S2S Sisters: “Intentional Bible Study – Reflect, Learn, Steward” by Irene Bontrager

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Welcome to Strength to Strength Sisters. Today, we're so glad to have all of you join us. The vision of Strength to Strength Sisters is to encourage women to be catalysts in advancing the Kingdom through biblical teaching, testimonies of faithful women, and thought-provoking discussions. My name is Lynelle Martin, and I'm coming to you all from State College, Pennsylvania, where our family lives and works with the Followers of Jesus congregation here.

And we have a café in downtown State College next to Penn State, where we like to interact with people from all around the world. Our talk today is on intentional Bible study, reflect, learn, and steward. And our speaker is Irene Bontrager, and she is an older single woman living in the small town of Guys Mills, Pennsylvania. She worked at Faith Builders Educational Program as a mentor and librarian for 17 years. During those years, she broadened her understanding of her relationship with God and others, as well as continued her education and counseling.

She's been mentoring and coaching for the last 25 years. Currently, she spends her weeks doing online and in-person mentoring and coaching, and her primary focus is helping women to build meaningful relationships with God and others. She loves to work outside, building meaningful relationships and puttering around her house and small property.

And I've enjoyed getting to know Irene personally, and I know that she has a heart for this subject, and so I'm really looking forward to hearing what she has to say, and I know it's something that I need as well.

So just a couple of announcements before I pray for her and she starts her talk. One is that this talk is for sisters only, and so thank you for honoring that. We also love if you turn your videos on because it's really encouraging for the speakers if you all show your faces, and I know that's not possible for everybody, and that's okay.

There will be recordings available on YouTube and on our website, as well as on the podcast platforms, but you will not be recorded unless you are speaking. We will have a Q&A following the talk where you can ask Irene questions that come to your mind. And if you do ask a question, we do ask that you turn your video on if possible for that.

All right, Irene, let's pray for you. Father in heaven, thank you for the time that we can come together and seek your face. Thank you for giving us your word, and we know that your written word leads us to the inner word, Jesus, and shows us how to live and how you have designed the world to operate. And so we want to learn more about how to study your word and how that helps us to grow individually and as communities. And so I pray for Irene today, pray that you would bless her with clarity and with wisdom and knowing what you would have her to share, give her calmness and peace, and just pray that this talk would be a blessing for you and for your kingdom.

We love you, and we want to serve you with our lives. In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, Irene.

All right, good afternoon. I just want to thank you for joining us this afternoon. You know, it takes intentionality to carve out space on Saturday afternoon to grow your Bible study methods, and it means a lot to me that you are joining me this afternoon.

I have not learned a lot about Strength to Strength women. I knew there was a Strength to Strength on men, but I didn't realize that there was one on women until I was asked to speak. And so I've had a lot of fun listening to these talks often as I had time.

And I wasn't quite sure about it because I've never done talking one-on-one online like this. I've done some in person, but not like this, and so I just wasn't quite sure what to do. All right, so just to let you know, I did not grow up studying the Bible. I read the Bible, but I didn't actually study it until I went to Deeper Life Ministries. I worked there for five years as a ladies counselor.

And so when I began to do more in-depth studying, I didn't think about the overarching theme. I just thought the Bible was just a book of random stories, and I thought, you know, I knew Daniel, I knew Joseph, I knew Bible stories like that, and I enjoyed reading the New Testament. But what I didn't know what to do with is I didn't know what to do with books like Leviticus, Numbers, Judges, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and many other prophet books.

Because to me, it felt like these books were full of murders. They were so full of the law, and I couldn't understand why God had to put all of that stuff in. And it just felt like there was just a lot of ruthless living. And it made no sense to me that God would tell the Israelites to murder people, and then Jesus came along in the New Testament, and he would say, "Love your enemies, do good to them." And I just really struggled with it. And then when I was at Deeper Life, I worked with John Collins, and he was a very good Bible teacher, and he just began teaching me, and that was really a good thing.

And so I owe a lot of what I know today to him, and then also when I went to Faith Builders as a student. So when I went to Faith Builders as a student, what they did is they gave me Bible study methods to how to study the Bible and also how to teach Sunday school lessons. And I was so grateful for that because I taught a lot of Bible, a lot of Sunday school. And so today, what I want to do is I want to pass on to you some of the things that I learned when I was at Faith Builders, and then I had also went on and did continuing education. And so that's some of the things I want to pass on to you.

Now, the book that I used for my primary source today was this one right here. It's Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. And so many of my headings, toppings are straight from her book. And so if you buy the book and you say, "Whoa, she talked about that," it's because I used a lot of her headings because they were actually so well done. And then I used other books and also a couple of websites, and so I will have a reference section at the bottom when we get done that you can have that you can see those.

All right, so the Bible verse that I want to use today is, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." And I really believe that. I really believe that the Bible is just that.

So I believe that the Bible, that Bible study methods is a skill. It is a skill that anybody can learn. And as we move through the topic, the skill that we want to learn is why should we study the Bible? Why is it so important? So one of the ways that we, one skill that we want to develop, and one of the reasons that we study the Bible is to reflect God's love.

So the first skill of reflecting God's love that we want to develop is to grow your knowledge of God. God's love grows out of understanding who I am. So in Exodus 3, God was in a burning bush that spoke to Moses. Have you ever wondered what that would have been like if you would have been out in the wilderness and all at once you were just tending sheep, you were minding your own business, and this bush began burning, but it never burned down? Like, what would that be like? Like, what would we do with that today? I've often wondered that.

And then, not on top of that, the bush didn't burn, but then there came a voice that said, "Moses, go to the elders of Israel and tell them that God has seen their afflictions and he's going to deliver them from slavery." Moses said, "Who shall I say sent me?" God said, "I am who I am."

Then God also said, "The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you." So in this passage, when we think about "I am who I am," the Bible is totally full of God and who he is.

And all at once, when Moses realized that God was sending him back to the Israelites, he said, "Who am I that I should go?" Like, he was really fearful. And he was afraid, I don't know for sure, but like that probably he didn't actually, people wouldn't believe that he actually had a legitimate encounter with the Lord.

And you know, God did not tell Moses that, "Hey, Moses, you're so powerful, you're so wonderful, you're so beautiful, go tell these people." He didn't do that. But what God did is he kept telling Moses about his power. He kept telling Moses about who he is, who the "I am" is. And so as you walk through the account in Exodus 3 and 4, you can really see how God was telling Moses who he is.

And you know, so God performed a miracle in the burning bush, and then Moses said, "Well, show me more miracles, like the people won't believe me." And so Moses, God said, "Moses, what do you have in your hands?" And he said, "A staff." And God said, "Throw it on the ground." And he threw his rod on the ground, and it became a serpent. Like, what would we do if that would happen to us today?

And then Moses was again afraid, and he ran from it. And then the Lord said, he also told Moses, he said, "Put your hand in your cloak." Well, he told him to take his hand out and catch it, and then he did, and then it became a staff again.

And then he told Moses to put his hand into his cloak, and then it was leopard, it became all leopards. And then he said, "Take it out, put it in," and then it was all healed again. And so Moses needed that assurance that God was with him. I believe that Moses truly had a legitimate, and he had a real conversation with God.

And he, you know, God said, "How people I am Yahweh, the God who created the earth, the Yahweh who made the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, we read, 'Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I will curse, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' God had not forgotten his people and his promise. And he tells Moses that he has a plan to deliver them."

So this is the kind of thing that we learn about God. When we go to his word, it grows our understanding of who this "I am" is.

So reading like just these, you know, passages in Genesis 12 and Exodus 3, it just tells us so much about God. And so one thing that I just wanted you to think about is if I focus on who I am and what I'm able to do, like if I was just thinking about this topic today and I would just be thinking, "I'm scared, I can't do it, I don't even know if I could have done it," but I kept thinking about who God is and that he gives us strength, he gives us courage. And so that's actually what helped me be calm. Well, not exactly calm. I was actually pretty nervous before the topic here, and I probably still feel, I don't know if you can sense that or not, but I still feel a little nervous here because I can see you, but it feels like I'm just sitting in my own little space, you know, and so it just makes me a little nervous here.

But so we go to the Bible to learn about God and his heart to bless his people. God is a blessing God. And so we go, we learn about him so that we can be a Christian who blesses people.

All right, so the second skill of reflecting God's love is let the mind transform the heart. We do not want to neglect our heart, but we also do not want to neglect our mind because the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. And this is a direct quote out of the book Wilkin, which she wrote, and I just thought it was really good, and it was something that I had not really thought of before.

And so she also says this, "The mind alone does not transform the heart, but the path to transformation runs from the mind to the heart and not the other way." And so in the scripture, we know like that the heart, our heart describes our will and our feelings, which is our emotion. And in our me culture, we tend to get it mixed up. It is easy to, you know, to begin reading the Bible and then ask the question, "Who am I? What is God's will for me?" I get that question all the time. What is God's will for me? Because I believe that we are people who want to live right. We want to do right.

And we want to know who we are because we want to live for God. Romans 12:2-3 tells us, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."

So these verses tell us to renew our mind and not our hearts. Yes, and so we want to renew our mind so that we can know the great "I am." Our mind is often fearful, and I believe that when we live in fear, it is incredibly hard to believe that God is good. I hear all the time, I even say it, "God is not good." When I'm living in fear or I've gone through something very difficult, it is very easy to believe that he is not good.

And you know, there are very many bad things that happen to good people, and it is very easy to believe that God is not good. Therefore, we do want to love God with our emotions because this is what enables our emotions and enables us to live, to experience pleasure, to experience peace, and to experience joy.

So we don't want to neglect our heart, our emotions, but we also do not want to neglect our mind because the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. The mind alone does not transform the heart, but the path to transformation runs from the mind to the heart and not the other way around.

That was really insightful for me. I had just never quite thought of it in that way, and so that was really hard, really good for me to think about it. And the final skill of reflecting God's love is meditate on his word.

Studying is not the same as meditating, but it keeps our mind engaged as we grow and broaden our knowledge of God. All right, so meditating should be we sit there and we think and we, you know, we're meditating on this certain aspect of God. I do not understand why that is so hard for me, but it is incredibly difficult for me. And my mind wonders, I'm more of a doing person than I am a being person. And I really believe it is good that we meditate on his word. Like I believe that, and I encourage many people to do it, but for whatever reason, it is very difficult for me.

My mind tends to wonder and, you know, I just want to concentrate on God and I just can't. So one way I finally made peace with this is that I came to say that studying, learning, and searching the scripture is a form of meditation. I love to study. I love to stay engaged.

And if I'm reading the, so I am doing that if I'm reading the word. And I've just come to believe that studying is a form of meditation and it keeps me in the word and it keeps my mind engaged.

So I think that we do need to understand how we personally function and how we can stay engaged, how we can stay attuned to God so we can come to see that God is loving, is a loving and a blessing God.

He wants to empower us to be all that we can be. The more I understand God and his heart for me, the better I can lean into my calling and trust God when life is difficult and sticky. And also the better I understand God, the better I understand who I am. Like I always thought, I always separated who I am and who God is as separate. But I'm beginning to see that if I know who God is and I'm following his way and I feel the calling on my life, then I am beginning to understand better who I am.

So in a way to finish up this section is I believe a way to reflect God's love is to grow your knowledge of God. God told Moses about the "I am." And we read the Bible, discover how God worked with people and their responses to God's pursuit of them. We love God with our heart, but our mind needs to guide the heart and not the other way around. And then we meditate on the word to help us learn about the big story of the Bible, understanding the meta-narrative or the overarching theme of the Bible will help us, will orient us to understand all the little stories in the Bible. Understanding God's heart toward his people can develop the skill.

So we're developing a skill when we study the Bible, the skill of reflecting God's love to the people around us.

So the second skill that we want to develop is learn Bible study tools. So this is a more practical part of it. And what I've done is I love the book of Ruth, and it's a very short book. And so I chose this book to show you how I go about developing, studying the Bible, a certain book. And so if I want to do a personal Bible study, I follow these tools that I'm going to show you next. And then I'm also going to show you how I study for Sunday school because a lot of people have been asking me for that. And so I thought this would be maybe a great platform to do that.

All right, so the first thing I do is read the text. So I read the book of Ruth in one study. Now, if it's a larger book that I'm planning to study, you know, I just break it down into two to four portions, but it's a very rapid read. Like you just want to read it quickly and get the feel of the book.

And then if you're not so familiar with the book, read it again, go slower. And then after that, I would encourage you to begin your study. So the second Bible study tool is study the text. So break it into manageable study portions. Most scholars break the book of Ruth into seven to eight sections.

For this study, I just broke it down into seven sections. And so I will briefly tell you how I did that. So the first section I took is Ruth one and then verses one through five. And what that is, it gives the story of Amalek moving his family to Moab because of the famine.

And you know, moving there was very costly because of death and removing God's covenant from the home. Naomi's husband and two sons die within a 10-year period. She is a childless widow living in a foreign land. And this is not good for a woman.

The second section for a woman in that, not for any woman, but particularly in that day is what I'm talking about. The second section is Ruth one and then verses six through 22. And in these verses, it shows that Naomi made the decision to return to Bethlehem. She knew the danger and she needed to travel 50 miles.

And she starts out with her two daughters-in-law and herself. And Naomi knew life would likely be hard for the three widowed women living in Bethlehem, but she still chose to return to her roots, to her people. And both Rachel and Ruth start out with Naomi, but before going too far, Naomi, she just urges both daughters to go back to their people. And I would love to expound more on that, but I just can't. Like there's just too, I don't have enough time.

And then Rachel, she goes back, but Ruth clings to Naomi and she remains loyal to her and to a living God. So Ruth left her family to make a life with a destitute widow who was bitter with the way God had interacted with her family.

The third section is Ruth two verses one through 23. And then this chapter reviews how Boaz accepted Ruth as a worker in his field. It highlights the generosity of Boaz and the hardworking attitude of Ruth. Both Boaz and Ruth seek to serve God and to show love and concern to those in their care.

The fourth section is Ruth three one to 18. And it tells how Naomi and Ruth seek marriage with Boaz. I always just think it's crazy what they did.

Yeah, I could say a lot more about that, but Ruth could have sought a younger man, but she chose to marry a man of integrity who was also a part of Naomi's family line. And so Boaz, he was Naomi's redeemer and Naomi knew this.

But Boaz was really, you know, flattered with Ruth, but she didn't let, he didn't let that have the last say. He was a man of integrity. And so when we think about the days of the judges, the people did what was right in their own eyes. But what we want to remember is when it's telling us how people were, there was still a segment of people that were living for the Lord and they were doing right. There is always a segment of people living for the Lord and doing right. We just want to remember that it's been like that through all history.

And so Boaz, he was a man, like he did what was right and he knew scripture. And he said, "There is a redeemer that is closer to your family line than he is." And he really did what was right, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that he really loved Ruth.

The fifth section is four one through 12. And this describes how Boaz then uses wisdom and he uses a lot of craft to redeem Ruth for his wife. He went to the city gate and then pretty soon the redeemer that was closer to Naomi than he was came along. So he gathered 10 elders of the town and he presented his case to them and he said, "You can have this land." And of course, this man wanted the land. But when he was told that he had to marry Ruth, he said, "Maybe not. I don't think I can marry Ruth because if I did, that would jeopardize his own marriage."

And so he said, "You can have her." And so Boaz, he buys a parcel of land and he marries Ruth. And everybody in the community was happy and that the decision was made for Boaz to marry Ruth. And then in the sixth section is four, chapter four, 13 to 17. And then this shows how God honors Boaz and Ruth with a son. And his name was Obed and he became the grandfather of David. And then, you know, Naomi's bitterness turns to joy as she comes to grandmother and has a redeemer for her family line.

And Ruth, a Moabite woman, is recognized as a godly woman despite not being born as a Jew. And then the seventh section is the last verses of 14 is 18, 22. And this points out how Ruth and Boaz's son become an ancestor in the line of Judah, leading to the king of David. And then this supports David as being in the family line of Judah. And then we know that David was an ancestor to Jesus.

And so it's really amazing how Amalek went to this country and then God brought Naomi back and Boaz had eyes to see Ruth and Ruth was very kind. And even though Amalek's choice maybe not has been the best at the beginning, the line that God wanted Jesus to come from came, it happened. And that's how God, he works. When men don't do what he wants, he works many ways to try to redeem. He pursues people. He brings about situations so that his plan can be carried out.

So the third Bible study tool that we want to talk about is who wrote it. The author is unknown. Many commentaries say that Samuel wrote Ruth. Others say this is unlikely since David's kinship was an establishment at the time of the writing.

And we all know that Samuel had died before David became king. So it's just not really possible that he was the writer. But we do know that God inspired a particular author, whoever that was, to write the history and story of Amalek and how Naomi and Ruth responded to a very difficult situation.

God gave the unknown author full authority to write the book of Ruth. And so all of the authors of the books were given authority and were inspired by God himself.

The fourth Bible study tool is when was it written? The mention of David in four one and his genealogy in four 18 to 22 places a writing after David was on the throne, which was in second Samuel two, which is sometime after 1010 BC.

Let me see where I'm at with time.

Okay, I'm just going to, I'm just going to leave it at that and then we'll go on from there. The fifth Bible study tool is to whom was it written? It was written to the Jewish people, giving them a powerful relational account and it connected David with his ancestors. This reflects God's plan and God's love and divine plan to his people.

The book of Ruth provides two benefits to that audience. First, it was a powerful relational account. And second, it was a theological narrative connecting David with his ancestors in a manner reflecting God's love and divine plan to God. The audience was very familiar with David, yet likely lacked the background of his family line beyond his father, Jesse.

So the initial audience of Ruth were faithful Israelite and individuals who were considering converting to Judaism. And it was also written to help us understand and know God better.

And this is a book that I think is really key that God had a heart for both Jews and Gentiles. Ruth was welcome and God was her savior.

The sixth Bible study tool is what is the genre? It was primarily a historical account unfolding another aspect of Yahweh's sovereign covenant work in history.

And that's all I'm going to say about that. And then the seventh Bible study tool is now what? So pull everything together by repetitively reading the text for comprehension, interpretation, and application. So what I did is I printed out the first chapter of Ruth and I marked it all up like this. And so what that did is it gave me way like I circled some things. Those are all different colors, but it doesn't really show up well. And then I made some question marks and it really helped me get a hold of the text. And so I read it and reread it when I printed that out.

And so that is a way that we can comprehend when we just read it, like read the text until you comprehend what it is saying. Then read it for interpretation. What does the text mean? Work first to understand the text before jumping to your Bible study Bibles or commentary. It's very easy for me to do that.

And so one of the things that I think we should work really hard at is we should do something like this so that it gives us a better understanding of the text. Like do as much of your own work as you can and then use commentaries. I used a lot of, I used commentaries and study Bibles for this too.

I like to use the ESV study Bible because it's done by quite a lot of people and I trust it. But there's many other good sources available. And so what I encourage you to do is just ask your pastors, trusted Sunday school teachers, people that you know well, like just ask them what are good study guides to help you.

And then read for application. And then how should the text change me? And the better you know God and his plan for the man, the more a text can change you. Ruth showed loyalty to Naomi and to God. And the way this text has changed me is to be more loyal to God, my closest friends and my family. I was convicted to be more loyal and kind to those around me.

And so we also want to talk about a Sunday school lesson. And so here is the Sunday school outline that I use. So I guess if you want to see it, you can go back and watch it, but that's the whole outline. And so now what I want to do is go and flash through the entire thing.

And so what I do, first of all, is I just do the date and the book of Ruth. And then I write down purposes for the lesson. So I wrote down a couple of things there and things that I want to, my objective for teaching that Sunday school lesson. So every Sunday school lesson that I have taught since 2004, I use this lesson plan always for every Sunday school class that I've ever taught. And I just really like it.

So one of the things that I like to do is if I can, I like to have a hook. And a hook is just something to stimulate people's thinking before you jump into the lesson. And so how do I plan to begin? The hook is how do I plan to begin?

And so one question that I might ask to begin is, do you think it was a right choice for Amalek and his family to move to Moab? Why or why not? And that is like we're all confronted with choices every day. And so it's something that somebody can identify with choices. So you want to do something that's fairly familiar that people can actually have a frame of reference for.

Or maybe the second, maybe another question I could ask, if you were in Naomi's situation, you had lost your husband and only two sons, only children in the last 10 years, how do you imagine you would respond? Because everybody understands losses and tragedies in their life as primarily, and they can probably identify with Naomi.

And so what a hook is, it's simply a way to draw you into the lesson. And you don't have to do one. I don't do one every time either. Like sometimes I don't get any responses to my questions and I just go on. Sometimes I might get one response and then I move on. Other times I get so many responses that I need to shut it down because I always want to be able to teach the rest of my lesson because I worked hard to develop it. I want to teach it.

And so what I do is I try to spend no more than five minutes on the hook.

So the third thing that I do is to do an introduction. So what are the interesting facts that the class should know? So I just wrote down a couple of these. There was a famine in the land of Judah. The man was Amalek from Bethlehem, who was a well-respected, influential man. This is an ordinary people, villagers, immigrants, married people, widows, and orphans.

And married people. And then the Israelites, they were discouraged from marrying someone from Moab because of their commitments to other gods. The two sons married two Moabite women, Amalek, and both sons died. They lived there about 10 years. Then Naomi heard that there was food in Bethlehem, so she decided to return home. Naomi and Ruth traveled 50 miles of rugged and steep terrain back to Bethlehem, likely a 7 to 10-day trip on foot.

So those are just some of the things. And I just simply go through and read them off. And I spend quite a lot of time on this because if I understand the background of something, I feel more confident teaching the rest of the lesson then. And so probably I spend about half of my lesson plan understanding the background of what is happening. The fourth thing I do is work on the questions that I want to ask the questions. And so this is how I do. It's called, what questions do I plan to ask?

And so one of the questions that I might ask is, why do you think Naomi encouraged Ruth and Rachel to return to Moab and to their gods? So what I do then is I answer all my own questions because if you can't answer your questions, then nobody else will either.

And that way, another thing is you ask a question and maybe somebody will sort of get you off track. Then you have these answers and you can go back and say, well, maybe another way could be this way. So maybe a way that you could answer these questions is they have been very kind to her. She did not want them to suffer the same hardship she was suffering. Maybe she was afraid that her people would treat them as unkindly.

In those days, immediate family and land were important for women. Well, not just for women, for the people. But if a woman didn't have that, they were very destitute and their life wasn't very good. And she likely was afraid they would be widowed for life since the Israelites were discouraged from marrying a Moabite. And Naomi did not know if God would provide food for them.

So if you develop two to four good questions and then answer them, you will feel more confident to lead a class discussion. Sometimes I only use the first question because of the things that the class shares. And I think of other questions that I could ask. And so I ask those. And sometimes I use all my questions. And I'm so grateful that I took the time to answer the questions as sometimes there's just times when the class sort of goes off course and I'm not quite sure where I'm at. And it helps me stay on track and not lose track of what I had planned. Now, I want to say something.

If you follow this lesson plan and the first 10 to 20 sort of flop or you feel very discouraged, just keep working at it. Believe me, when I first started it, I felt discouraged so many times because my questions flopped. The people didn't respond the way I thought they should. Sometimes I didn't understand the background. And then I didn't understand how to move things forward. But because I've done this for so many years, I've learned things. I've learned more of the Bible. And so all of that is helpful in leading the discussion. But I just want to encourage you, don't be afraid to teach Sunday school because we need teachers. We need women teachers, particularly if your church does them.

I know not all churches do. That's totally fine. But I think to gain confidence is just trying it over and over and over. That's what I did.

The fifth thing I do for a Sunday school lesson is work on the application. So maybe the application could look something like this. Ruth showed unconditional love to Naomi. The word love is not mentioned in the book of Ruth, but her love for Naomi is a choice Ruth made. Her love for Naomi was an action. It was unconditional and she followed through. We can make similar kind of choices. Everyone can do that.

There are people that we need to show commitment and unconditional love to. It is easy to make a vow of commitment and then break it when it is inconvenient to follow through. God loves us. God wants us to honor our commitments and vows even if our circumstances or emotions change.

And then the sixth thing I do is work on closing the text and the closing comment could be something like this. The overarching meta-narrative of the Bible is about creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. This story is how God created Amalek, his wife Naomi, and two sons. Amalek was the direct descendant of Judah. They encountered a famine in Bethlehem. They chose to escape the famine and moved to Moab. After living there for about 10 years, the family encountered tragedy.

Naomi buried her three men. God moved Naomi's heart to move back to Bethlehem. Ruth loved Naomi and was willing to move back with her. This family did not necessarily make the best choice to move to Moab, but God redeemed and restored their bad choice.

This book is about ordinary people who show how God creates people who will sin, who is very able and willing to redeem and restore bad choices. It is always a good choice to turn to a blessing God.

All right. So the final section that I want to work at is the Bible. The skill that we want to develop is steward God's word. And so the first skill that we want to steward is study with purpose.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells us about the reign and rule of God. The Bible is about God telling us who He is. He is the I Am. The books of the Bible tell us the big story. So the big story is creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

Studying with purpose helps us see how God fits together the 66 books of the Bible. And in these books are many smaller stories about His work with man and His created world. And in Genesis 1 and 2 helps us understand that God created the world and man to His glory. He created man in His image. This is the creation story. The fall is introduced in Genesis 3, where men tried to usurp God's authority.

And then this is when redemption is introduced in Genesis 3:15 with the promise of salvation coming through Eve. And then the rest of Genesis and Exodus, they tell us about God's work of redemption through Abraham and his descendants. There were many failures. There were many breaches in relationships with God's people. This did not discourage God.

He kept pursuing them. So let's be Bible study students who study with purpose. God made it possible for all of us people to know God. We have the privilege of the Holy Spirit living in us. We have the gospels to tell us about Jesus. We have the epistles to tell us how to live in the Spirit and God's intentions for the church life. There is so much richness in the Bible to learn.

Study with perspective. God worked hard to make holy people out of His people. He walked with Abraham and made a covenant with him. He walked with Moses to show His people how to be holy. He drove out nations so His people could remain holy and fearful to Him.

But they kept turning to idolatry. People are fallen. We are fallen. We strive to live right, but we often fail. And this is why we want to make sure that we learn about redemption and restoration. I just want to talk very briefly here. At times, it is very difficult to read the Old Testament because of the sinfulness of the people, the murders, the just things that just are not really good.

But in all of the books, God is pursuing His people, His holiness, and what God is actually after. The reason He wanted to drive out all those people is because He wanted His people to be holy. That's why He went to such great length in Leviticus to write down the law to give them so that they would know how to live.

And in all of the book, it's always about God's holiness and our fallenness and how He pursues us and how He wants us to turn to Him and how He wants to make us holy people that would worship Him, that are able to live in joy and peace and love with ourselves, with those around us.

So again, I do not go to the Bible to find out who I am. I read scripture to discover God's heart for people who sin and want to live right. God is kind. He's generous, and He's always, always pursuing His people.

The third skill that we want to steward is study with patience. Bible study is a skill that anyone can develop. It takes time and discipline. It takes patience for our brain and heart to learn about the historical and cultural context and to understand another era and ways of living life. Patience is the key. I was very frustrated when I began this study. I didn't know where to begin. I had to make something out of nothing. And so I had the book, but even that, I can't just use a book and talk out of the book. I had to develop something that was me. And so it took time for me to, again, learn the book of Ruth.

It took time to understand the historical background. It takes time, and it can be really, really frustrating, but stay in it. And one of these days, it will begin to make sense.

Gaining Bible literacy requires a cumulative effect across weeks, months, and years so that the interrelation of one part of the scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully. Just so that you know, I'm 64 years old. I began studying the Bible in depth when I was 40. That's 20 years. And I just wish I would have been learning it since I was 20 because if I did, I would even understand other things that I don't understand today. And one of the things I do know, we can never exhaust the word of God.

And the Bible aims to shape the way we think. It shapes us. It makes us into a people who love Him, who can love Him. And the final skill that we want to steward is study with prayer. God can direct our thoughts to additional Bible verses and stories. He convict us of something that needs to be changed. He can encourage us to keep following Him.

As I prayed about this topic, I was reminded about two books. And the one book is Her Name Is Woman by it's G-I-N-E. So I'm not quite sure how to pronounce that, Jen or Jine or something. Carson is one I use a lot of, and it looks like and it looks like this. I use it a lot. It has just some very it's an older book, but it's something I just she has some really good things to say. This book had a chapter on each of these three women, Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth. And I was able to learn more about the cultural background and insight into their life. And she wrote, "Perhaps Naomi realized that her family's departure from Bethlehem had, in fact, been a journey away from Bethlehem and away from God.

In Bethlehem, she and Amalek had been prominent citizens. And in Moab, they were not prominent citizens. They were foreigners." This helped me reflect deeper what can happen when we walk away from hardships. God will be with us in difficulty.