Playing with Pictures - Growing in Scripture

Good Bible study is far from ho-hum. The power of God's spirit and excitement of God’s word meet in the  rich language of “word pictures” or metaphors placed throughout scripture. And until we take a good look at those pictures, we might miss out on the real message God wants to give us.

A good example of "Word Pictures" and there power is found in Paul’s prayer in chapter 3 of Ephesians, you can spent a whole study exploring the metaphors in the passage. Take verses 16 through 19.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:16-19, NIV).

That’s a lot to say in two sentences! But don’t let the density of those sentences get in the way. The word pictures are terrific! There are six of them suggested here: 1.) God’s glorious riches, 2.) Christ dwelling in believers’ hearts, 3.) believers being rooted in love 4.) established in love, 5.) grasping how wide and long and high and deep is Christ’s love, 6.)  being filled with the fullness of God.

As studying word pictures go, one thing I like to do is draw the picture or write out a flowery description of how I see it. Letting the image rest in my mind and flow on to the paper in a new form. I'm no artist yet drawing the word pictures I find opens me to more insights from the Spirit. Take how I visualized God’s “glorious riches.” I visualized a room full of treasure overflowing and sparkling with gold, valuable gems and priceless jewelry, then my mind flashed to a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end. The images built on each other until I had developed a fabulous picture of God’s riches stored up in inexhaustible piles. The pictures connected with me intellectually and emotionally making a transcendent ineffable truth concrete. Biblical imagery will come alive in a powerful way. The method is an avenue to get the word deep in the human heart. The basic steps are simple:

1. Pray before Reading claiming the promise of the Holy Spirit's ministry of illumination.
   
2. Read the passage aloud and listen carefully to discover the word pictures used in it.
3. Give yourself time to visualize and develop the word pictures. Draw or write your personal take on each picture. [Optional study tool - Some may like to get at a deeper meaning to the writers use of a particular word picture, two good tools are the Key Word Study Bible (similar online tool here) also  Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament. I have used both to inspire my imagination when a picture was still just words and to clarify a tricky picture when I wanted to understand the cultural ideas behind the picture]
   
4. Read scripture again with the picture in mind. You might even try reading the passage aloud again, this time inserting your picture and flowery description for the word picture.

Such a method can surely be taken to far and pervert a text as much as it can enlighten one. The only caution i would give is to talk with others about your insights. From within a community of believers, the studier gains clarity, accountability and is encouraged to act on the insights they have gained. Truth is like water, it is a life giving substance if left to stagnate it can poison as well as clean. Truth put in action is like a running mountain stream. It is fresh and clean and full of such life that given time it can cut through the hardest rock. 

When using this approach, it’s important to take all the pictures seriously, even the ones that seem far-fetched or funny. One time in response to the phrase “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19), I visualized a water balloon. After I laughed at my own way of thinking, I gave it real consideration. I began to unfold the image and found that it provided helpful insights. Our lives are as limp and shapeless as empty balloons if we don’t have God’s Spirit filling us. When God begins to pour his nature into us, we will be surprised how we can be stretched far beyond the capacities we thought we had. And we will feel ourselves “fit to burst” with a sense of joy and fulfillment when we find that God is beginning to give us his own character and to include us as partners in his own purposes.

Though visualizing scriptural word pictures may seemed like playing and not study. The approach produces serious benefits for the believer. It jarred us out of our traditional ruts of interpretation, forces us to avoid pious platitudes and allows us to hear God speaking afresh.