Actually, I was a little deceptive a few entries ago.  It takes me two weeks to prepare a Bible study.  I spend a few days reading the passage and reading commentaries and leave it for a week while I let all those truths settle down into my soul. 

Then the second week, I begin to think of how it all comes together.  What's the point?  And then... how do I get us there?  This is the point of serious rumination and prayer -- of desperate cries.  Lord, what do you want to reveal of yourself here?  What does the group really need to hear?  Lord, please don't let us leave this passage unchanged or missing what you intended.  Actually, I think I pray this through the whole process.

Then I will spend a day walking through the passage again, jotting down whatever questions naturally come to my mind that I want answers for.  And then at last, I bring it all together, trying to come up with the best questions that will bring the group to the main point, that will allow for good discussion and at last, application.  The last day, I pray like crazy so that I don't throw up as I contemplate leading a large group of people. 

I love Bible studies.

I'm always nervous when I'm going to lead a Bible study or teach a lesson.  The nervous energy usually means that I can't eat or attend to a conversation.  My years of teaching high school Sunday school are full of flashbacks of running into the prayer room seconds before the class would start, falling on my face with desperate cries to God.  I think the anxiety is mostly due, on one hand, to my need to control and the need to give up control if I want God to work, and on the other hand, the anxious anticipation of God to do something unanticipated.  Bible studies just don't work like formulas.  And that's what's so exciting and terrifying to me.  I can't control the outcome.  The Holy Spirit breathes wherever he wills.  You don't know exactly where he's going to go or what will happen, but you know with certainly that something will happen.  The inability to foresee, predict and control outcomes can be so terrifying to me.

I just finished spending a day plus a week to prepare a Bible study.  Does anyone else spend this much time?  I think I am on the slow side in Bible study prep, but I'm realizing that my goals act as a tension which push me to keep refining.

As I write the study, my goals include:
1.  Writing questions that will lead to discussion easily:  They need to be thought-provoking but not too impossibly perplexing.  They need to not be dead-end questions with one-word answers.
2.  To be accurate in my interpretation of the truth and lead others to those accurate interpretations.
3.  To not have a boring Bible study.

Of course, ultimately, I am sending up desperate prayers that God would show up.  What's the point of a Bible study if he doesn't?  Who wants a mental exercise?  Not me.  I'm not a literature teacher, leading a discussion on a piece of literature.  I'm a rough-hewn signpost, hoping to point others to Jesus -- an unremarkable facilitator, hoping to open ways for the Holy Spirit to manifest his power and his presence.  I wouldn't 'throw away' so much precious life if I didn't fiercely believe that God's word has the power to transform lives.  God's word has an explosive dynamite impact on souls.  I believe it, I believe it, I believe it.  I might not get to see explosions every time I lead a Bible study, but I believe it's happening and bound to happen in visible ways.  And so I pray desperately, Lord, please show up!

So we've had two classes of Hermeneutics with about 150 pages of reading already, and I've learned that when we approach the Bible, we need to ask what the author's original intent was in writing to his original reader.  We need to remember that the Bible was NOT written to us, it was written to a certain reader during the author's time.  To ask the question, "What does this passage say to me?" is the wrong way to approach it.  The Bible wasn't written to you, but it's written for you.   We need to ask:  What did the author mean to say to his original readers? -- and then, How is that significant for me today?

Sam and I didn't worship at church today.  We were about to leave but I started feeling so nauseous from the vicodin I've been taking for my wisdom teeth extraction that we ended up staying home.  We held worship service in our home - worship on the guitar, followed by a good hermeneutical study of the book of Haggai.  In context.

This reminded me that it wasn't too long ago that we were doing Bible study poorly.  Didn't we have everyone sit in a circle and say what they think the passage means and approve everyone's interpretation as valid?  Ugh, that was bad.

Mary Ann:  Man, this means I've been leading Bible studies poorly for the last ten years.  How come nobody told me?
Sam:  Because Navigators don't go to seminary.
Mary Ann:  OH.  Tru dat.

I can't wait to lead Bible studies better than I've ever done before.