The Importance of Personal Study in the Life of a Christian
The world is full of people telling others what it means to be a christian. What I find funny is that a lot of the noise online about Christianity comes from people who don’t follow the faith. It comes from people who are judging Christians for not following what they deem is Christianity or what it should look like. A lot of the noise online that I’ve seen is people telling Christians they are not real Christians because they do not do x, y, or z.
For the Christian, we shouldn’t be listening to the world for guidance on how to be a Christian. I won’t lie though, years ago, I was listening to the world on what it means to be a christian. I would read things that sounded just right enough to change my perspective or my mind. It was how I ended up being mormon for a year. There was just enough truth to make me think that everything else that was said or believed in the religion was actual truth.
It’s easy to sway along with the wind when you don’t have a foundation to stand on. It’s easy to go along with whatever sounds good or sounds “right” when we have no roots in the ground, keeping us secure in truth. I was living like this without even realizing it. In fact, I would bet a lot of proclaiming Christians are in the same boat, they sort of blow along with the wind instead of having a secure, solid foundation. Yet, they think they do. I know I did.
How do we fix it though? How do we build that solid foundation that Jesus talks about in the sermon on the mount? How do we get the secure faith that the disciples had—that faith that could look at the possibility of death and not back down from the truth?
Depending on who you ask, there are a thousand different answers to that question. I’ll just share my experience though and what worked for me, what changed for me. For me, it started with personal study.
Prior to 2020, I was in a church. I was serving in ministry. I was leading small groups. I really thought I had the whole christian thing down. I thought I knew what I was doing and I thought I matched up to what christanity looked like. In reality though, I was playing a part. I was being who I thought I needed to be in order to be a christian. I was saying the things I heard and knew were right. I saw doing what I saw others do and what others told me to do. If I was asked to do something, I just said yes. I never asked if it was a yes I was supposed to give. I trusted everybody else around me to tell me what God was doing and saying. I would pray. I would journal. I would talk to God. I would hear from God. I would find answers to my prayers. Yet, I still felt like something was off. Turns out I was the one still calling the shots. I wasn’t fully trusting God or even fully believing in God. I was letting everybody else around me paint a picture of what christianity looked like and I fit myself to fit that mold. Even when I was exhausted and at the end of myself, I didn’t stop or take a break. I had to fit what I thought I needed to fit.
I was really good at reading books from others on what Christian life looked like and I read a few of them. I was really good at talking to people about Christian life and I would follow what we talked about. I was really good at modeling things off what I saw from others. What I wasn’t good at was reading the Bible.
In 2020, I watched a documentary called American Gospel. This is the movie that became the catalyst for my own personal study into the Bible. At the start of 2020, I started doing a yearly reading plan and I was mostly consistent with it. It was casual though, I was casually reading the Bible. I wasn’t doing deep dives to study and understand. Then, American Gospel came along and it opened my eyes to a lot of things I never thought about within the church. Mostly, that people can believe in a fake christianity. That alone was mind boggling and enough to rattle me. There are people who believed in something that looked like Christanity, kind of talked like Christianity, and maybe even sounded like Christanity, yet, they weren’t following the real gospel. They weren’t following the real Christ. Then I started asking myself, would I fall into that category?
American Gospel got me to stop casually reading the Bible, and start studying the Bible. I started reading commentaries when verses didn’t make sense. When I started making connections, I would gather more background information to confirm the connection. I started treating the Bible as a course to be studied instead of something to be enojyed.
Don’t get me wrong, the Bible is both. It is something to be studied for understanding. The Bible is literally a guidebook for life. Every issue we deal with, God talks about, even if you cannot pull up the exact word from the index. It is also meant to be enjoyed though, the rich descriptions of history, buildings, and the lives of those who lived before us. The Bible is a study guide for life and a story to be enjoyed and talked about. The whole story points back to God and His character. If you are unsure of who God is, grab the Bible.
So Christian, don’t let the world tell you what it means to be a Christian. Don’t let the world tell you what it looks like to be a Christian. Let the truth about Christianity come from the one who it is for. Jesus died to save you from eternity in hell. There is nothing we can do to earn forgiveness, but forgiveness is freely given to us.
Don’t just take my word for it though. Crack open your Bible and read for yourself. American Gospel was the catalyst for me to dive into my Bible more and actually study it. It’s been four years since I first saw that movie and in the past four years I have learned what it looks like to follow Christ. I have discovered the gospel and how foundational it is to faith. I’ve also learned to let go of a lot of things I used to clutch with all my might.
It is only possible because of Christ and his work in me. However, I wouldn’t know who God is if I wasn’t reading the Bible, learning about who He is. If you’re unsure about Christianity or even if you think you know it all, I encourage you to pick up your Bible. Take a read, learn something about God, and allow yourself to see God for exactly who He is, who He says He is. Let’s stop letting the world be the one who defines God and defines Christanity.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash