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“Seeking, Not Seeing Is Believing!”

Maggie To
Staff Columnist

Coming off a hectic week of finals and the madness of dorm move-outs, hundreds of college students arrived at Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s Cedar Campus for “Chapter Focus Week,” a week of God-filled training and community. Over the course of the week, students were trained in one of 10 different tracks, ranging from Bible study of the Gospel of Mark to training sessions on effective evangelism.

Students in the Mark I track!                                                       Photo courtesy of Gala Lok

I participated in the Mark I track, which conducted inductive Bible study on the first half of Mark. For those who are unfamiliar with what inductive Bible study is, it’s a method of studying Bible passages using three main components: observation, interpretation, and application.

OBSERVATION: explores what the passage says, by looking at repetition, contrast, identification of mentioned names or numbers, etc.

INTERPRETATION: explores what the passage means, by looking into the significance of the repetitions, numbers, names etc.

APPLICATION: explores how you should respond to the passage

To be completely honest, I wasn’t initially thrilled about the track. Coming off a week of finals and thus very little sleep, spending 5.5 hours a day analyzing Bible passages didn’t strike me as ‘fun.’ However, as the week progressed (and after many cups of coffee), the Gospel of Mark came alive to me. Ask anyone else in the track and I’m sure they’ll answer the same exact way: there’s so much more to this gospel than many people give it credit. It’s jam packed with “subliminal” messages about the character of Jesus!

Throughout Mark, Jesus asks people to listen to him, but they fail to understand him. Many see his miracles, but do not perceive its implications about his Messianic purpose. They hear his parables, but they do not understand.

How much more then, is Jesus calling us to perceive him - to grasp and understand the underlying implications of his gospel?

Jesus wants us to be illuminated and enlightened with understanding.

In Mark 4 Jesus states, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand?  For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.”

I always thought this passage paralleled what Jesus says in Matthew 5, when he asks Christians to be a light to the world. But no! Jesus is telling us something different here. He wants us to know that there are messages in the text that are designed to be uncovered with some intentional analysis. With a bit of seeking, we can delve into the deeper meanings of Jesus’ words.

Why does Jesus make his messages so cryptic then, if they’re meant to be uncovered?

If we examine an earlier portion of the same passage, we can see Jesus explaining the message of the parable of the sown seeds to his disciples. However, he reveals the message only to his disciples, not to the people at large.

Why?

He does this because the disciples ask him for the meaning – they are being intentional about seeking out the answers.

Jesus tells them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God.”

What is the secret, then, to the kingdom of God?

Well, it’s just what He’s asking us to do – the secret is to seek!

In all my years of Sunday School, never before have I perceived the Bible to be so rich with meaning. I spent 19 years of my life seeing, and only just recently have I begun to perceive. Jesus calls us to something deeper than simply gliding over the words of the Bible – He calls us to seek, and if it doesn’t come the first time, try a second. And a third. And a fourth. It’s called the Living Word for a reason – it deserves a second glance.

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