Welcome to Day 1519 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomBible Study – Prayer and Plausible Interpretation – Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1519 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.
 We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on accurately interpreting the Bible. Today let us meditate on:
Bible Study – Prayer and Plausible Interpretation·      Insight Thirty-Seven: Prayer Doesn’t Guarantee Your Interpretation Is Accurate
God is not a vending machine. He is not the genie of all genies, in covenant with his people to grant their every wish. No mature Christian, of course, would ever think of God in such terms. We know that God does not always give us what we ask for in prayer. We trust that God has good reasons for such denials. Paul asked the Lord to rid him of the mysterious “thorn in the flesh” three times, but the answer was no (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Even Jesus was refused when he asked God to deliver him from death on the cross if it was God’s will.
Upon reflection, this pill isn’t so hard to swallow. Perhaps the thing we so desperately want wouldn’t be good for us. Perhaps our motives aren’t entirely upright. Even if they are, maybe God has something better planned. These reasons are hard to fathom, though, when we ask God to illuminate our mind to understand Scripture. Why wouldn’t God want that?
Of course, God wants us to understand the Bible rightly. He desires our understanding as he expects us to kindly treat our spouse, tell someone the gospel, or meet someone’s emotional or financial need when it’s in our power to do so (Proverbs 3:27). But all of these spiritual endeavors depend in part upon our own will, discernment, and ability. Bible study is no exception.
This is transparently obvious when you think about it. We know from their writings that Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley prayed that they would adequately understand Scripture and believed God had answered that prayer. Yet these famous theologians came to dramatically different conclusions on many topics and in many passages. For example, John Calvin is renowned for his insistence that the salvation of individual believers was predestinated, an idea Wesley rejected. Luther’s judgment that James’s book didn’t belong in the New Testament would have drawn objections from the rest of these theologians. While it’s certainly appropriate to ask God to guide our study, it’s our responsibility to develop skill and experience in studying Scripture. Prayer is no cover for either meager effort or failure to address our own inadequacies as students. Most Bible students accept that until they’re in the heat of a theological joust or feel the urge...