“Cry out for insight and ask for understanding” (Proverbs 2:3)
When I was on a church staff, I had the privilege of my office being between two pastors who had majored, one in the Greek and the other in Hebrew while in seminary. When I would be studying and find myself perplexed about a text in the Old Testament, I would tap on the door of the Hebrew major. When the same happened in the New Testament, I would go visit my Greek major colleague. You could say I had the best of both worlds, so to speak. My major was neither Greek nor Hebrew, thus my study load has increased since those days.
It is convenient when we regularly have access to the expertise of others who know more than we do. It is also a blessing to assemble and listen to a good sermon or gather for a comprehensive bible study taught by a gifted teacher. Sadly however, with Covid 19 neither of those are easy to do at the present time. Sure, there are some good podcasts and DVD studies out there, led by some very capable pastors and teachers; but what do we do when we have a question, or we want to better understand a verse? What happens when we need a person to talk to rather than a media personality to listen to?
That leads me to the thought that perhaps this lack of access to the expertise of others we “think” are more knowledgeable in Scripture than we are might be a good thing. Perhaps we have become too dependent on others to spoon feed us God’s word. Maybe we have been waiting for the “experts” to tell us what we should believe, rather than asking God to show us his truth. Is it even possible that we have listened to pastors and teachers more than we have listened to the Holy Spirit?
The apostle John wrote in I John 2:27, “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true – it is not a lie.” John is saying, “hey, you have the same Holy Spirit in you that is in me. He imparts truth to me, and he can and will impart it to you. You have the Master Teacher – God’s Holy Spirit living in you. You can learn from Him the things God wants you to know.”
Do you know what that means? It means the same Holy Spirit who teaches and enlightens pastors and bible teachers can and will teach us the wisdom and truth found in God’s word. We do not have to major in Hebrew or Greek. No pandemic can prevent us from understanding scripture. The Holy Spirit will open our hearts and minds to understand God’s word. THAT, my friends, is how we are taught in a pandemic.
Darlene