PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Why Bible Study Feels Like a Chore — And What I Was Missing
Think about this:
We’ll never truly know the God of the Word apart from the Word of God.
I’m Jean Wilund, but It’s All About Him! Welcome to a fun place to get serious about Bible Study.
You know what’s not so fun? It’s when Christianity is wearisome, and Bible study is boring.
Yes, I said it because that’s how I once felt. Christianity had become wearisome, and Bible study was boring.
I felt it, but I never said it out loud. Only in my private prayers did I dare voice my frustration and discouragement.
Failure fatigue in faithfully reflecting Christ had worn me down. Can you relate?
I’d lost my will to try even one more time to master the fruit of the Spirit, the “Blessed are Ye’s,” and the “Thou Shalt Nots.”
After almost twenty-five years of reading the Bible (sporadically), attempting to apply it to my life (as best I could), and failing miserably, the Christian life had come to feel more like a sentence than a pardon.
It felt like a sentence of only striving, failing, and seeking forgiveness while carrying the guilt of being underwhelmed by my “abundant life” in Christ.
But what could I do? Walk away?
I agreed with Peter in John 6:68 when he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
I had enough smarts back then—or more accurately wisdom from the Holy Spirit—to know the problem did not lie in Christianity and certainly not in God, but in me.
I reached for my Bible.
The answers must be within its pages. I’d never read it from cover to cover because, it is ridiculously long. But I was out of options at this point.
Before I resigned myself to simply accepting Christianity is a wearisome existence this side of eternity, I determined to read the whole Bible.
If it took me a year, so what. I would read every note, comment, and even the maps in search of the secret to contentment that Paul enjoyed despite shipwrecks, snake bites, and prison (Acts 27:27–28:5; Phil. 4:12).
Show Me Your Glory, Lord!
I didn’t know when I opened my Bible to Genesis 1:1 that the desperation in my heart echoed Jacob’s in Gen. 32:26, when he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
I didn’t realize when I called out to God, “Show me Yourself on every page,” that my heart’s cry mirrored Moses’ in Exodus 33:18, when he said, “Please show me your glory” (Ex. 33:18).
And I never imagined that I only thought I knew God until His Word humbled me and Job’s confession in Job 42:5 became mine.
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” (Job 42:5)
In that crisp morning hour as the sun rose and the coffee perked, I simply flipped to Genesis 1:1 and prayed, “Lord, I am done learning how to live a good Christian life. I just want You. Show me You on every page!”
It took me more than a year, in fact it took me three years to reach the final page of my Bible, but it only took a few months for the Bible to transform my heart.
God had answered my prayer. Oh, how He answered it.
I Saw the Lord High and Lifted Up on Every Page
If you’ve read Genesis, you notice Adam and Eve appear in the midst of Creation and quickly steal the show. (Unless, like me at that time, you are ignoring them and are just looking for God.) So, this time I didn’t focus on those two sinners and three ways to avoid falling for Satan’s lies like they had (which is not a bad lesson, but I didn’t want any more lessons).
Instead, I noticed the Almighty God of Creation. Or more accurately, I noticed the Almighty’s absence.
Only two chapters into the Bible, something nefarious is afoot in the garden, and God is nowhere to be seen. Except, didn’t He have to be there? Scripture tells us He’s everywhere (Jer. 23:24, Ps. 139:7–12).
So, I looked at the garden disaster with more studious eyes.
This time I saw a God who waits to act when I would’ve rushed in screaming. I saw a God who will allow pure evil to accomplish His pure good. And I saw a God who is utterly unlike us.
I’d only just begun my journey, and already I realized how little I actually knew or understood about the God who created me and saved me.
I kept reading.
Throughout the old familiar stories, God continued to reveal Himself in surprising ways. The Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus were threaded through every book of the Bible, not just the New Testament.
Bible scholars knew this long before Gutenberg ever bound a Bible, but I’d never seen it. I’d been too preoccupied with learning how to be a better version of myself (and failing at it, by the way.) I was too busy to see His unmatched character —to see God’s unmatched character—and overwhelming glory on each page from Genesis to Revelation.
But now I saw that the Old Testament is not just a long foreword to the real story that starts with a baby in a manger.
And, more importantly, I discovered the Bible isn’t about me. It is all about Christ, who reveals the Father and is glorified by the Holy Spirit.
Show Us the Father and It Will Be Enough for Us
The disciple Philip was onto something when, in John 14:8, he said those words to Jesus. “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8). It is indeed enough, but Philip had seen Him.
He and the other disciples had walked with Jesus for nearly three years, and yet they didn’t understand that Jesus and the Father are One.
More than once, Jesus had told them He must be betrayed and die, but that He would rise again on the third day. But His disciples didn’t understand. And because of what they didn’t understand about Jesus, when the sun rose on that third day, they were cowering in a locked room rather than holding a resurrection party at His tomb.
Their ignorance about Jesus had driven them into fear, confusion, and despair.
Our ignorance about Jesus drives us into the same traps today, even many who have been Christians for years like I was. And we are without excuse.
God hadn’t yet opened the disciples’ minds to see the full truth of who Jesus is. We see that in Luke 24:45.
But today, at the very moment of salvation, every Christian receives God’s Spirit. He knows the mind of God because He is God, and He is our faithful teacher (John 14:26; 16:13–14; 1 Cor. 2:10–16).
Are We Reading the Bible But Missing the Point?
Since God had given me His Word and His Spirit at salvation, why was I only now being transformed in ways I’d longed to experience? Because I, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ days, read the Scriptures but missed the point:
It’s not the sheer act of knowing the Bible that changes us.
The Pharisees knew the Scriptures (what we now call the Old Testament). They quoted long passages from memory, taught them daily, and practiced countless religious traditions. And yet many of their hearts remained hard toward Jesus.
They’d missed the point that all the Scriptures—all the law of Moses they vehemently proclaimed—pointed to Jesus (Luke 24:27; John 5:45–46). They didn’t see who He is.
And if we’re not careful, we’ll miss Him, too.
How to Read the Bible to Know God, Not Just Master It
There’s simply no escaping it. If we want to grow in our faith, we must know God—know His character and His ways—and we have to know Him through His Word because we will never truly know the God of the Word apart from the Word of God.
We need to know the whole Word of God—yes, that includes Leviticus.
As pastor and theologian A.W. Tozer so brilliantly stated: “Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”
It’s Not about Mastering Scripture; It’s about Scripture Mastering Us
After I abandoned my fruitless attempts to master the fruit of the Spirit, the “Blessed are Ye’s,” and the “Thou Shalt Nots” and simply read the whole Bible to find God, to know Him, everything changed. Well, I changed, because I finally saw the point of Scripture.
It’s not so that I can master God’s Word. It’s so God’s Word will master me.
And it’s the same for all of us.
And that is when Bible study becomes an adventure and Christianity brings abiding joy and peace because our joy and peace are in Christ, not in a religion.
So let me say it again as we end this episode:
We will never truly know the God of the Word apart from the Word of God.
Thank you for joining me today. If you want to dive into how to effectively study the Bible and know and love the Lord better, subscribe to this podcast and my website, JeanWilund.com. And check out my study Discovering God’s Word: An Introduction to the Transformational Bible Study Method with the Gospel of Mark.
Discovering God’s Word can transform your Bible study. The Gospel of Mark will transform your life.
I’m Jean Wilund, but It’s All About Him!
