Beyond Today Daily

How to Have a Successful Bible Study: Part 4

When you read the Bible have an open mind and let God talk to you and be willing to change. 

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[Darris McNeely] I live in Ohio. And not too far from where I live, there is a town called Berea. Now I happen to know down the road from where I live in Kentucky there's another city named Berea with a college called Berea. Berea is a commonplace name in the United States. You know where it comes from? It comes from a reference in the Bible, in Acts 17, to a group of people in a city named Berea, where the Apostle Paul went to teach. And what it says about them helps us to understand something about Bible study.

We've been going through a series on Bible study here on BT Daily, and we're at point number four where we are talking about what it means to have successful Bible study. What we have to have is an open mind. When we sit down to read the Bible, let God talk to us, be willing to change. Even if it means letting go of long-held cherished beliefs we've been taught from childhood, or we've come to our own on our own study. If we can successfully apply this one study, this one tip of going at it with an open mind, then we will truly learn something. Because that's what a group of people that we are told about in the Bible, Acts 17:11, in the city of Berea where the Apostle Paul came, it speaks of these people with this description. "These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so." They searched the scriptures, and that search involved a very diligent desire and work to search all of the scriptures to come to an understanding of what they were hearing from Paul and everything else.

It's a city that existed anciently in Macedonia. It's given its name to a lot of other places in the world today. But it speaks to an attitude of being a Berean, someone who searches the Scriptures daily. Find out what is there, and whether what is being taught anywhere by anyone is so. Seek to understand and that way go into it with an open mind, you'll have successful Bible study.

That's BT Daily, join us next time.

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How to Understand the Bible

How to Understand the Bible

Millions of Bibles are sold or given away every year. It's the world's most popular book, but at the same time the most misunderstood! To many it's difficult to understand, yet the Bible itself gives us keys to understand it!

Darris McNeely

Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43 years. They have two sons, who are both married, and four grandchildren. Darris is the Associate Media Producer for the Church. He also is a resident faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center teaching Acts, Fundamentals of Belief and World News and Prophecy. He enjoys hunting, travel and reading and spending time with his grandchildren.