Ask God for Guidance
Back to The Bible's Difficult Scriptures Explained!
Before beginning your Bible study, ask God to open your mind to better understand the Bible’s spiritual principles.
Also pray for guidance and wisdom as to what to study. Then focus on a particular topic, book or chapter. As God opens your understanding, what is confusing to the world becomes interesting and exciting to you.
Review what the Psalmist recorded in Psalms 119:33-40. Carefully digest each verse and each word of this passage. We must all come to view God’s Word in this light.
Asking for and receiving understanding from God is no small thing. Many scholars and men of great intelligence have mastered the Hebrew and Greek languages, and spent their lives translating and analyzing each verse of the Bible—yet they do not get its message.
One such individual was James Moffatt. He translated a commendable version of the Bible. Yet the message went completely over his head. He made the truth of God much more clear, but he—along with the whole world (Rev. 12:9)—remained blinded to its meaning.
Even in the preface to the revised and final edition of Moffatt’s The Bible, A New Translation, he made the following comments: “This is great literature and great religious literature, this collection of ancient writings which we call the Bible, and any translator has a deep sense of responsibility as he undertakes to transmit it to modern readers.” Here was an individual of great intelligence, yet without God’s Spirit and guidance, he considered the Bible mere literature.
Adam Clarke, writer of the famous six-volume commentary of the entire Bible, also did not get the message. Some of the Pharisees were people of great intellect who studied Scripture for endless hours—yet all in vain. If these and others of similar intellect failed to get the message, we should never assume that we could study the Bible and, on our own, automatically understand it.
Only by asking God to open our minds can we understand the Bible—receive the message within. If we think we no longer need to ask for His guidance, then our understanding will diminish—unless we wake up and realize that true understanding comes from God.
Rule #2: Study the Bible for Correction