Rough

Some days, Bible storying and Bible studies just don’t work out the way you had hoped. This is one reason consistency is key. When we are regularly discipling and being discipled, we are not looking for a knockout every time we meet. We are looking to build each other up in love.

At Mr S’s house, we spent  most of the first hour just enjoying his daughter’s new found ability to hear. Her cochlear implant activation was wonderful and she could hear voices from day one. Now she is learning words, after 8 years in silence.

There are several steps in an oral inductive bible study. The three we start with are as follows.

1. Someone reads the Biblical passage.
2. Someone tells the Biblical passage.
3. The group retells the Biblical passage together, correcting all details as they go.

One of the keys to having a meaningful Bible study is getting a good handle on the text. Even if we make no observations and draw no applications, if everyone learns the Biblical text by heart, we’ve been successful. For this to happen, the passage needs to be “unbroken.” That means no interruptions during the reading and the telling (especially interruptions to comment on the passage.) Scripture comes first and holds priority.

We were interrupted multiple times in every one of those three steps. Children playing too loud and needing to be corrected. Telephone ringing. Children pouting and needing to be corrected. (smiley face goes here) Questions. Medicine time, someone needs to take a pill. Water break. Bathroom break. More children interruptions. It was rough.

This was likely the worst meeting we ever had, if we were only judging by our checklist of things to do, or by how many insights we pulled out of the passage. In the end, we were very successful. We persevered through difficulty. We prayed for one another. We learned a few strategies to make the next meeting smoother. We all learned God’s Word by heart.

Oh, and our text was Zechariah chapter 3.