishing from GoodSalt.com

Also, Jesus Himself tells us: “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’ ” (Matthew 22:37, NKJV). That is, God doesn’t want us to ignore our minds; rather, He wants to inform our minds with His vast reaches of knowledge and understanding, which are revealed, in part, through His Word. We can read many biblical narratives in which God had discussions with such people as Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Job, in addition to many conversations that Jesus had with people. God doesn’t bypass human reason but invites us to submit it to His Word and wisdom when “working out” our salvation.

Human reason, however, is still human—capable of error and deception. It’s never infallible. It’s possible for human reason to push God aside to try to work things out on our own, which places self as equal to, or above, God when it comes to thinking. People can approach Scripture with an arrogant and critical spirit, thinking they’ve heard it all before and that there is nothing new. It’s when we feel important, confident, self-sufficient, and in need of nothing that we neglect our relationship with God and rely on our own limited knowledge and faulty reasoning.

<–Sunday Tuesday–>

Before we explore why the Bible is so valuable and how to dig deeper in our personal Bible study, we must understand something: one of the most significant attacks Satan can make on you is to stop you from spending time with God in His Word. Keeping people away from their Bibles through business, apathy, tiredness, or doubt is his number-one strategy. He knows that when we spend time with God in His Word, it revives our lives and nourishes our souls; so, of course, he would do everything to prevent this!

We are told that “Satan employs every possible device to prevent [people] from obtaining a knowledge of the Bible; for its plain ut­terances reveal his deceptions.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 593. Satan knows that God’s powerful Word makes him powerless. Satan knows that prayer and Bible study are the most powerful weapons humanity can use against him (Ephesians 6:17-18; Hebrews 4:12), so he does everything he can to stop us from reading and praying. He knows that God’s words are powerful and that they not only spoke this world into existence (Psalms 33:6), but they can raise the dead (John 11:41-44) and give us strength to overcome (Matthew 4:1-11).

Image © Kevin Carden at Goodsalt.com

By keeping God’s people away from their Bibles, Satan affects not only our relationship with God but our relationships with others. Our marriages become strained, we yell at our kids, and we don’t have patience with our friends or coworkers. Life seems too busy; we feel stressed and burdened, with no escape route. And surprisingly, we don’t often pause long enough to realize what’s happening. We might think we’re close to God, but in reality, when days and weeks pass by without our ever opening God’s Word, we’re weakened more every day.

As the covering cherub before he fell (Ezekiel 28:14-17), Lucifer heard God’s words and knew their incredible power. He now hates this truth, so it’s clear why our minds grow numb and our hearts grow dull when we don’t choose to hear and bring God’s words into our daily lives.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

Image © Pacific Press

Read for This Week’s Study:

Lamentations 3:22-23; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; John 17:17; Ephesians 1:13; Psalms 119:11; 1 Corinthians 2:14.

Memory Text:

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12, NJKV).

The Bible. No doubt you own one copy or perhaps many. Throughout history, this precious book has been copied in secret, smuggled, and banned. It’s the most published book in the world, in any language, and also one of the oldest. Some have died so that the Bible could be preserved.

Where is the Bible in your life? Do you read it or does it sit beside your bed or on a bookcase gathering dust? Is life too busy for you to find time to really study the Word of God or do you feel too tired to open its pages?

God’s Word is living and powerful, and God is calling for you to let it speak to your heart, to encourage you, to challenge and change you, and to give you guidance and hope.

The Bible is not just an academic book or a collection of old stories. Instead, it is a beautiful, profound account of how the Creator of the universe seeks to draw us close to Him. If you have a desire to grow in your relationship with God, the best thing you can do is commit to spending quality time with Him daily, praying, reading His inspired Word, and surrendering your will to what it teaches.

*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 25.

Sunday–>

Iolanda

Part of last quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, also known as the Quarterly Mission Project Offering, went to open a church at Pernambuco Adventist Academy in Brazil’s state of Pernambuco, where Iolanda lives. Thank you for planning a generous offering for this quarter’s projects. Watch a YouTube video of Iolanda at “Mission Is Really Important“

A mother with three little girls walked up the path to Iolanda’s home in Belo Jaridin, a Brazilian city of 80,000 people.

Iolanda saw them coming. She was standing at the door, giving rice and beans to a stranger who had stopped by to ask for food. Her house was located on a busy street, and people regularly came to the door to ask for help. She was sure that the approaching visitors also needed a hand, so she waited after the stranger left.

When the mother and girls reached the door, Iolanda’s eyes fell on the children’s feet.

“Why are your children barefoot?” she asked.

The woman explained that her eight-year-old daughter’s sandals had broken, so she had asked her four- and six-year-old daughters to remove their sandals so their older sister wouldn’t feel ashamed.

“I’ll get a pair of sandals and some food,” Iolanda said.

She disappeared into the house and returned a moment later with sandals for the eight-year-old girl and a snack of plain crackers, plain cookies, and cold water.

The little girls beamed with joy. “Can we call you Grandma?” one asked.

The mother was surprised at Iolanda’s kindness.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I’m a Christian from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and we like to help people,” Iolanda said. “I sew clothes for children, and church members bring me many donations. So, I have lots of sandals and clothes.”

“I want to be part of this church,” the mother said. “I want to study the Bible with you.”

A year later, the mother was baptized and joined the Adventist Church.

Iolanda Xavier, an 86-year-old great-grandmother, believes that nothing is more important than obeying Jesus’ command, “ ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you’ ” (Matthew 28:19-20; NKJV).

“Mission is really important,” she said. “All of us were born of God to be missionaries.”

“The nearer we come to Jesus and the more clearly we discern the purity of His character, the more clearly we shall discern the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the less we shall feel like exalting ourselves.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

Those whom heaven recognizes as holy ones are the last to parade their own goodness.”—Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 160.

“Before honor is humility. To fill a high place before men, Heaven chooses the worker who, like John the Baptist, takes a lowly place before God. The most childlike disciple is the most efficient in labor for God. The heavenly intelligences can co-operate with him who is seeking, not to exalt self, but to save souls. . . .

“When men exalt themselves, feeling that they are a necessity for the success of God’s great plan, the Lord causes them to be set aside. . . .

“It was not enough for the disciples of Jesus to be instructed as to the nature of His kingdom. What they needed was a change of heart that would bring them into harmony with its principles. . . . The simplicity, the self-forgetfulness, and the confiding love of a little child are the attributes that Heaven values. These are the characteristics of real greatness. . . .

“The sincere, contrite soul is precious in the sight of God. He places His own signet upon men, not by their rank, not by their wealth, not by their intellectual greatness, but by their oneness with Christ.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, Pages 436, 437.

Discussion Questions:

Summary: Pride can be one of the greatest blocks to growing in a relationship with God. If we feel self-sufficient and don’t realize our need of this relationship, we simply won’t pursue it. In contrast, Jesus was the humblest Man on earth and the most perfect example of how to have a close relationship with God.

<–Thursday

In stark contrast to the disciples’ desire to be superior and their belief that they were better than the next guy, we see Jesus—the ultimate example of humility. Jesus, who said, “ ‘Yet I am among you as the One who serves’ ” (Luke 22:27, NKJV). Jesus, who every day gave to those in need around Him because He was filled with compassion and saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd. He knew that humanity needed Him more than anything else in life, though few realized this simple truth. Jesus, who gave up heaven to die for the human race in the hope that they would understand His act of grace and respond to His invitation to have a relationship with Him.

Image © Phil McKay at Goodsalt.com

Jesus did it all. He bore all. When we pause long enough to see Him—truly and purely—we can’t help realizing our impurity, our filth, and our desperate need of Him in our lives today.

When we look to Him, everything else (especially ourselves and our own perceived greatness) pales into complete insignificance. Who Jesus is, what He has done, and how much He loves His creation becomes front and center. Self will surely disappear when we look at Him.

Jesus. What a beautiful, mighty name. He is the epitome of humility. When our open hearts learn about Him, when we understand what He has done for us, and when we allow His words of life to seep into our minds, we realize how proud and wretched we really are. If His own disciples, who lived and learned from Him, struggled with pride, we can’t fool ourselves that we are any different. Ultimately, we can grow in our relationship with Jesus only when we are humble.

<–Wednesday Friday–>