No random human off the street just enters the Olympics because it sounds like fun. The athlete must prepare himself like his life depends on it with grueling intensity. Likewise, when you study God’s Word you take on an awesome task that is as meaningful as it is a privilege.

You Need the Holy Spirit

Trying to study the Word of God without the Holy Spirit is like trying to go through a locked door without keys. The Word of God is dead to the soul until it is brought to life by the Spirit who wrote the Word. Show a horse Michelangelo’s masterful sculpture of “David” and all he sees is “lump.” Show a dog Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting, “The Last Supper,” and all he sees are shades of black and white. The Word of God is nothing more than a lump of information or shades of black and white to the lost soul. He needs the Holy Spirit to bring it to life.

A lady emailed our ministry and asked how the Word of God can come alive to her. She wanted it to jump off the page and enthrall her with wonder and excitement. Instead of giving her tips to a lively Bible study the first thing I asked her is if she was saved. Without the Spirit, the Word will be a lump of lifeless clay.

The Five Steps of Studying and Applying the Word
You can break down the entire process of studying the Word into five steps.
Stage	Question	Example
Preparation	How do I prepare?	Confess sin and pray for understanding.
Observation	What does the text say?	1 Thessalonians 5:17 says that believers are to pray nonstop.
Interpretation	What does the text mean?	Paul wants the Thessalonians believers to pray constantly as a way of life.
Application	How does the text apply to me and my listeners?	The believer is to pray throughout the day.
Implementation	What are specific steps of application that I and my listeners can take?	Try praying 1/2 hour every morning before breakfast and the moment an individual comes to mind throughout the day, pray for that person.

Paul calls the Word the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph 6:17). The Spirit grips the handle of the Word and welds it skillfully, “piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow” and judging “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).  

Salvation is a nonnegotiable for understanding and applying the Word of God. The world cannot and never will be able to properly interpret and understand the Word of God. Though they may be able to quote Scripture facts and analyze Bible doctrines, their spiritual comprehension is seared by sin and entirely dead.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. (1 Cor 2:12-14).

Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit you cannot understand Scripture. God’s Word is complete foolishness to the mind of the unredeemed.

Almost 500 years ago Luther said the same thing in different words. He argued that all Scripture has two meanings: the outward and the inward. The outward meaning is man’s intelligent, cognitive ability to comprehend and analyze facts and theological truths. The inward meaning is the spiritual, subjective experience of loving and applying that knowledge. Although an unbeliever may understand the grammatical and historical facts of a passage, only a Christian understands this in a way that penetrates his soul, places Him before the throne of the Almighty, and makes him feel the presence, holiness, and grace of the God of Scripture. This is why Luther said, “Experience is necessary for the understanding of the Word. It is not merely to be repeated or known, but to be lived and felt.”  

Luther’s argument can be illustrated by the relationship of two people about to be married. Imagine that your fiancée lives far away and your only correspondence is by letter. You know her, but only from a distance. Your knowledge of her is merely intellectual and factual. But the day of your wedding arrives and suddenly your knowledge of her reaches a fascinating new dimension as you experience life with her. Now you know her intimately. In the same way, a human can learn truths from God’s Word without ever experiencing it intimately until the Holy Spirit enters his soul and gives him power to assimilate and live it. No matter how many doctrines you burn onto your cerebral hard drive, if you are without the Holy Spirit then you know Scripture no better than a pilot knows a plane he has not flown. You would be like a mechanic with a truck of tools who never crawled under a hood.

At the same time, be careful to never let your feelings or personal experiences determine the meaning of Scripture. Many have slid over the cliff of neo-orthodoxy by reading their own subjective impressions into the text until they have made Scripture mean whatever they want it to be and have slaughtered the author’s original intention.

This not only emphasizes our need for salvation in order to understand Scripture, but our ongoing dependence on the Holy Spirit’s illumination of Scripture as we study it.

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him (1 John 2:27).

John is not saying fire your pastors, throw away your commentaries, and find a lonely hut where you can study forever by yourself with no help from other believers. John’s argument is that no one can understand the Word of God apart from the help of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who teaches you as you study the Word by yourself is the same Spirit who teaches you through other men’s preaching and writings. No matter how you are receiving the Word of God, you are always dependent on the Holy Spirit in order to understand and apply it properly. Calvin put it well, “The Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.” And Thomas Watson said, “Ministers of God are only the pipes and organs; it is the Spirit blowing in them that effectually changes the heart.”

You Need a Clean Heart

An exasperated father once said, “My son has a new nickname for me, ‘Baldy.’ Well I’ve got a new word for him, ‘Heredity.’” This comical satire is a truthful witness to the effects of sin. Balding, disease, sickness, pain, death—all of it comes from sin. Sin brings consequences, and this is especially true when you study the Word. If your heart is captivated by any sin—pride, bitterness, lust, greed, deception—your understanding and ability to apply God’s Word will be greatly inhibited. The Word will become cold, lifeless, and boring. There are only two reasons believers fall asleep during sermons: because the preacher is unexciting or the sinner is unrepentant. When the heart is enflamed by the lusts of filthy cravings, nothing will be duller to it than the Word of God.

Paul says that when you sin you grieve (Eph 4:30) and quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thess 5:19). If every Christian is dependent on the Holy Spirit for a proper interpretation of the Bible, then a heart that resists the Holy Spirit will receive no help from Him until he has confessed and repented of his sin. It would be ludicrous to seek the Spirit’s help for understanding God’s Word, while at the same time resisting the Holy Spirit in your daily living which is spoken against by the very Word you are trying to understand.

Pouring God’s Word into an unclean heart makes no more sense than pouring milk into a glass contaminated by acid. The greatest preachers of past ages had hearts captivated by truth, broken egos, and thoughts marinated by Christ and His Word. This is why Jonathan Edwards would ride his horse into a clearing in the forest and weep for hours as he contemplated the ministry of Christ. This is why Henry Martyn chose to be a missionary in India over marrying a woman he loved. This is why the ancient Christian Eusebius called James, the brother of the Lord Jesus, a “man of camel knees” because he prayed so much. This is why R. A. Torrey’s life and ministry were dramatically transformed when he asked God for nothing but to be satisfied in Him alone. This is why John Bunyan willingly suffered thirteen years of imprisonment, even though his family would have no one to support them, rather than submit to the authorities’ order to no longer preach Christ.

What made these men great? Their oratory skills? Their large lungs? No. Their love for the Word they preached. Your walk with the Lord will directly influence your ability to understand and teach His Word.

How to Prepare

Confess your sin. Your most earnest desire should be a clean heart, for a heart caked with mud is not a suitable home for God’s pure Word. Nor is a deceptive mouth a fitting place for truth to be proclaimed.

If you have un-confessed sin, ask God to forgive you, for He is “faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Sincere and humble confession of sin brings immediate and total heart cleansing. Remember it is not your righteousness that makes you acceptable before God, but Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor 5:21; Rom 5:17-19). Confession of sin is not to be a formula for successful Bible study but a sincere desire to be right with God not only because you love Him, but because you sincerely desire to understand His Word. God forgives and cleanses the humble and repentant heart (Ps 34:18; Matt 5:3-4).

Ask for help. Pray the psalmist’s prayer, “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law” (Ps 119:18). Ask God to give you understanding and He will. After all, He wrote it! What better person to ask than the Author?

Plan your study. As much as God delights in helping us to understand His Word, He will not circumvent the learning process and always give you immediate comprehension. It’s just like prayer. If a believer asks for discipline to rise early and then goes to bed without setting his alarm, he shouldn’t expect God to bless his laziness. To be a diligent student and teacher of the Word you must discipline yourself.

This means you will need to set aside an allotted time to do your work. Be realistic and recognize that by taking more time to study, you will be giving less time to something else. What are you going to let your study time replace? Time with your spouse? Sleep? Time watching TV? Late hours at work? Make sure the tradeoff is worth it.

To plan your study it’s also important to write down a goal. What are you going to study, how are you going to go about doing it, and why will you study it? Maybe you want to study 1 John so you can teach it to a small group. Perhaps you’d like to do a topical study on loving others to teach your children or siblings. Maybe you’d like to survey the gospels for a Sunday School class. Or perhaps, you are a pastor and you want to preach the book of Romans. No matter what the situation, you need a specific goal.

Lastly you need action steps. By action steps I mean specific steps you will take to make it happen. Years ago after conducting a sales meeting for potential clients I asked my manager what I could have done better. “You need an agenda,” she said. “No matter how many great products you have to sell, if you have no plan for conducting that meeting, you become the proverbial meeting that talks much but accomplishes nothing.” She made the point well and the same stands true for Bible study.

If your goal is to teach through the book of 1 John, you might come up with a study plan like this:

Action steps put feet on goals. The man with a goal but no action step is like an aerospace engineer with blue prints for an incredible jet airplane that will win the war, but no manufacturing company to produce it. Until they are put into action, good ideas help no more than good dreams.

Adopt the right attitude. This is the final step in preparing yourself to study and teach God’s Word. Make sure your attitude is right. It has been said thousands of times, “Attitude is everything.” This has never been truer than in Bible study.

• Come to Scripture like a child. Be humbly ready to believe the unbelievable and willing to let all your views be challenged and changed if Scripture shows them in error. May you sing with the heart of Luther, “The more you distrust yourself and your thoughts, the better a theologian and a Christian you will become.”
• Come to Scripture like an eager student. Prepare yourself to learn and sit at the feet of Jesus.
• Come to Scripture like an umpire. Be objective. Put your personal opinions and biases on the shelf. 
• Come to scripture like a detective. Let your eyes burn like laser beams looking under ever rock, piercing every line and every paragraph to find the clues so you can solve the mystery.