Let's get to know each other! You can use this simple format: Hey, I'm from _______________________. For fun I like to ___________________________________. My favorite book of the Bible is: _________________________________________. (If you don't have a favorite book of the Bible yet, change it to "My favorite holiday is: ______________________.")

-Logos. Bible study software. They have a free version. Great place to get started and start building resources for study. You can purchase different upgrade packages and/or one time books, commentaries, etc. I use it weekly. -New Bible Commentary edited by Gordon J. Wenham, J Alec Moyer, D.A. Carson and R.T. France and their credentials (this is available in Logos). It's a solid overall commentary (in my opinion). I go to commentaries when I need to get someone way smarter than me's take on a passage.

Requirements For Understanding Scripture "Rightly". I've been reading Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem over the past 4 or 5 months. In his chapter on "The Four Characteristics of Scripture: Clarity" he lists some requirements for understanding Scripture rightly. I think it is a good starting point when we approach Scripture to understand what it's saying. Too often, we try to study the Bible in a similar that way we order food from a drive thru. We expect it to come fast. I know I've been guilty. I've tried to move too quickly and that kept my understanding limited at times. I've learned over the past several years that understanding scripture is a process that requires time, effort, the help of the Holy Spirit and often seeking the perspectives of mature believers/theologians either in person or by use of other methods. Grudem asserts that the Bible can be clearly understand as long as some requirements are met. I thought it was such a good list that I would share it here as a foundation for us to study the Bible "rightly". 1. Time. Understanding Scripture and what it teaches requires time. It's a process. It doesn't come all at once. The Bible itself commands us to meditate on God's Word (Ps 1:2, Ps. 119:15,24,48,78). Grudem asserts "Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood, but not all at once: growth in understanding is a life long process. Clarity is a property of Scripture, not a property of its readers, who vary widely in their understanding". 2. Effort. Ezra 7:10 says, "Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and teach his statutes and rules in Israel". Ezra was a teacher of the law, yet still needed to study to grow in understanding. Not all Scripture is easy to understand as Peter knew in 2 Peter 3:15-16, "And count the patience of the Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do to the other Scriptures". Effective study requires effort on our part to understand and grow. 3. The Use of Ordinary Means.

A little while back I had a desire to go deeper in my understanding of Scripture. With the constantly shifting sands of culture, I felt a strong pull to gain greater clarity and perspective on many of the issues we’re facing today from a truly biblical perspective. I’ve always had that desire to varying degrees, but God was doing something new. At some point as I was thinking and praying about what to do about this pull, I felt the Holy Spirit prod me with the idea- “obey what I’ve already shown you”. Even though overall I felt like I was living aligned with Scripture, there was one nagging area of my life I was struggling with that I essentially did not want to surrender to Lord. It was not an area that I wanted to willfully disobey, but it was something I was struggling to figure out how to obey. So I began praying that God would help me. In this case, I had to realize I could not obey this particular truth from Scripture in my own strength. I needed His help. And He worked on me. He always seems to give me the grace to obey His Word when I am truly willing. It brought me great peace and joy when I began to obey even though it was counter to how I felt in my flesh. Fast forward to last week I was watching something where professing Christians were debating ethical topics. I was sitting there thinking, “How do these so called Christians have such confusion over what Scripture teaches even though they seem to have a reasonable knowledge of it?” I was reminded about what the Holy Spirit had prodded me on months earlier and something I’ve been reading in a Christian Ethics book lately: Our own disobedience can deceive us and limit our ability to understand Scripture properly. James 1:22 says “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves”. The implication here is that we can know a lot about the Bible and still not truly understand it, not because it's unclear, but because of our own disobedience to it. That was a revelation to me. That truth has helped me develop a healthier fear of the Lord in the sense that I always need to be striving to obey Scripture in my quest to learn more of it and to avoid heeding voices who claim to know a lot about Scripture but who’s lives aren’t a reflection of it.

This is a question I've had for some time. The answer comes from understanding the difference between our justification and sanctification/ongoing fellowship with God. When we come to faith in Christ, all of our sins are legally forgiven. We don't need to continually pray for forgiveness from sins in a salvation sort of way. Instead, when Jesus tells us to pray "Forgive our sins" in the Lord's Prayer ("our daily bread" implies we are to be praying the Lord's Prayer daily, which includes forgiveness of sins), He seems to be meaning forgiveness in the sense of how our daily sins disrupt our fellowship with God, displease Him or are bringing on Fatherly discipline. "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." (Psalm 51:12) "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." (Ephesians 4:30) "If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." (1 John 3:21). We need to confess our sins to God (and at times to other believers when the sin has become more powerful in our life) after coming to Christ not to re-attain our salvation, but to re-gain our intimate fellowship with the Lord.