One of the things that I have found as I spend more and more time studying Scripture is that there just seems to be more of it to hand in my mind. This has increased a lot as I have been working on sermons and Bible studies. I am also finding that much of what I am learning for my training course is becoming what I am teaching to our youth group.

My understanding of this was always that becoming more familiar was just a natural consequence of time spent working on studying Scripture. Apparently it’s possible that an even bigger help for this has actually been the act of teaching others. For many, this will probably be obvious, but it wasn’t obvious for me. Jared Henderson makes the case that reading with the intention of teaching and taking notes with that in mind helps to increase knowledge retention.

Looking at this from a discipleship perspective, it seems like the best way to help people grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour (2 Pet 3:18) is to help them make disciples themselves. This seems to be further confirmed by research shown in books like The Trellis and the Vine.

I know that my own devotional life has been greatly enriched by the training that I had in learning how to teach the Bible. God’s word seems to yield more and more applications as I spend more time in it. And that very same gift being handed down is what we are working at, just as it was for Timothy under the care of his mother and grandmother (1 Tim 1:5).