How to inject serious biblical wisdom into your life and leadership
Wouldn’t it be great to have a comfort level with the Bible that enabled you to call on its wisdom whenever you needed it?
When I became a believer more than 30 years ago, I was obsessed with being able to answer people’s questions. I devoured books on apologetics and listened to many debates.
It took me a while to realize that the best preparation for defending the Bible was simply reading the Bible. The more I read it, the more comfortable I was talking about it, teaching it, and writing about it.
Along the way, I realized that having biblical knowledge also helped me lead better. Not only that, I slowly started becoming a better husband, father and friend. It showed me where I needed to improve and where I needed to grow, as well as how to do it.
Ironically, a Jewish pioneer in AI, Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001), lends credibility to this “just read it” strategy. He studied human behavior and artificial intelligence, winning the Turing Award in 1975 and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978.
Simon was interested in how humans learn, and his theories explained that anyone wanting to become an expert on a topic requires about ten years of experience and learning roughly 50,000 chunks of information (the CHREST model, if you’re curious). A chess expert was said to have learned about 50,000 chess position patterns.
If we apply his findings to learning the Bible, after ten years of reading, including hearing sermons, sitting under teaching, and engaging in Bible studies, we’d have enough chunks of biblical knowledge to help us become proficient.
Becoming more knowledgeable in the Word opens us, grows us, sanctifies us. God is revealed to us. We gain perspective on life and eternity that helps us extend our efforts beyond just going through the motions of life and work. We see ourselves as God sees us.
I’ll never get to a chess-master level on Scripture. I don’t know how many “chunks” there are rolling around in my brain, but the longer I study the Word, the more I am inspired by it, and the more familiarity I have with the Author himself. He gives me just enough regular inklings of understanding that keep me motivated to continue studying.
Still learning,
Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
Now coaching founders, CEOs and ministry leaders: https://lnkd.in/gEdm2gqJ
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