Look carefully at this picture–What do you see?
Now let’s dig a little deeper, so to speak. Was there something important that you missed in the first photo?
As you might have noticed underneath the towel in the first picture was a little girl. The purpose of these photos is to illustrate that when we look a little deeper we can find things that we would have otherwise missed. Likewise, in the scriptures there are many hidden treasures we can uncover.
Often we need to just dig a little deeper and we’ll find great spiritual insight. John Hilton III wrote the book Please Pass the Scriptures to teach how we can gain more from our study. A free copy of this book is currently available at http://deseretbook.com/free. Go grab your free copy today!
We love this quote from Elder Christofferson about what our scripture study should be like.
“You should care more about the amount of time you spend in the scriptures than about the amount you read in that time. I see you sometimes reading a few verses, stopping to ponder them, carefully reading the verses again, and as you think about what they mean, praying for understanding, asking questions in your mind, waiting for spiritual impressions, and writing down the impressions and insights that come so you can remember and learn more. Studying in this way, you may not read a lot of chapters or verses in a half hour, but you will be giving place in your heart for the word of God, and He will be speaking to you” (Ensign, May 2004, 11).
One specific technique that can help us focus in on our scripture study and “dig a little deeper” is to look for one-liners. Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “The scriptures contain so many jewels over which we pass too lightly, especially some stunning one-liners” (“Unto this Very Purpose,” 5)
A great purpose you can have in your scripture study is to look for these one-liners. Consider the following:
“The battle is the Lord’s” (1 Samuel 17:47).
“Get thee hence” (Matthew 4:10).
“Ye ought to search the scriptures” (Alma 33:2).
“Ye must study it out” (Doctrine and Covenants 9:8).
Elder Jay E. Jensen of the Seventy, in his excellent book Treasure up the Word, explained how to find one-liners. He said, “(1) Study, search, and examine words and phrases prayerfully and humbly…(2) ignore existing punctuation marks and verse and chapter breaks…(3) put periods in a sentence where there are none…(4) after you have isolated a phrase ask yourself whether those words express an idea much bigger than the words themselves” (95-96).
Searching for one-liners can be a fun way to dig a little deeper in your scripture study. The next time you study the scriptures remember the little girl under the towel. There are great scriptural nuggets that are buried a bit, waiting for us to dig in and find them!
My leaders did a lesson on this in august it was one of the most memerable lessons it really opened my eyes to the scriptures and helped me understand them more.
okay so what you do is try to imagine your self in their shoes. That usally helps me. Hope it helps you!