How to Go Deeper in the Word

After people have read the Bible devotionally for awhile, they often desire to go deeper in the Word. But how does a person go deeper in the Word? Is there some secret method for learning more from God? We can follow these practical principles to go deeper in the Word.

1. We cannot go deeper in the Word unless we are in the Word to begin with.

• A daily time with God is an absolute must for anyone who desires to go deeper in their faith. Some people call this "devotions" and other people call it a "quiet time." The term really does matter.
• Talk to some other Christians whom seem strong in their faith and ask what some ways they do their quiet time are.
• The three key aspects of a healthy quiet time are:
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  1. Reading the Word in a translation we can understand.
  2. Praying about what the Word has said in our lives and about the concerns we have in life.
  3. Applying the Word to our daily lives. We cannot just read the Word, we must live it.

2. If we want to go deeper in the Word, we must be committed to reading the entire Bible, not just the parts we like.

• Reading the entire Bible helps us connect the various parts into the whole.
• Reading the entire Bible helps us find nuggets of truth that we would miss otherwise.
• Reading the entire Bible will point out weaknesses in our faith that we never knew were there.
• CAUTION: We read the entire Bible to CHANGE, not to FINISH!!!!

3. If we want to go deeper in the Word, we must be willing to invest in some resources to help us through the difficult parts.

• We must FIRST rely on the Holy Spirit to help us understand the Word.
• The Holy Spirit often uses other resources to accomplish His purposes.
• Three biblical resources every Christian should have is:
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  1. Concordance – helps us find all the verses with a particular word in it.
  2. Bible dictionary – helps us understand terms, places and names.
  3. Commentary – gives us historical research and theological insights that we might not know on our own.

4. If we want to go deeper in the Word, we must remain faithful

• We are often good "starters" but we must learn to follow through.
• We will not learn it all the first time through which is why we must keep reading the Word as lifelong learners.
• As we go through different seasons in life we sometimes see things that we could not have seen at any other time in our lives.

Copyright 2010 - Dr. Terry W. Dorsett