Besides overseeing the schedule and volunteers, my big job at SDG Ballet and Arts Camp earlier this month was teaching Bible class for older and younger kids. For the older class, we started each day by looking at principles of study.
For me, one of the most important principles of study is obedience. A quote from Eugene Peterson summed it up pretty well, so I included it in our class time:
Obedience is the thing, living in active response to the living God. The more important question we ask of this text is not, “What does this mean?” but “What can I obey?” A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances.
Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studied with would often say, “For us Jews studying the Bible is more important than obeying it, because if you don’t understand it rightly you will obey it wrongly and your obedience will be disobedience.”
This also is true.
– Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book
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