5. Read Patiently and Selectively

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What does your school backpack say about your personality?

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Patiently

Raise your hand if you have a phone, tablet, or computer?

Phone Illustration

- Texting: Travels 2/3 of the speed of light, that’s about 200 000km/second!

- Email & Phone calls: Travel 300 000km/second. When you say “Hello” to your grandma on the phone, that noise shoots through your phone to grandma at the speed of light. In one second, your word travels the earth 7 times!!

Everything in life these days is instant; I get instant dopamine rushes as I scroll through reels.

Do any of you have a hard time sitting through a whole movie? Why do you think that’s the case?

Reels and shorts fry our attention span, most people can’t even wait in line without checking their phones! We live in an instant generation, we want everything, and we want it now. I can only see things getting worse as you guys move into adulthood. And trust me, this is just as much of a problem for adults as it is for teens.

What we don’t see is the amount of hours seniors spend on FaceBook and candy crush, it would blow your mind! My grandma did something like 2000 levels on that game.

Today’s lesson is all about having patience as we read and being focused as we study.

Principles of Patience

We’ve all done this; oversleep a little, and you’ve got 20 minutes to get dressed, eat breakfast, and read your Bible before school. So you grab that Bible and flip those pages like it’s no one’s business, and for the next 4 minutes, you read faster than you’ve ever read. Bam, finished the chapter, close my Bible and head off to school.

Would any of you confidently say, “I’d come away with a lot of insights from my reading.”?

I don’t think any of us would, unless you are an incredibly skilled speed reader. The truth is, we need time if we want to have a meaningful devotional life.

If we’re going to fill a half-hour, one hour with good Bible reading and study, what’s it going to take? (Patience!)

1. Be Patient with the text

This one is more for the impulsive ones among us.

Impatience with the text = Action now, think later. When we make a quick reaction after reading a certain portion of Scripture, this can be a positive or negative reaction.

When you think of people in the Bible, who strikes you as an impulsive person? (Peter is the perfect example for us)

Positive reaction (Actually negative outcome)

Matthew 17:1–4 NKJV

1 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; 2 and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. 4 Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Negative Reaction

Mark 8:27–33 NKJV

27 Now Jesus and His disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi; and on the road He asked His disciples, saying to them, “Who do men say that I am?” 28 So they answered, “John the Baptist; but some say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered and said to Him, “You are the Christ.” 30 Then He strictly warned them that they should tell no one about Him. 31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke this word openly. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33 But when He had turned around and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

Being patient with the text is all about not jumping to conclusions. You just saw something confusing or alarming to you, stay calm, and keep reading. 90% of our questions will be answered if we just keep reading the rest of the story!

2. Be patient with yourself

Do any of you go all in when you get an idea in your mind?

You’ve got this new hobby or this goal in your mind, and all of a sudden you pour every once of your being into it.

Get into the gym with high ambitions of being the fittest person on earth...

- Expensive gym membership

- Weight belt

- Weightlifting shoes

- 1000$ Gym clothes

- Headphones

- Protein powder

- Creatine

- Amino acids

- Pre-workout

2 weeks later, you quit.

Does any of this gym equipment make someone a pro body builder? (The skills come over time and discipline, you can’t be a pro right away)

Same thing applies to our Bible study routine. If you think you’re going to learn the Bible inside and out in a matter of days, you’ll be discouraged. Nobody learns that quickly, and that’s okay! Good things take time and effort. So, when we apply ourselves to Bible study, don’t overdo it, start with a managable routine. God will grow us as we are consistent with our study.

How to Read Patiently

Here are a few tips for patient reading of God’s Word...

1. Work with a book for a month

Pick any book of the Bible, and carve out one month worth of devotional times dedicated to reading and studying that book. If you keep with it, you’ll start grasping things in that book better than you ever have before. You’ll understand the characters in the book, you’ll have a good idea what’s the purpose, you’ll know the verses that helped you most, and the contents of the book will be clearer in your mind.

2. Zoom in and zoom out

Directly related to the last tip. This is something to look for as you are reading a book of the Bible for a month.

Chart on PowerPoint

3. Alter your approach

“Variety is the spice of life.”

Change is good once in a while! We all get in the rythm of things, but after a while we get used to it and aren’t too engaged anymore. It’s okay to spice up your devotional life! The change can be many different things...

Time of day

Area you read

Study plan

Translation

Character study

Audio Bible

Selectively

That’s it for patient Bible study, we want to stick with it to allow the Word to make its impact on our hearts.

We’ve got a lot of young guys and girls into fishing in this room, what’s one thing I need to get right before I go fishing for a certain kind of fish? (Get the right lures)

What’s going to happen if I take this tiny lure out to deep sea fishing for sharks? (I’m going to return home sad, no sharks)

We’ve got to make sure we are using the right bait if we want to catch our goal. Same applies to Bible study. How do you approach the Scriptures? Are you expecting to understand it the way God intends you to? Or are you approaching it in a totally wrong mindframe?

These next blanks are 6 lures to help us get as much as we can from our Bible reading.

Lets turn to Luke 24:13-35 and we’ll walk through it together, I need your help to unpack this awesome story in the Bible.

Switch to iPad display

1. Who?

Who is in our text?

What is said about the people?

What do our people say?

2. What?

What is happening in this text?

What are the events? In what order?

What’s wrong here?

3. Where?

Where is the narrative taking place?

Where are the people in the story?

Where are they coming from?

Where are they going?

4. When?

When did these events take place?

What is going on in the Scriptural timeline?

5. Why?

Why were their eyes restrained (vs. 16)?

Why is Jesus’ reply in vs. 25-26 so pointed?

What’s the meaning of this interaction?

6. So What?

How can I apply this to my life?

What difference would this truth make in my life?