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Welcome to Day 1479 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomBible Study \u2013 God Desires Us To Learn and Understand \u2013 Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.\xa0Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.\xa0Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1479 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.\xa0Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.\xa0For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.\xa0You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God\u2019s Word and in prayer.\xa0It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.\xa0As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.\xa0\xa0\xa0
We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.\xa0Our current insights are focusing on study habits to build a strong foundation. Today let us meditate on:
Bible Study \u2013 God Desires Us To Learn and Understand
\xb7\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0Insight Twenty-One: Believe That God Will Help YouGod wants us to understand Scripture. It stands to reason, then, that he\u2019s perfectly willing to help us do that. I\u2019m not talking about including a formulaic prayer for assistance when you begin your Bible study. I\u2019m not recommending a specific prayer at all, though that\u2019s appropriate. I\u2019m suggesting that you go into Bible study expecting God to help you with something he already wants you to do.
This is how Dr. Heiser explains it. \u201cI learned this lesson in some startling ways in graduate school. I chose a controversial topic for my dissertation. Granted, every dissertation is supposed to blaze a new path, but mine had an element of risk. I was bucking consensus opinions because I thought I\u2019d noticed something unaddressed in centuries (really, millennia) of scholarship about the Hebrew Bible. In grad school, it isn\u2019t enough to say; I don\u2019t think the way everyone else does. You have to offer something coherent and defend it adequately to please a room full of top-tier scholars.
One day I walked into the library absorbed with a particularly vexing problem that I couldn\u2019t unravel in my mind. I was there because I\u2019d come across a reference to an essay in a book that sounded like it might be useful. I went to the stacks to get the volume, and, inexplicably, it wasn\u2019t there. The computer catalog said it had not been checked out, but all I saw on the shelf was a rectangular hole. I had to get to work, so I turned around to leave. My eye fell on a random book whose title I\u2019d never seen. Something told me to open it. I did. To my astonishment, there was an essay in the Table of Contents on precisely what I was struggling with.
I hadn\u2019t prayed before that first incident, but I knew God was looking out for me. I\u2019d do my research and go to the library and tell God I needed direction. I was honest. There were times I felt lost with my topic.
God helped me. The experience I described above was repeated a half-dozen times while writing my dissertation. It got to the point where I wouldn\u2019t leave the library without checking the books on either side of one I\u2019d come for. I always check the shelf behind me, too
\xb7\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0Insight Twenty-Two: Believing What the Bible Says In Not Bible Study
Not all