Dave’s Monday Blast – November 4, 2024
Good Morning Men of Intention,
One day left before elections in America! It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole world is closely watching. Regardless of the outcome, I like to think of tomorrow as just another day closer to the Rapture of the Church. But until that day, men of INTENTION know that we are to be about His business. We speak every week about redeeming the time; about not wasting one moment of any day in service to the Kingdom of God.
We learned last week that the totality of Scripture is “Christocentric”, which simply means that the word of God ultimately exists to lead us to the Word/Son of God. Since our job is to “make disciples of all men” (Matthew 28:18) until this church age is complete, our best disciple making tool is the word of God. We need to be daily students of the word, “…rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). I mentioned last week that my friend Diana Berns has a robust ministry designed to enable the student to do just as the Apostle Paul admonished in the afore-mentioned passage. I neglected to provide this link last week for you to easily explore all the resources available from her website. Here it is (http://www.j616roadmap.org/).
She would say that if you do not experience Christ whenever you read the Bible, you have not fully read the Bible. Or perhaps you are reading the Bible as an end rather than as a means to more intimately know Him. I think we often read the word to see how it can help us as opposed to meditating upon it to get to know Him. One of my favorite tools she has created comes from her Road Map Training – Discover God. Here are a couple quick takeaways from this one project that has been developed in a bookmark format:
Principles of Good Bible Study
Discover
Observe: What does this say?
Interpret: What does this mean?
Explore
Reflect: What does this mean to me?
Experience
Apply: What will I do with what I have learned?
Pray
Throughout this process of meditating on ANY passage within context, we are seeing how God is revealed:
His Nature
What is God like? Look for descriptive words.
His Purposes
What has God done, is He doing, or will He do? Look for action words. (I like the book of Mark to practice these skills)
His Priorities
What does God value? Eternal before Temporal – Spiritual before Physical – Internal (motives of the heart) before External (behavior)
Throughout this always consider…
How should I live?
Warnings: What do you need to be aware of?
Instructions: What do you need to do?
Promises: What can you count on?
This is a simple but excellent way to meditate upon passages and flips the script on why we are in the word in the first place. Next week I want to return to the Denison Forum to conclude.
