It is important to incorporate a variety of strategies when studying of the Bible. I use narrative techniques, such as examining the setting and character motivations. I apply reading strategies to comprehend the Bible, like employing my background knowledge to form connections to the text. I utilize the concept of hierarchies of knowledge where I endeavor to rise above simply collecting facts to the applications of God’s word in my own life. In addition, I do not use the same techniques in every situation. I vary my methods depending on the type of literature I am reading in the Bible and my purpose for examining the scriptures. However, there is one essential component of Bible study that I never overlook or skip over. God’s help is a prerequisite for understanding spiritual ideas. No matter how hard I try or how many strategies or techniques I use, I will never be able to understand the ideas of the Bible without the Holy Spirit opening my mind to the meaning of the printed words that I am attempting to decipher. Reading skill is not as important as having God’s assistance as you read from the Bible. Even if you are an extremely poor reader, the Spirit can teach you the lessons of the scriptures in more depth than a scientist or scholar who refuses to look to God for help in comprehending His word. Always, always, ask for the Spirit’s guidance as you read the Bible. However, some of you might be puzzled because you have asked for God’s guidance, yet you feel that you are still confused as you study. It may be that even though you have used the words to request help, you are still limiting the Spirit’s interaction in those studies by limiting His interactions in the rest of your life..
Have you ever watched a child learning to float on his back in the water? Or maybe you remember when you were learning to float on your back. I do. I was scared of sinking. The teacher kept her hands under my back, so I would not go below the water, but I knew that she was going to take that assistance away, and I would drop like a rock. Consequently, I held myself stiff as a board and panicked whenever I felt her hands move. It took quite a while before I trusted her when she said that I would float if I just relaxed, but finally, one day I did! A lot of Christians are like this with God. He says, “Trust me and follow me where I ask.” We seem to have a fear that God will act like a swimming teacher by taking His hands away and expecting us to float by ourselves; we fear that God will take us out past our comfort zone and leave us alone to sink or swim. However, God has a different technique than the swimming teacher. He does not ask us to float by ourselves. Instead, He has promised that we will have a Helper with us always. We have this promise in John 14:15-18. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” The Holy Spirit is the power of God sent down to live in us by Jesus. Jesus calls the Spirit a Helper and says that the Spirit will be with us forever. Through the Holy Spirit, we have access to the unlimited power to do whatever Jesus asks of us. We have strength in the Spirit to defend ourselves against all troubles. The Spirit will keep us floating and above the waters of trouble. If this is the case, why do we feel defenseless so often?
We have another promise about the Spirit’s assistance. 1 Corinthians 2:10 tells us that we have access to great knowledge and wisdom through the Spirit. “But God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.” If this is the case, why do we often struggle to understand even simple ideas? Why are we not geniuses, at least about spiritual topics? Why do so many Christians not understand even the basics of the scriptures?
In John 16:7-15, Jesus said that it was better for the Holy Spirit to be with us than for Jesus to physically stay with us. “However, I am telling you the truth. It is for your advantage that I am going away, because if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment— of sin, because they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; and of judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I still have a lot to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. Yet when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own accord, but will speak whatever he hears and will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. That is why I said, ‘He will take what is mine and declare it to you’” (Joh 16:7-15). Here again, we are told about how powerful the Spirit is and how much He is able to help us, so why do we not see Him working in our lives more?
My answer is that there is one thing that can limit God’s power and ability to perform great works in our lives: US. We ourselves limit how much the Holy Spirit can work with us. Let me give you an example from my own life. I started out my spiritual life as a Christian on the right track. After I accepted Jesus as my Savior at the age of sixteen, I read the Bible and met with fellow believers to learn more of Jesus and to have fellowship. I was soaking up more and more understanding, not just from the Bible, but also from my fellow Christians, which was great. We should be teaching each other and helping each other to grow. However, I soaked in something else at that time, something wrong that began slowing my spiritual growth until it finally pretty much stopped. I learned from many of my fellow Christians that it was okay to compartmentalize my life–that there was God’s time and my time, that there were spiritual topics and topics of this world that God was not part of. In short, I learned how to stop the Holy Spirit from permeating and transforming all areas of my life. I learned how to limit the most powerful force on earth and in heaven.
How do we limit the Holy Spirit? Well, first of all this limitation is not about our actions; it is about our attitudes. You see it is our attitudes, in other words, our beliefs, that allow the Holy Spirit to work in us.
One of the ways that I began limiting the power of the Holy Spirit was the belief that His power is only for reaching other people with the gospel and keeping us from sinning. That does not sound bad, does it? The key here is the word “only.” By believing that those were His only jobs, I could compartmentalize my life into the spiritual parts and the “real world” parts. Thus, I separated Bible study from entertainment. Politics could be dealt with separately from the Law of Love since Jesus’ commands were not practical on a national scale in a sinful world. I only needed to consult God on decision-making that related to actions that I had defined as sinful or decisions that dealt with conversing with other people about spiritual topics. My Christian friends and I separated Jesus out of our daily life discussions. Oh, we talked about Him in certain contexts like if we were having a Bible study or a Vesper sing-along, but we forgot about Him when we were chatting about boys or movies or classes or going out for ice cream.
Even today when I understand how this kind of compartmentalizing has limited the Holy Spirit’s ability to work in my life, I have problems getting rid of the idea that He is only for witnessing and stopping me from sinning. For example, one week, I asked God to use me to help others. That week at work I had more students coming in for extra help than ever before. Former students came in for help with academic classes. Current students came in for advice on other teachers’ classes. By Thursday, I was exhausted and complaining to myself about all the extra students who were taking away my free time. Then, it dawned on me. God was answering my prayer. I asked to be used, and He was drawing people in for me to help. My actions were the same before and after this realization, but my attitude changed. I realized that I had been assuming that my prayer did not apply to my work and the job duties related to my employment. Somehow, in my mind, I did not believe that the Holy Spirit was involved in my work life. Fortunately, I was wrong.
God is interested in even the smallest details of our lives. In other words, the Holy Spirit is involved in the ordinary areas of our lives, as well as in the churchy stuff. Regrettably, we tend to believe that we only need the Spirit’s help for great works but too often we do not even imagine that the Holy Spirit would desire to be involved in our small routine activities. Our chores and hobbies are not critical enough to bother God with, so we limit the Holy Spirit’s power to the “important” parts of our life and basically tell Him, “No, that’s okay. I can handle this” when we are involved in the routine, the boring, and the usual.
This limitation is related to another restraint on the Spirit’s power in our lives, which is based on a lie that Satan tells us. I am not important enough to be used. I do not accomplish great endeavors like healing people, presenting inspirational sermons, traveling to distant lands as a missionary, or baptizing hundreds of people. My life is humdrum, and my days are not exciting. I am just a little person living my little life, so I am too little for the Holy Spirit to use. This is Satan’s deception to cause us to limit the Holy Spirit’s involvement in our lives. Here is the truth. We are human and sinful. Jesus died for us. We have been redeemed from sin at an enormous cost. If God was willing to pay such a high price for us, I am not little, and you are not little. Jesus redeemed us, and He believes that we are important enough to be used. We are smart enough to be taught. We are loveable enough to be loved. We are consequential enough and our lives are significant enough that God wants to be in every part of us through His Holy Spirit.
Another limitation we place on the Spirit is our belief that He does not love us. Yes, Jesus loves us, and the Father loves us, but we tend to think that the Holy Spirit is simply a force without emotions. We believe that the Power of God living in us is impersonal and uncaring. Because of this misconception, we hide parts of ourselves from Him, not trusting Him to touch our insides with love and gentleness. We do not trust Him not to hurt us. Again, this is a lie. The truth is that the Holy Spirit loves us and wants to help us. In John 14:16 Jesus talked about this aspect of the Holy Spirit. “I will ask the Father to give you another Helper, to be with you always.” The word that is translated as “Helper” in this version is also translated as “Comforter” in other versions of the Bible. In the original Greek, Jesus was calling the Spirit the paraklētos (par-ak’-lay-tos) which means intercessor, consoler, advocate, and comforter. Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as someone who consoles us in our grief and troubles. The Spirit is someone who will advocate for us and speak up when we cannot speak for ourselves. He is there to stand up for us and defend us. He loves us. In fact, Paul says in Romans 8:15 that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption. “For you have not received a spirit of slavery that leads you into fear again. Instead, you have received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Helper and Comforter makes us family with God. He is not just a friend, but family. We need to trust Him that He will never hurt us as He becomes part of our lives. We need to have faith that the Spirit is for us, not against us.
Why is the Holy Spirit not able to do more in our lives? Because we limit Him. We try to keep Him out of certain parts of our beings and our lives. Yes, we can limit the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit. He refuses to overwhelm us so that our will is lost. Instead, He must wait until we surrender ourselves to be guided and controlled by Him. We can choose to keep parts of our lives separate from Him and try to manage ourselves, but when we decide to act alone, we are harming ourselves and keeping the Holy Spirit from performing mighty and powerful actions through us. We are also limiting Him from gently comforting us and assisting us in all areas of our lives. When it comes to comprehending the Bible, we are electing to wander through the pages blind and deaf, groping for the enlightenment that God longs to gift to us freely.
I no longer want to limit the Holy Spirit to certain areas of my life. I want to be in constant communication with God. I long to have my Friend with me. I hope with all of my being to become the person Jesus perceives that I could be instead of the degraded human I am. I want the Holy Spirit to transform my every atom so that living with God is who I am, not just helping me in one limited section of my life. I desire with all my heart that nothing will separate me from Jesus’ love. I choose for Christ to live in me through the Spirit. I have made a decision to trust Jesus’ promise that we read in John 14:15-21. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
The Holy Spirit is necessary for us in every activity and every idea. This is the reason why it is essential that we invite Him into our Bible study. He knows us inside and out, so He knows the lessons that we need and that we are ready for. He will help us to focus on the parts of scripture that are necessary for our development. He will show us depths of meaning that we never guessed at and teach us to apply the lessons to our lives so that we are transformed. Most of all, He will draw our attention to God’s love shining out from every page of His word. More than any technique or reading strategy, you need the Spirit’s guidance as you read the Bible.