How to Study the Bible Pt 4: What Does It Mean for Me?

But we want to go to the Word of God because it's powerful to change lives. It's powerful to change who we are, right? And so we said that all Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work. So we want to start to put those things into action.

And so we want to apply God's Word to our lives. Now, if you're going to apply God's Word, I'm sure there's lots of ways that you can look at it. But again, I like to ask questions. And I get this because that's how Jesus always did things. You ever notice throughout the Gospels that Jesus was constantly asking his disciples questions? Matter of fact, rarely did he just start off by telling them something.

He always started off by asking them something to create a thought that he could then answer because they didn't know how to answer it. And so I like to ask questions. I like to ask myself questions when I get into God's word. So as I look to apply God's word to my life, and as I look to apply God's word to your lives, as I'm putting together a study, there's always five questions I'm looking to answer. So I want to go over these five questions.

The first question I'm always looking for is, what do I learn about God? What do I learn about God? Because God is something that's very foreign to our mentality. The character and nature of God is the very opposite of us because of sin. Because sin changed our view of God. Because after all, what was one of the great things that Satan caused Eve to do when he tempted her? He caused her to

question God, right? And so when she decided she would create God in her own image, it destroyed man's view of God. And so one of the things that God's word does is it restores a proper view of God. And so the first question I'm always looking to answer is, Lord, what do you want me to learn about you? What do you want me to learn about your character? What do you want me to learn about your nature? Because

as we get into God's word, the first thing we realize is that God's character and nature is so much more complex than we think, right? Like if you are more of a legally minded person than God for you is always justice, right? If you're more of a mercifully minded person, God for you is always mercy. If you're more of a love-minded person, then God for you is always love. If kindness is

the thing that's the most important to you, then God is always kind. Here's the fascinating thing. God is all of those things. And one of the things that God's word teaches us is that God's character is immutable. So all of those things are true about God without violating his other aspects of his character, right? God is both gracious and just. God is both merciful and a God of judgment. And so the

first thing that we want to ask is, what do I learn about God? The second question that I want to ask as I apply God's word to myself is, what do I learn about man? Or more specifically, what do I learn about myself? Now, it's kind of interesting to kind of take both of those aspects of that question, because I find it fascinating to read through scripture and be like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't

know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't That's why humanity is the way that it is. You ever see things and you're going, I don't get it. Why would, why would people act that way? Why would, why would anybody do that? And then you read God's word and you're like, that's why they do that. And God's word really answers a lot of

questions about humanity. And what's fascinating to me in answering that question about man is how, when you read through, especially old Testament prophets, how often you see the 21st century put down in words, only it's put down in words 4,000 years ago. years ago, right? Because man really doesn't change. We're told again about humanity, that there's nothing new under the sun. We're told about Ecclesiastes, right? And so, so not much

really changes along those ways, but, but we want to take it always from the broad and bring it down to the very narrow. And so it's not just, what do I learn about man? Because then I start just applying it all to everybody else. I then have to shrink that question down and say, what do I learn about myself? And I will guarantee if you will ask the question, Lord, what do you want me to

learn about myself from this passage? He will always reveal it to you because the word of God is like a mirror, right? And it, and it reflects who I am. And the unfortunate thing about when God's mirror reflects who I am is that I often find myself saying, Ooh, as it turns out, I'm the problem, right? I don't probably know Swifties in here. I'd quote Taylor Swift on this one because

she says, it's me. Hey, I'm the problem. It's me. Right. And that's what God's word does for us is it, is it reveals myself. And so I need to ask the question, Lord, what do you want me to learn about myself? Now, number three, the third question I need to answer is what attitudes do I need to change? What attitudes do I need to change? Now the next one, which we'll get to

in just a second is what actions do I need to change? And I should have put those the other way because I find that actions are a lot easier to change than attitudes. Have you ever noticed that? So I should have made this like in progressively difficult things because we have to ask what attitudes do I need to change? Um, sometimes they're attitudes of unbelief. Matter of fact, I was just reading in numbers in my own personal devotional time. And

yesterday I read how they wouldn't enter the land and, and when they wouldn't enter the land, I thought, isn't that just like me? And it's not that I'm facing some sort of a giant that, that I can't overcome, but I look at things and I go, that's going to be hard. And I don't know if I can do that. And so I will shy away from difficult things because it's going to be really hard. And God

said, that's what you do, Ryan. You act just like the children of Israel. And I was like, ouch, but it's good. It's good for him to show those things to us, right? Because he revealed attitudes inside of me, attitudes about me that need to change. Sometimes he'll reveal attitudes in you, uh, towards other people and those things need to change. And so I'm always asking God,

what attitudes do I need to change? And so I'm always asking God, what attitudes do I need to change? The fourth thing is I'm going to ask what actions do I need to change? What actions do I need to change? Sometimes the actions that God wants to change in us are negative things. Like these are the things you need to stop doing. And it's kind of fascinating, really Psalm one kind of

addresses both, both of these things that addresses things we should not be doing. And so we change our actions for the negative, right? Because we're going to stop doing some things. But God's word also shows us how to change actions in the positive because he then shows us what we should do, even in Psalm one, right? And we'll talk about that with some things that stuck out to me.

And this is the thing that I love about God's word is that God's word is always faithful, that it shows that if it's going to show us where we're wrong, it will always show us how to be right. You ever, you ever work for somebody that will always point out what's wrong and they'll never tell you how to do it right. And you're going, okay, help me help you or help me help you help me or however that works. Because I want to do the right thing, but you won't tell me what your standards are.

And if you won't tell me what your standards are, I don't know how to meet them. Well, God's word is really good that if it says, this is where you're missing the standard, he says, and now this is what you need to do. If you will, God's word shows us what we need to obey, obey by cutting things off, obey by doing things, but it's always going to do those things. But I have to ask myself, Lord, what actions do you want me to change based on what I just read out of that particular passage of scripture? And then the fifth question that I'm always looking

to answer is this, what warnings do I need to pay attention to? What warnings do I need to pay attention to? Now, your name is never going to show up in scripture unless you have a biblical name. And then occasionally it's going to show up in scripture, but, but God's never going to just put your name down in the Bible and say, this is what Ryan needs to watch out for. But I do pay

attention to things. That come up in scripture. When I see somebody else and I think, Hey, that attitude looks like my attitude or that action looks like my action. And I know that if I don't change, I'm going to end up just like them. The conference that we did two or three weeks ago up in Johnson County, the theme was out of first Corinthians chapter 10, where it says, these things were written for

your admonition, talking about all of the old Testament, old Testament examples, so that you would learn and not follow their example. And that's what scripture is really good at doing for us. Is it gives us warnings. Sometimes those warnings are clear. I think, I think one of the greatest warnings that you see in all of scripture is, is when Cain kills Abel, right? And, and God

calls Cain aside. He says, Cain, bro, come here. I mean, where's your brother? And he says, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? And God says, maybe one of the scariest phrases I've ever read in all of scripture. When he says, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you. But you should rule over it, right? Like that's a fearful warning. And I should take that and I

should go, whoa, because that benefit was true of him when temptation was facing him. It's probably true of me when temptation is facing me, that it's not only crouching at the door, but its desire is to rule over me. So I need to pay attention to those kinds of warnings. Now, as I'm going through my own personal Bible study, again, I'm going to tell you this from two different aspects.

So if I'm preparing a study to present to you, then I'm going to take those things and I'm going to be a little bit more generic about it because while I give you a lot of things about my life, and it may be every now and then more transparent than I should be with you, I'm not going to tell you some, some dirty details of my life, right? Because it would be inappropriate. And so I'm going to be a little bit generic as to how I present these things to you. But if I'm, if I'm in my own devotional life and I'm writing these things down, I'm going to start going into some detail about myself. And, and if I need to burn

that later, I will, but, but, but I'm going to start writing this stuff down. And if, and if I'm going through Psalm one, or I'm going through any portion of scripture, then that's exactly what I'm going to start doing. Now, you're not putting a Bible study together. You're having a devotional life, right? So what you need to do is you need to start writing some of these things down, right?

You need to start writing down what God speaks to you. I've gone through several different phases of this in my life. There was a point in time where I tried to journal the entire chapter, where I would just give a quick synopsis and what stuck out to me the most. Then I graduated college and didn't have time, right? And so, so I couldn't do that anymore. So then I started just picking out a verse

and a verse or two, and I would write out the verse and underneath of the verse. And this is a really good thing to do. I'm telling you how the progression has happened in me. And I may go back to this at some point in time. I do it a little bit different now, but this was a method that was really good for me. And if you have time to summarize the entire chapter and then give a

little personal application, then that's a wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, you will lock in God's word in an incredibly powerful way like that. As a matter of fact, if you can put it in your own words, you will always remember what John chapter 14 was about, right? So then I started being like, okay, I don't have time to do that, but I can write out this verse and why this verse stuck out to me and how I'm going to apply it to my life. Now I do bullet points, right? So like

today I was in Numbers. I don't remember the exact chapters. It was Korah's Rebellion. I remember that, but I don't remember the address of it, but I was in Numbers. And so I wrote Numbers, it was like 20 and 21 or something like that. And then below that I wrote, there were three things that stuck out to me. So I wrote number one, this stuck out. Number two, this

stuck out. Number three, this stuck out. I didn't write the whole verse out, but I wrote down the point that really stuck out to me. So you do it however you want to. The important thing is if you write it down, then it will carry it a lot easier from here to here. And remember it. Now I have been able to convince about 99.8% of people to do this. There are about

0.2% they're holding out on me and they'll hold out on me for the rest of their life. One of them is my wife. Okay. So don't give her a hard time about it. She's not here tonight. Don't give her a hard time about it. I give her a hard time about it all the time. It is what it is. But I used to do a Bible study with a group of kids. And in this Bible study, and I did it multiple years in a row,

and in this Bible study, I said, okay, what did you guys read that stuck out to you? And the first would show up to a Bible study. They'd go, uh, and I know, okay, I know I read. I know I read. And I read something and I liked it. I remember that. But in fact, I think it was even in Matthew. I read something in Matthew and I liked it. I'm like, we're winning so far. Listen,

you get anybody to read the Bible and like it and remember what book it came out of, you are already leaps and bounds beyond 98% of people in the church today. Okay. You just need to understand that. But I told him, okay, so here's what I want you to do. This time, go through, I don't even care if you just underline a verse and write, I liked it on the side. You're going

to remember what it was and why you liked it. And so the next week they'd show up and they would have taken some notes or journaled something or written down some of their bullet points. And they come in and I say, okay, what'd you read? And we talked for an hour. You know why? Because they wrote it down. And then you remember it that way. And then you know what you can do?

That becomes what I call an Ebenezer stone. We'll cover that when we get into Joshua. And all of a sudden, now you're going to be able to look back and you'll go, you know what? On June 25th of 2023, this is what God spoke to me. And I have seen his faithfulness in my life in that area over this last year. And it's been so cool to see. It becomes your place of remembrance that God showed you something in your life that

needed to change. And he showed you the steps you needed to take to change it and obedience. You took and the Holy Spirit absolutely changed your life. And now you even remember when it started because you wrote it down. So as you're answering these questions, my real encouragement to you is that you write it down. That's why I recommend things like writing in your Bible or having a

journaling Bible or keeping a sweet leather journal or a mead notebook or the 35 cent notebook you can get at Walmart right now, right? Just start writing this stuff down. And I always have people say the same thing. They're like, Ryan, I'm scared to write stuff down because somebody's eventually going to read it. Well, I have two answers for you on that. One of them came from David Jeremiah,

right? Believe it or not, David Jeremiah, of all people was like, I am scared for anybody to read all, to read all of the things that I've written down over the years. So I have it written into my will that when I die, my wife will burn every thing that I've written, that I've journaled because I don't have it. want anybody to read those things because that was between me and Jesus and nobody else needs to know it. And I was like, I need a will. So that's the first thing is, listen, you don't

have to keep it. Write it down, burn it, get rid of it. It'll still be in your brain. But number two, if somebody reads the struggles that you're having and they judge you for it, that's a greater indication of how much they need to grow than it is of how much you need to grow. So those are the things that I have to say, but I definitely have a shelf of things that will be burned upon my death.

So now I will say this too, when you begin the application process in your life, this is another place where commentaries can come in really handy because it's really, really interesting to read what somebody else has derived out of God's word because it will often stir other things in your mind and go, oh, that's a good point. And it'll point out another scripture to you. And it just really helps. I actually watched...

I watched a little YouTube video of somebody that was talking about how they study through a book of the Bible. And they talk about the fact that how they do is when they start off, they do kind of like what we talked about. They go through and they mark all of the important words, all of the things that stick out. They said, then I read through it. Oddly enough, this wasn't a Calvary

Chapel YouTube video that I watched, but they used David Guzik. They said, then I read through the entire... Every chapter I read through with David Guzik and I write down things that stick out to me from what he had to say. And then I start taking my own notes based on what stuck out to me, what stuck out to him, and what God's showing me through it. I thought that was a pretty fascinating way to do things. So anyway,

this is kind of where commentaries that can kind of come into play. So now, the next thing that I want to do is I want to tell you based on those things, I'm going to tell you the six things that stuck out to me out of Psalm 1. Okay, I'm going to give you my own personal application out of Psalm 1. So I think it's really important that if you're going to talk about the word, you should read God's word first. So let's look at Psalm 1, verse 1. It says,

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so,

but they are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Now, as I wrote these things down today, I really did do the best that I could to base it off of everything that we've talked about in here over the last two weeks. I looked over a couple of

commentaries shortly, but I thought, you know, I really just want to base it off of what we've discussed. That way you understand kind of how we do this. And so based on what I read here, this is Ryan's personal journal about what stuck out to me based on what it says and what it means. Number one, sin is a downward spiral. Sin is a downward spiral. Did you take note of the

progression of words in verse one? It says, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor does he stand in the path of sinners, nor does he sit in the seat of the scoffer. Do you notice a downward spiral that takes place there? He starts off by walking, walking by, and then all of a sudden he's standing. And then after he's walked and stood, he

sits because sin is a downward spiral. Now there was a cross-reference that came up in my own mind. It wasn't in scripture, but because I study other parts of scripture, I started thinking about another story that was really similar to that. And that's the story of Lot. I didn't have her put that up there, but the story of Lot stuck out to me. And so I even took just a minute and I looked back at the story of Lot. Do you remember

the story of Lot? Lot was Abraham's nephew, and it was time for Lot and Abraham to part ways. And so you see an interesting downward spiral that took place with Lot. Lot started off pitching his tent toward Sodom, setting up his camp towards Sodom, right? Then Lot moved into Sodom. Next time that you see Lot, he's living in Sodom. But then he was sitting in the seat of the

scornful because he was sitting in the gate of the city where the town leaders live. You see the downward spiral of sin. If I walk near it and I let it start to penetrate my mind, then all of a sudden I start to stand in it because I can put up with it a little bit longer. And then pretty soon I'm just sitting in it because it doesn't bother me any longer. It's actually a part of who I am. And so as I see that, I go, there's a downward spiral of sin. Now,

what does that mean for me? It means that I better beware of the downward spiral of sin because I cannot entertain anything. Because if I entertain it, then pretty soon it'll be something that I'm standing in. And then once I'm standing in it, I'll be sitting in it. I'll wake up one day and go, how did I end up sitting with that? the mockers, right? How did I end up sitting with all of the people who are opposed to the things

of God? So I have to pay attention to the downward spiral of sin. The second thing that I thought of or kind of derived from our study is you have to be careful what you listen to, what you watch, and what you take in to avoid the counsel of the ungodly. I started thinking about this because remember we said that the word counsel meant what? You guys remember? It meant advice, essentially

the advice of the wicked. I don't want to stand in the advice of the wicked. Therefore, I need to be careful what's going into my ear gates and my eye gates because all around us all the time, I am being given the advice of the wicked, right? I was standing next to a young lady the other day who I know grew up in church, and I heard her say this to somebody. She said, I think you'll find the answer

within yourself. And I was like, no, you won't. You'll find sin within yourself. That's what you'll find. You'll find the answer in Jesus. But you see, that is a worldly idea. That tells me that she's probably been hearing that somewhere. And probably the place that she's been hearing that is in every show that she watches and all the music that she listens to and probably the psychology

class that she had to take, right? And so she allowed herself to sit in the seat of the scorn of the ungodly. And as we listen to that, if we're not careful to discern, hey, that's the advice of the ungodly, it kind of starts to sound pretty good, right? Because the advice of the world always sounds good until we compare it to what God's word has to say. Therefore, I need to be careful

what I listen to. I will always say that the most foundationally, theologically correct song that we ever sang about sanctification when we were kids is be careful little eyes what you see, oh, be careful little ears what you hear, right? Like that foundation is the strongest thing that you can have a kid stand on because they start thinking you're right. Because the things that I hear and the things that I see affect the way that I think. That's why he says the blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.

That's the second thing that stuck out to me. The third thing that stuck out to me is the second thing that stuck out to me is the second thing that stuck out to me is this. What do I take the most delight in? Do you remember it says in verse two, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. We said that the word delight meant desire, longing, or pleasure. So what do I find myself desiring the most? Now that's a question

that I can't necessarily answer right away. And sometimes as I'm applying things to my life personally, all I do is write down an open-ended question. Lord, what do I desire the most? Because sometimes, to quote a friend of mine, that's just not something you can learn in 10 minutes, right? Because sometimes we don't pick that up right away, but we can start the conversation with God. So part of personal application is starting a

conversation with God. Lord, your word says that I'm supposed to delight in the law of the Lord. I'm supposed to find my greatest pleasure in your word. So what do I find the most pleasure in? What do I find myself thinking about the most? And then allow God to reveal that to you. Because once you ask God that open-ended question, he's like, I was hoping you would ask, because I'd really like to show you what you've been

delighting in the most. And as he reveals it to you, often through his word, sometimes other ways, you learn the things that need to change. So what do I take the most delight in? Number four, meditating on God's word is not just for Sunday mornings or morning devotions. It's an all day, every day process. Meditating on God's word is not just for Sunday mornings

or morning devotions. It's an all day, every day process. Now, I know what's going to be thought of right now. Ryan, you're a pastor. Thinking about God's word is the only thing you have to think about all day long. Okay. A, that's not true. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. I am a pastor. way more to think about during the day than just whether or not he gets to study today.

But B, even when I wasn't a pastor, when I worked in the secular workforce, I still had to learn the importance of meditating on God's word all day long. Because do you know who I worked around all the time when I wasn't a pastor? Heathens, right? I love them, and I love them dearly. Matter of fact, I just had a conversation with a guy I used to work with the other day, and it

was great. It was great catching up with him, and I think God's doing really good things in his life. But a lot of the people that I worked around were plain old heathens. They talked like heathens, they acted like heathens, and I took in a whole lot of garbage. And so I knew that as I'm taking in garbage, I have to meditate on God's word. And so it can't just be what you do on a Sunday

morning. That's a great time to think about God's word. And a good friend of mine in Bible college named Simon always challenged all of us, because he'd ask us later, especially after one of Chuck's lectures, he'd say, hey, let's talk about what Chuck talked about today. Let's talk about that a little bit. What did you think about it? And we're like, I don't know if I remember what Chuck talked about today.

He goes, it's okay. And he started talking to us about what he does to remember what he talks about every time he would come. He goes, I take the notes, and I literally make it an intentional point to think back over everything that was spoken of and chapel. And I thought, that's a pretty good point. And I thought, that's a pretty good point. And I thought, that's a pretty good

thing to do. But that's meditating on God's word day and night. So it's not just for Sunday mornings, not just for your morning devotions. It should be an all-day thing. But again, number five, that brings up a question for me. How can I make this an everyday part? Oh, it should say life. It says lift. I mean, it lifts me up too. Love lifted me. How can I make this a part of my

everyday life? Well, I don't always know what that is. I don't always know how to do it. I don't always know how to do that. And so I say, okay, Lord, show me how I meditate on your word day and night. Oh, she's so good. And you know what? God is so good to show me that. You know how God started showing me ways that I could meditate on his word day and night? He started giving me jobs that were

by myself. And so I would turn on Bible teaching when I'd work by myself. And so I would take it in that way. If I had any kind of control over the radio, I would either listen to the Christian music station, or I'd listen to Bible teaching on Bot Radio Network. If that wasn't a possibility, then I would start thinking, okay, what did I read in my devotions

this morning? I would even, you know, one of the greatest ways that you can meditate on God's word all day long, you could talk to somebody else about what you read. Ryan, you don't know the people I work around. Yes, I do. I worked around ex-cons every day. I'll never forget, sidebar. Okay. So there was this little dude that worked with us, right? He was a labor pro guy, temp labor

guy. His name was Danny. I can't tell you his last name, not only because I can't remember it, but I probably wouldn't tell you anyway. And Danny was this little gangbanger type guy, right? And so Danny's telling me about how he used to be in prison at one point in time. And so, you know, I'm just a talker. I ask people questions. Sometimes I regret them later,

but I ask him questions. I said, Danny, how'd you end up going to prison? He said, I tried to kill somebody. I said, did it work? He goes, nope, I just tried. I said, okay. Danny, what do you do when you're not doing labor pro work? I said, oh, crack. Okay. That seems like a bad idea. And then he starts telling me about how he always has to take care of himself. I said, Danny, do you have a gun with you right now? He goes, no, it's in my car.

And I was like, okay, dear Jesus. And I started meditating on God's word at that point in time, right? So while you may be going, Ryan, you don't know the guys I work with. I kind of do. Okay. I get it. So I started talking to Danny about Jesus. Every chance I got, I would tell Danny what I read in God's word that morning. I would tell him because I wanted the protection of the Holy spirit over my,

it was incredibly selfish on my part. Like Jesus take the wheel, right? And so I'd have those conversations with him, but that's one of the greatest ways that you can meditate on God's words by telling somebody else what you read. So you have to ask Lord, how can I make this a part of my everyday life? And then number six, the last thing I got out of this, and this is the warning

sin has consequences because did you notice what it says in verse six for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Sin has consequences. And that's a warning for us as believers. That's a warning for me as a believer in Jesus Christ is that I need to pay attention to the consequences of sin. Not only in my life, but also in the life of others. And I

have to pay attention to the consequences of sin. And I have to pay attention to the consequences of but in the lives of the people around me, and it's a warning for us. You see, if I'm doing this devotionally, those are my six points that I write down. I may only get two of those. If I've only got 10 or 15 minutes to pay attention, but that's how you apply God's word to your life. There's no magic to it. There's no,

there's no craziness to it. It's just, what does it say? What does it mean to me? How do I change my life based upon, or how does the Holy spirit change my life based upon what I just read in God's word? Now, we've got about 10 minutes left. So here's what I want to do. I had told you that most everybody has three problems you have to solve. What does it say?

What does it mean? How do I apply it? I said that as pastors, we have a fourth problem that we have to solve, and that's how do we communicate that to somebody else, right? How do I now communicate that in an understandable way to you guys? Okay, so I got to thinking, you know, really we all have to communicate God's Word to people. And then last week, somebody came up to me and said,

hey, you know, we kind of started talking about this in our Bible study group, and we really all at some point in time have to communicate what we've learned in God's Word to people. So I felt like that was a confirmation from the Holy Spirit to me that I should give you a little bit of an understanding of how to communicate God's Word with people. Now, I'm going to be honest. I sat back and went, huh, I don't always know my process on that.

I just write stuff down and talk. Hmm. I wonder what my process is. I wonder what my process is. So I started praying about it. And as I started thinking about how I communicate God's Word and how God wants me to communicate God's Word, I've come up with three things, okay? Three things that I call principles of how to communicate God's Word. And they're not overly like, they're not that deep.

Anyway, number one, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Especially if you've walked with God for a long time. Especially if you've been studying God's Word for a long time and you're really getting into, man, maybe you're starting to use some of the like Strong's and you're starting to learn how to pronounce some of the Greek words and some of that. Listen, the average person that you're talking to doesn't care if you can pronounce a Greek word.

Okay? We've got to keep it simple for people. And one of the greatest things that I have is people in my life, that when I don't keep things simple, they say, you didn't keep that simple. I'll never forget, I won't use his name. One of my former youth group kids said to me, can you put that in our city of Redneck Talk? And I was like, good word, good word. So keep it really simple because quite frankly, God wrote his Word in a really simple way.

You know what one of the greatest criticisms of Isaiah was? Is that he spoke too simply. It's just line upon line, precept upon precept. It's way too simple. But you know what people understand? The average person on the street understands? Simplicity. And quite frankly, I'm not smart enough to understand anything much deeper anyway. So by the time I learn it, it's had to be simplified for me.

So all I know how to do is try to give it to you in a simple way. So number one, keep it simple. Number two, keep it brief. Keep it brief. And I know some of you are thinking right now, Ryan, listen to yourself. I try really hard to keep it brief. But listen, I've watched this happen over and over again where somebody shares God's Word with somebody and they've struck gold and they just keep digging.

And you're like, okay, you communicated it in 30 seconds to them and they went, okay, and then you just kept talking. I've been guilty of it. I've watched other people be guilty of it. The greatest thing that you can do is keep it brief. There is beauty in brevity. As a matter of fact, oftentimes the more brief you can keep it with people, the better you hold their attention span.

After all, we are typically taught to have a scene change about every five seconds. So people's attention spans are a lot shorter than they used to be. Number three, be transparent, be humble. When you're communicating the truth of God's Word to somebody, you know what's happened to you first with God's Word, it's broken your heart. Because the only way, and listen, you can study it all you want to,

but you don't really understand it until God breaks you with it. And the way that it means something to you is because your heart's been broken by the Holy Spirit. And the best thing in the world that you can do is tell somebody what God's Word did to you and how it broke you and how God did a work inside of you. And it's because of you. It's because I struggle with this, that I can tell you that this is what God's Word

has to say about it. Because when people see reality like that, that's maturity. And they understand because now you are not someone who's preaching at them. You are now someone who is loving them and not speaking the truth in love and being transparent and being humble with them, even to the point of saying, when they ask you a question, you don't understand.

Great question. Let me get back with you. The more that we can be that way with people, the more they're much more willing to listen to what we have to say. So those are my three principles for communicating what God's Word has to say. So as we wrap up, any questions? Anybody got any questions on any of that that we talked about tonight? Okay. Praise the Lord.

Let's pray. Lord, thanks. Thanks for giving us this opportunity. I thank you for these. People wanting to learn, Lord, that you have given a hunger to this body, Lord, to want to know and study your Word. So Father, may the principles that we have talked about here, Lord, be things that we apply to our lives and really start getting into your Word and digging in so that we can

learn. Because Father, ultimately, we just want to be transformed into your image. Lord, we just want the hope that we have to be that which changes us and the hope that we have to be that. That we can take to the world around us. And so, Lord, continue to bless us and strengthen us as we seek you and your Word. In Jesus' name. Amen. Be blessed.