{"id":151,"date":"2011-02-09T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/?p=151"},"modified":"2013-07-11T13:28:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T18:28:25","slug":"approaching-the-scriptures-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/approaching-the-scriptures-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Approaching the Scriptures (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cHow do I balance devotional time with God with more intentional studying of God\u2019s word?\u201d This is a great question that deserves great attention. To begin, be sure to understand the difference between reading and studying<\/a>, as these two practices are not\u00a0 synonymous. The next thing one must realize in approaching reading & studying the Bible is that there is no one right way<\/em>\u00a0 to approach them. There are a number of ways that are unfruitful and\/or wrong, but there is not one right way to study and read the Word of God. That should be liberating to hear!<\/p>\n The bottom line is this: you and I are wired differently. God created us that way. He’s gifted you and made you to think, write, speak, and read in different ways than me. That doesn’t mean that you cannot study and read the way I do, it means that my way of studying and reading (assuming it’s fruitful and Biblical) is not more right than yours. For example, God may be leading me to study humility. He may be leading you to study love. I’m not more right in what I study. God knows each of us and will lead us accordingly. Again, that’s not to say we couldn’t study the same thing in the same way. Or that we couldn’t learn from each other (in fact, we should!). It’s saying that my way is not superior or more holy.<\/p>\n I’ve found that the question of balancing study with devotion is really an issue of time<\/em>. How much time should be spent in studying and how much should be spent reading. Knowing that no one combination of reading and studying is a one-size fits all will help us to answer this question. For example, I may have a lot more time than you during my mornings, so studying for a half-hour every day may be realistic for me for this season. In another instance, I may be busier than you, so my only chance to spend deep time studying the Word may be Saturday mornings. The best way to figure this out is to lay out your schedule, pray through your options, tell someone else what you’re thinking through (for accountability and input), do it, and review it. The last two are of utmost importance. It’s easy to dream up a great plan to study, but doing it and reviewing how it’s going (and how it could be better) is much more difficult.<\/p>\n Lastly, here are seven pieces of advice for learning how (and how much) to read and study the Word:<\/p>\n Grace, grace as you study and read.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHow do I balance devotional time with God with more intentional studying of God\u2019s word?\u201d This is a great question that deserves great attention. To begin, be sure to understand the difference between reading and studying, as these two practices are not\u00a0 synonymous. The next thing one must realize in approaching reading & studying the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Y9ZB-2r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gallifant.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n