I began my walk with Jesus Christ by studying the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians. My very first mentor was a former Presbyterian minister from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, named Donald Barnhouse. Through this study the Holy Spirit placed in me an unquenchable thirst to know more and more of God’s word but also to discover Dr. Barnhouse’s method of studying it.
As it turned out, Paul’s letter to the Galatians was a great place for me to start. Paul’s desire was to clarify to young Galatian Christians, who were being confused by a crowd of religious zealots, what the gospel is. I spent my first few years in that book studying the truth of the gospel and the meaning of God’s grace.
My greatest desire has been and continues to be to lean heavily upon the Holy Spirit to teach me the Scripture. After all, Jesus Christ said that is precisely what the Spirit is sent here to do. “When He is come (the Holy Spirit) He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore, I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14). The word “glorify” means to shed light upon. I liken it to using a flashlight to make visible things in the darkness.
In this case the Holy Spirit will teach God’s word and through it make Jesus Christ and His work more and more visible and understandable to the student. The Holy Spirit teaches the believer’s living human spirit God’s mysterious hidden wisdom. He does so by taking the spiritual meaning of the words of the Bible in context and turning them into spiritual thoughts or truths that feed our living human spirits. He feeds our souls the very thoughts and truth of the living God. Wow! (1 Cor. 2:7-16). That is heavy thinking! It is through this “feeding” that we grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Son of God (2 Pet. 3:18). Blessings!