Patience

I'm reading Jen Wilkin's book, Women of the Word on how to study the Bible and I'm finding it really helpful. The book is structured around 4 Ps-  she writes that we should study with Purpose, Perspective, Patience, Process and Prayer.

This is some of what she says about studying with patience:

"Our culture believes that patience is a hassle and looks for ways to keep us from ever having to exercise it. Television shows resolve conflict in thirty minutes or less. Restaurants serve us food almost as quickly as we can order it. The Internet delivers any and every purchase we could conceive of in under 48 hours. Music, e-books and movies are available instantly. Weight-loss programmes offer immediate results. The concept of delaying gratification can be difficult to learn and practice in a patience-optional culture that celebrates immediate satiation of every desire.

So it isn't surprising that the desire for instant gratification can even creep into our study of the Bible. The preponderance of devotional material available to us bears evidence to our love for the neatly-wrapped package: a spiritual insight paired with a few verses and an application point or two. We approach our 'time in the Word' like the drive-through at McDonald's: 'I've only got a few minutes. Give me something quick and easy to fill me up."

But sound Bible study is rooted in a celebration of delayed gratification. Gaining Bible literacy requires allowing our study to have a cumulative effect- across weeks, months, years- so that the interrelation of one part of Scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully, like a dust cloth slipping inch by inch from the face of a masterpiece. The Bible does not want to be neatly packaged into 365-day increments. It does not want to be reduced to truisms and action points. It wants to introduce dissonance into your thinking, to stretch your understanding. It wants to reveal a mosaic of the majesty of God one passage at a time, one day at at time, across a lifetime. By all means, bring eagerness to your study time. Yes, bring hunger. But certainly bring patience- come ready to study for the long term."