The Biblical, devotional discipline of study has been one on of the "lost" disciplines of recent Evangelical Christianity. There seems to be a hesitancy to think of the mind as an avenue to transformation. Donald Whitney said it best: “Why do we seem to think we must choose between the two? Why do many Christians live as though they've been told, ‘Choose you this day whom you will serve: scholarship or devotion’? I maintain that a Biblically balanced Christian has both a full head and a full heart, radiating both spiritual light and heat.”The wisdom of the ages would suggest that we need to consider study as worship, as an avenue in which God brings transformation to our inner and outer worlds. Karl Barth points us in this direction: “In prayer, theological work is the inner, spiritual and vertically directed motion of man; while I study, although similarly external, it runs in a horizontal direction. It is also an intellectual, and physical, if not fleshly, movement. Theological work can be done only in the indissoluble unity of prayer and study. Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.”
May we recover a Biblical approach to study that will aid us in the re-discovery of a humble, authentic and transforming approach to leadership.
