For the past two years I've been part of a Messianic Jewish community. I've learned the Biblical feast days and how they point us to Yeshua (Jesus). And I've learned a lot about the first five books of the Bible. These were parts of the Gospel that my origional Earthly church overlooked a great deal and I feel I've grown and learned more about my God than I knew before. After my second Passover, I began to be dissatisfied with this level of knowledge. I wanted to dive into the other books of scripture too.
The Rabbis have a schedule for studying the Torah each year and there will be a "Torah portion" assigned for the congregation to study each Sabbath. There will also be a small portion from the prophets and writings, but so as not to lead people to Yeshua it goes out of order and relates to a topic in the Torah portion so that people won't notice the careful exclusion of everything in the writings and prophets that is rather obviously about Yeshua. These carefully excluded parts are exactly what my soul has become hungry for over the course of these two years.
Every time I talk to someone from my congregation about this problem they ask, "Well, how's your home study going?" I'm always distraught in response because when they're awake my kids or their messes seem to demand all my attention and when they're asleep it wasn't my first go to activity to read my scriptures. I would say something like that I can't just learn all alone that I need people to discuss with. Ultimately this comes down to motivation. When I know I'm going to get to share what I learn with someone else I'm more motivated to study. My learning style is teaching.
I talked to my sister about this dilema, and unlike people of my congregation who all suggested talking to my Rabbi, my sister just flat out rejected the lie Satan's been feeding me that I can't learn this stuff on my own. She reminded me of times when I just dived into things I wanted to learn and came back with rewarding results and a depth of knowledge on a topic.
Since then I read John in about a week and Acts in three days. I'm going to try to read a book at a time through the New Testament. And I think I'll start a series here discussing my findings on the book as a whole, pulling out what stood out to me right now as I go through. They won't necessarily be in order but whatever I feel the need to study next will be next. How do you like to study? What helps motivate you? What helps you make time for it?
