Learning to Engage the Bible for Yourself | Ep. 137

Do you find yourself relying on pastors, teachers, or Bible studies more than your own time in Scripture? In this episode, we talk about why personal engagement with God's Word is essential for spiritual maturity. Anchored in Acts 17 and Acts 8, we explore the balance between receiving guidance and taking responsibility for your own understanding. If you've ever felt dependent on others to explain the Bible, this conversation will help you build discernment, strengthen your foundation, and engage Scripture with greater confidence.

👉 Listen to a related episode: Bible Reading vs Bible Study: What's the Difference (and Why It Matters) | Ep. 127

Transcript

Welcome And Quick Housekeeping

0:01

This is episode 137, and I'm your host, Atoya, and this is Equip the Next, where you get equipped to lead disciple and move the mission forward. It's time to engage in the word. You don't want to miss this. Listen, if you are new and you would like to engage in scripture, I would suggest, possibly the book of James, check out episode 105, where I give you a very top-line view of how to study the book of James. I think it'll be very encouraging and um is a great place to start if you are new to diving in scripture, I guess. So listen, um, without further ado, we are gonna get started. But I have to thank those people who um have been following me. Thank you so much. If you have shared, um subscribed, I greatly appreciate it. If you haven't, and these podcast episodes have been a blessing to you, I encourage you to share it with your friends, your family, your loved ones. It really does help the ministry. Um, and it really is greatly appreciated.

Teachers Are Gifts Not Replacements

1:48

So I want to get into learning to engage the word for yourself. Now, I'm gonna kind of start with um our focal point, which is that we must understand that teachers are a gift to the body of Christ. Okay, that they're they're a gift, but believers are also invited to engage in scripture personally. We talked about this last week, kind of of how um we can be codependent to other people as an excuse to not want to study scripture because they do it for us. That was that was like, you know, back well that there are some people that believe that, like the lay members can't really open scripture. We have to go to the higher-ups, and that is not the case. Teachers are definitely needed. I'm a teacher, um, I love to teach the word, but I also want to encourage people to engage in scripture personally, it's so important to understand scripture. We say we see that in Acts 17 with the Bereans, um, and so many other areas, we see that in Scripture, but it's just one of those common sense things that we need to get regardless of what other people might say or what they do. It's important that we engage in scripture. I want to ask, I want you to ask yourself this question: Do I rely on others more than I engage the word for myself? Again, we kind of touched on this last week, but we're gonna hone right in because it's very important that we rely on each other to like grow, but also that we spend that personal time to engage in scripture for ourselves. I think it's fun too, because if you engage in scripture for yourself, and then you get with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and you talk about the scripture, you engage. That's so rich. It's so rich and so rewarding. And so I encourage people to study scripture for yourself.

Why Teaching Matters In Discipleship

4:04

I really, really quickly though, I want to highlight why teachers are necessary. Number one, they teach the word. Some people have a gift, it's a spiritual gift to teach, it's a function, it's not like a title per se, but it's just people have the that that they have the capacity to not only teach, but to consume content. You know what I'm saying? Um being that I went to seminary for a little while, it was a lot to consume. And one of the reasons why I kind of pulled back um from it, I'll say temporarily, is just because the workload was just I couldn't juggle all of it. But I did grow in the foundational structure of scripture, and that really helped me in seminary. And so, but you have to have a capacity, and not not everybody has that, and that's fine. You have to know what your grace to do. So they teach the word, they're also very useful in discipleship. We are all called to disciple one another's, but teachers are very good in that as well, but they also can bring clarity to the scripture. I feel like I'm a little bit more of a storyteller. That might work for some people, some other people might be a little bit more analytical, and so they may gravitate to a teacher that's that style, which is surprising because I learn from other teachers that way. Like if they're really some people would say that they're boring. For for me, I love it, right? But they bring clarity to the scripture, but that doesn't mean that you just rely on them. You should also and always want to learn the word for yourself. You should want to grow, you should want to build that uh uh Bible reading muscle so that you're able to understand scripture, especially more than ever in 2026. When we look at it, teachers equip the saints, but they do not replace personal engagement, you cannot bring them home with you. They they have their own lives, they have downtime, they you know, they're not on call. Teachers are there to equip the saints, but they do not replace personal engagement.

The Bereans Model Daily Examination

6:40

Just like when we look at the Bereans, the Bereans received teaching with eagerness, but guess what they did? They examined the scriptures. Actually, let's go to um Acts 17. I think it's 11. Acts 17. Is that where I want to go? Yeah. Talking about Bereans. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessal Thessalonica, Thessalonica. There you go. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So, yeah, they heard and received the teaching with eagerness, and they were so like invested at this point, but they also examined the scriptures for themselves to learn if those things were true, and not even just to do it, like uh, you know, in general, you should just want to learn the scriptures, not just like be like, okay, is this true necessarily? I mean, yeah, but also just so that you can learn and understand and grow in in God, grow and understand more

Guidance Helps Dependency Stunts Growth

8:03

about scripture. There's another one um I wanted to look at, and that's Acts 8, 31, where we're looking at the eunuch, Ethiopian eunuch. Let's go to yeah, 31, and he was reading Isaiah, and he said something. I'm gonna go down to Yeah, I'll say 31. He said, and he said um to to Philip, he was like, How can I? Because he was like, Do you understand what this means? And he said, How can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to s to come up and to sit with him. That I wanted to highlight that part right there because again, if you don't understand it, we talked about the internal conflict at the beginning of this series. If you don't understand something, that's where you have that fellowship, that's where you have teachers, you have some teachers who are very knowledgeable in the New Testament, some who are very knowledgeable in the Old Testament, some may be knowledgeable in a particular book that they have studied their entire life. There's just so many people that are gifted and have the capacity, and that's very much needed, but you still are required to study for yourself, even in that. We have to always understand that guidance is good, but again, dependency, or I should say codependency can weaken growth. It'll have you drinking that milk, it'll weaken that growth. We depend on one another to grow, but we don't want to be codependent. They're to guide you, but also not you don't want to be enabled. That's the yeah, you don't want to be enabled. So mature disciples learn to listen, they test, and they read the word. Because when we look at the Christ thread, it's for equipping. He wants you to search him out. And guess what? It also requires personal responsibility.

Church Hurt And Personal Responsibility

10:24

You can't blame anyone, and I'm gonna say this, this just popped in my head. This isn't this is not minimizing church hurt. Okay, this is not minimizing it because people have been church hurt, and that is something that's very serious. But I would say that a majority of the people that have been church hurt or are going through that, largely it's because they didn't know this the word, they didn't know scripture, they didn't know how to study it, nobody taught them how to study it, and so they were probably more dependent on the leader or leadership, and those that leader let them down, and that's a that's a low blow, and it's very, very hard sometimes for people to come up. I know people that are like still not coming up from that, and it's really hard, and I feel for them, I pray for them. But if you know scripture and you understand it, and remember, this is a personal responsibility because only your the pastor can only do so much, the teacher can only do so much, the leaders can only do so much, they're one person, and they probably have a lot of people coming at them. It doesn't excuse them from anything, of course. They take a leadership position, but we have a personal responsibility to look at scripture and study it for ourselves, even myself when I was in my 20s and growing up and not knowing a lot about scripture. I didn't know. And you know, looking back, I'm like, man, I wasted a lot of time. Not that I'm regretting, but I learned how much time I wasted because I did stuff in error, thinking that that was what you're supposed to do. And God's loving and mercy and grace. He, you know, he said, Well, she don't know nothing, so we're gonna just let that slide. But it's still a learning lesson that we have a res a personal responsibility to learn scripture for ourselves. It you don't have to learn a whole chunk in a day, which is why I pointed out the book of James. It's really good for a practical living for Christians today. But whatever it is, you don't have to learn everything in a day. I um have read the Bible from cover to cover many a time, but we're reading it this time chronologically, and I'm gonna be honest, I don't know, like I'm not well versed in the old testament as much. Like I know a lot of it, but not where I would feel comfortable teaching it like that. So I'm learning and growing while we're reading through it and being able to decide um dissect it, especially now that I went to seminary. Now I can look at it differently than like when I was in my 20s. But I'm learning and growing, um, and now able to spend more time in it and pause and really reflect because we have um EFP discussion meet meetups twice a month, and then we have our coffee chat once a quarter. But the the um the meetups twice a month, we're actually just discussing what we've read, what stood out to us. Where's the Christ thread if we find a Christ thread? Like being able to talk about that and engage and being able to pause and take your time so you you can take your time. You don't have to rush through, you just need to

A Simple Scripture Engagement Challenge

13:52

start. So I challenge you to read a passage on your own before seeking outside explanation or anything like that this week. Read it on your own first, read it a couple times, maybe pick like a um a chapter. Pick like a chapter. Um you want to do something easy, go in the New Testament. It's a little bit more, especially epistles. Just pick a pick a chapter. Well, actually, maybe not. Epistles you should read straight through. It's a letter. But for the sake of this challenge, just pick a chapter anywhere and read it and read it, and kind of, you know, whatever stands out to you, maybe circle it, annotate, whatever you want to do, get a notebook, and really just let it get in you. And then maybe you can find some commentary or if you have a Bible dictionary, look up words that stand out to you. But I challenge you to engage in scripture. Be blessed.

Final Encouragement And Closing

14:57

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for listening to the Equit the Next podcast. If this episode blessed you, I'd appreciate it if you leave a review and share it with someone who can use a little encouragement. Now grow in God's word and lead boldly.