Laundry Room Bible Study
Last week Elder Dave said he wanted to go through the book of Romans with me. He and I have been meeting weekly for about 5 months now. By the way, thank God for this - and thank you Dave of course! I recently expressed my wish for our meetings to develop into some sort of discipleship format. One of several results of a sermon a couple weeks prior was the conviction to become a more intentional disciple of Jesus Christ (or one at all, since I'm not worthy of the title). Dave concurred and had come to the exact same conclusion. Romans it is.
I made several attempts to start reading the first chapter of Romans this week and failed miserably. I read all the way through once and listened to the audio about a dozen times. In spite of all that, I couldn't get my brain to focus on extrapolating details and applications.
One thing I was getting caught up on was Dave's instruction to carefully consider the verses and write down everything that occurs to me for discussion. I debated with myself: does this mean I should 1) write down all thoughts both simple and complex that I've ever had before about these verses, 2) write down anything new that occurs to me this time I read, or 3) outsource by looking up in a commentary to get an "expert" and exhaustive analysis? At first I didn't like the pressure of coming up with a bunch of thoughts and fought with myself over it. I didn't want to seek "impressive" insights to score some sort of spirituality points or other vanity. I don't want to impress, but to grow and learn.
Finally I decided I would just do it. My desire is not to come up with deep theological observations to show off my intellect. That's not why I've been spending so much time in the Bible, writing on my blog, and so forth. In truth, I'm pretty slow and dull of heart. My intellect leaves much to be desired. Thankfully for me this allows God's Spirit to really shine and fill in the gaps.
I'm sick of head knowledge about God. I don't want to lose this knowledge, but I want also to be changed so I'm less recognizable each time I encounter the Spirit of Truth. I'm sick of being a mere hearer and student of the Word. My goals for 2009 relate not to empty religious devotion, but to becoming a doer of the Word, a disciple of Jesus Christ, to read through the Bible and become more passionate about it all the time, to be fervent and constant in prayer for everyone I know who needs it, to be a servant of all, and to crucify my flesh (I know, lofty).
Late last night I decided to combine my Bible study efforts with doing laundry. I was quite astounded how I was able to focus much better in the laundry room. I get distracted with all my things around me in my apartment. The results of this "Laundry Room Bible Study" are several observations written in my journal that I'll share over the next few posts.
For the record, my method involved reading a verse at a time in three different translations: NIV, NLT and KJV. As related verses popped into my mind from memory, I looked those up to shed further light on each verse in Romans 1. Of course if I had a computer, I could have simply done a search to find even more related verses. The limited concordance in the back of my NIV Student Bible sufficed. Because of my slow process and snail-paced journal writing, I only got to verse 4. Me is slow.
