My friend Vanessa is hosting a link-up with some of her bloggy friends to encourage personal Bible study. The idea follows the acronym GROW:

G – Greet – Welcome God’s presence into your study with prayer
R – Read – Read the verse a few times, both silently and aloud
O – Observe – Ask yourself what stood out to you while you read the verse
W – Write – Write out the verse, note your observations, and share a prayer for this verse

For my fourth element:

Write

Context: Colossians 3 describes what a Christ-follower’s life should look like. It contrasts the old and new and uses the analogies of put off and put on. Toward the end of these instructions, verse 15 starts “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…” and verse 16 follows “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…” Peace and the word, ruling and dwelling.

The first line of the verse stood out to me this time.

Let – this word speaks openness to me. It’s not complicated or necessarily requiring much effort. Just stand back and allow it to happen.

the word of Christ – there are many ways God has spoken – prophets, visions, Jesus – but we can access His word any time with the Bible. His word. Isn’t that amazing? It’s there, was there, will always be there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” John 1:1 It’s stable and reliable. Jesus is the Word, truth personified.

dwell in you – for His word to dwell in us, we have to know it. And sometimes, after being in “the church” for a while, we can know a lot about His word without letting it dwell in us. We might keep it in our heads or use it to measure where others fall short, but we don’t let it dwell, really live as an active part of us. Memorization makes this easier. As the spirit also dwells in us (James 4:5), He can bring the word to mind. It’s there, hanging out, some of it in a back closet of the brain, but it’s still dwelling.

richly – the Greek word is plousios which means abundantly. We can’t just open the door a crack and let a few things in. “John 3:16 is pretty good, and all the love stuff. Y’all can come in. I think I’ll try to do the rest on my own. Encourage and teach on my own. Between Google and Pinterest, I should come up with some good stuff.” Nope, let the word dwell richly. It’s comfortable, it’s at home, it fills us. Richly. Like a dark chocolate molten lava cake. Mmmmm.

And that’s as far as I’m going to go today. Click over to Hearts on Guard to see the link-up and check out what the others are writing about this verse.