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For the next few months, Bro. John O’Malley will be sharing with us from his book, Overcoming Your Devotional Obstacles. We know that everyone can use some encouragement to stay in the Word of God on a daily basis, and we hope these articles will be a blessing to you in your walk with the Lord.

The Obstacle of History–I seem to miss the meaning of the passage I read. I think it is because I do not understand the background or history of the Bible.

God did not hand us His Word and say, “Here, you figure it out.” God gave us better than a Google/Wikipedia mash-up for the Bible. God gave us a Guide, Teacher, Counselor, and Adviser to go along with His Word. He dwells within the heart of the child of God. You may say, “I know the Holy Spirit lives within me, but I want to ask questions and get answers, immediately.”

Having a Quiet Time with God should not leave you feeling dumb when you cannot get the sense of the passage because you do not know the history or background. The Bible is not intended to make you feel inadequate because you do not have a post-graduate degree in ancient culture, language, and history. It is possible to know the history or background of the Bible.

Consider this, the One who exhaled the Scriptures into those who held a pen for God also sent you the Holy Spirit to teach you. That means you can ask the Resident Guide who lives within you. Each time you read the Bible, you are stepping into a family event. You need someone to whisper in your ear about what has happened before this event and what is going on now in light of past events. If the One, who inspired the Word of God, lives within you, you will always have a Counselor.

Agreeing to the truth that the Holy Spirit lives within you, how do you get the answers from Him? For me, it begins with prayer. Let me tell you what I say. “God, I know there are things here I am not getting. I need your Holy Spirit to teach me this. Please guide me.”

Sometimes, my answer has come shortly after that as I continued to read the verses before it and after it. I have also had my answers come months later when I read the verse again. Other times, I will read a similar thought in another passage and realize that is what the passage I got stuck on meant.

Your premise, when you begin any study of a passage, should be that the Bible is God’s Word and is the answer to every human need; it is inerrant and infallible. Remember, the passage is about real people in a real place with real needs. You know as a fact that there is something in this passage God included for you to know. (The Bible is very personal that way.) God did not put random words in the passage to confuse me. He put it there to help me. I believe God has enabled believers in every generation to explain the sense of a text. (See Nehemiah 8:8).

What should you do to overcome the feeling that you do not understand the background and history of a passage?

1. Pray: “God, I know there are things here I am not understanding. I need your Holy Spirit to teach me this. Please guide me.”
2. Pick a resource: It can be online, digital eBook, or bound.
3. Ask your pastor or Sunday School teacher: “Is there something in the background of this passage that would help me understand this section?”
You can know the background and history of a passage. I refuse to let an obstacle get in the way of me understanding what God wants me to know.

Tip #1: Remember the culture.
Culture is the system of beliefs, values, and ideas of a people in a certain time period. When you read the Bible, there was a definite culture. It is not a Western culture; it is an Eastern culture. The values of Western culture see things from a right and wrong perspective. Eastern culture will often times see things through a prism of what brings shame and what restores honor. When you read the Old Testament, you have to understand that your way of thinking cannot be projected onto their way of thinking. Furthermore, the culture of Heaven and the mind of God far outstrips any of our understanding. God and His Word are transcultural. You will be able to understand what is happening when you enter the cultural mindset of the people about whom you are reading.

Tip #2: Remember the context.
Learn to read the Bible by paragraph not just the numbered verses. This is critical in understanding the verses you are reading. You will become frustrated quickly if you isolate a verse from its context and try to bend it to what you want it to say or not say. If you ignore the context, you will miss the meaning and teaching. Reading the Bible by paragraph helps correct this. Get a good Bible that marks the paragraphs clearly or is printed in paragraphs. I always encourage people to read it grammatically or like they would read a book. If the numbers are getting in the way, get a Bible that does not have them, so that when you read Paul’s letters, they read like real letters!

Tip #3: Remember the conflicts.
The sin nature of man is in conflict with the righteousness of God. You will find man’s will takes him beyond the will and righteousness of God. Many of the accounts in Scripture describe when man’s will dominates and God brings man to a place of correction and contrition. Contrition is a Bible word that gives the sense of being crushed or humbled. God values when our hearts and spirits are contrite. When you read a passage and the culture is so different and the context is not easily grasped, remember that man’s will and desire is selfish. God will correct those who are wrong. He will forgive and restore those who confess their sin. Remember, before you boast that you might be better than another, you are a sinner saved by grace like those in the passage you are studying. Stay close to Him. Keep your heart and spirit contrite.

Tip #4: Remember your Companion.
Just before Jesus went to the cross, He told His disciples that He would leave them, but He would not leave them comfortless. He would send them a Comforter (John 14:16). One of the Comforter’s tasks is to bring all things to our remembrance. He dwells within us and guides us to truth. When I am stuck on a verse or passage of Scripture, I pray. I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me and help me to see or recall what I am not seeing. There have been times I have been stuck on a passage of Scripture for more than a year. Then one day I am reading in another section, and the Holy Spirit brings to mind what I was stuck on and shows me the connection. It is a wonderful thing to have the Holy Spirit turn the lights on in your mind.

My goal is to give you a tool to overcome the Obstacle of History, the feeling like you miss the meaning because you do not understand the background or history of the Bible. When you get stuck, review these four tips.

If these thoughts have been an encouragement to you, you can email Bro. O’Malley here to let him know. If you’d like to purchase the entire Overcoming Your Devotional Obstacles book in PDF, Kindle, or iBooks format, click here.

For the next few months, Bro. John O’Malley will be sharing with us from his book, Overcoming Your Devotional Obstacles. We know that everyone can use some encouragement to stay in the Word of God on a daily basis, and we hope these articles will be a blessing to you in your walk with the Lord.

Our hearts and minds are bombarded with thousands of messages each day. These messages come from our technology, our work, our children, our academic institutions, our churches, our medical professionals, and our spouse. Those messages are just from the relationships in our lives.

Then we get to the advertisers who spend millions of dollars each year to get us to remember the name of their product when that particular need arises in our lives. We look at our televisions; then we listen to the radio and podcasts. Everyone has a message for us to recall.

The messages that find us each day are not always wrong. Sometimes the words we read bring good news, and other times messages we read do not bring good news. These inbound messages seem to assault us the moment we wake up in the morning until we are lying in bed in the glow of our phones. In a world filled with messages from technology, relationships, and society’s advertisers, what makes those slogans, jingles, and images stick in our mind?

Why is it we go to church and by the time we get to the meal after service, we cannot remember the sermon or even think of the Small Group, Bible Study, or Sunday School lesson? Why is it we can remember the jingle from a fast-food restaurant from two decades ago, but we cannot remember what the Lord showed us that day in His Word?

This devotional obstacle of distraction is common, real, and embarrassing. How do I have meaningful and memorable Devotions when I so easily lose interest or am so easily distracted?

Tip #1: Create an environment of solitude.
You need to create the environment where you can hear God’s Word and listen to His leading.

Tip #2: Choose one or two verses from that day’s Bible reading on which you will mediate.
When I need to work on keeping interest and focus, I settle on one or two verses. I then take advantage of the Bible study methods in the resource section and begin to work through that passage. Take a 3×5 card and write the verse on the card. Write it neatly and deliberately, and add the punctuation marks. Meditate as you write the words.

Tip #3: Write down three thoughts about the passage.

• Take the same 3×5 card and turn it over. Write down these three words: Inspires. Instructs. Includes.
• Look at the verse you wrote. What inspires you in this passage?
• What precept or principle is mentioned in this verse that teaches or is an instruction for you?
• Read the verse aloud and listen to how your name could be included in the place of the names or pronouns mentioned in the verse. Now, write one sentence beside the word Includes: You could start it with “This verse includes me because…” or “I am included in this verse because…”

If these thoughts have been an encouragement to you, you can email Bro. O’Malley here to let him know. If you’d like to purchase the entire Overcoming Your Devotional Obstacles book in PDF, Kindle, or iBooks format, click here.

“And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” (Acts 7:59)

Have you ever thought of what it would be like to take Stephen’s place and experience the last few hours of his life? For many of us that would be rather disturbing.

Stephen himself probably had little opportunity to ponder why this was happening to him. The events unfolded too rapidly. He was accosted by a group of hateful men with a pre-established agenda and was in up to his ears before he knew it.

On the negative side, here are a couple of the things we could mention. First, he experienced the pain of a violent death (although it almost seems like the grace of God so powerfully flooded his body that he was impervious to the beating). And second, he missed the spectacular expansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem on out into the world.

However, when we switch over to a different perspective, the scene doesn’t seem quite as ugly.

Even as he felt the rocks hit, he was seeing the One who gave it all meaning. Jesus, the Lord, the Origin of life itself, was making eye contact with him! Apparently, a few saints down through history have been granted a similar privilege.

But most are called to die by faith.

And then, as he slipped into the presence of the Holy One, he instantly gained a vantage point from which to watch the rest of the story from the first row of Heaven’s balcony. Wow!

Furthermore, even as the rocks go still and the martyr’s body stops breathing, the Holy Spirit turns our attention to a different man. This surprising shift of focus is designed to remind us all of a wonderful and comforting truth, one that is just as true today as it was in Acts 7.

God is always doing more than we think He is.

Again, He is ALWAYS doing more than we think He is!

And He loves to surprise.

Nobody was paying too much attention to the young man who watched the clothes. Surely Stephen hadn’t noticed him–he was looking up at the right hand of God. The eyes of the violent religious men were looking for stones and taking aim. If there were Christians nearby, they were focused on Stephen and praying for help. Saul himself was observing, with a smug sense of satisfaction, the permanent silencing of an extremely vocal and powerful opponent.

Little did anyone know, but a pair of heavenly eyes were looking down at the young zealot. There may even have been the hint of a divine smile.

Saul would soon be changing his name.

But back to Stephen…

Sometimes God takes away loved ones suddenly and without explanation. The shock and loss are excruciating and there is no avoiding the pain, or explaining it away. But God doesn’t ask us to do that. Instead, He addresses the perplexing topic in a subtle but undeniable way.

Notice how He strategically sprinkled throughout the Bible certain stories, each with their silent and anonymous sufferers. These all experienced the torture of tragic surprises, and they may not have immediately been given a measure of understanding.

Think of Abel’s mother, Eve. Think of Naboth’s wife. Think of Uriah’s siblings. Think of John the Baptist’s friends… and there are others.

Each of these deaths brought piercing pain to those closest to them. Undoubtedly, tears were shed, questions were asked, and hearts were stunned.

But what occurred to them happens all around us today. Indeed, they are part of the same family, the family of godly Christians who die or suffer in what appears to be random, meaningless, and painful ways. Surely as you read these words a name or names come to your mind.

The message from God, in the example of Stephen, seems to encourage us to remember a few things. First, every Christian life is a tiny part of a very large picture. The picture is not only huge, but it is eternal. Second, God is always doing more than we think. Stephen leaves the stage at exactly the right moment for Saul to make his entrance. At the time, neither one understood the significance of the other.

But the Lord did.

He is the Author of the grand story of grace, the story that spans every continent and every age. It is the story that links every believer and the details of his life directly to the Cross. No death is insignificant, no matter how short or unknown or unappreciated it was by other people.

This truth makes it all worth it and can give comfort when we or loved ones are hit with unexplainable hurt.

Dear Father, how important to keep in mind Your view, the real one, and to know You guide every single event towards Your glorious purpose. Please use these words to encourage someone who is hurting. Amen.