At one time, I was taught in Seminary. Since then, I have learned to instead be taught by Yahweh how to understand the scriptures. I was a process for me, and I did not expect it. I thought I understood. Well, I did. I understood what man taught, but I had not searched the scriptures. Once I opened myself to the scriptures, my Father gave me understanding on those questions that bothered me so much.
Even though I was taught hermeneutics, I did it in a manner that avoided those passages that showed some doctrines in error. It was like I was still in Sunday School with prescribed proof texts.
I can relate to you. I once depended on teachers to teach, lead, correct me. Then I stopped, as I was becoming dependent on them.
Then I only read the bible, nothing else. It was my first port of call. It relied on it to teach, lead, correct and transform me into the image I interpreted it to present to me. But then I found that I had formed a wrong image, an image of my imagination which I formed from the extremly limited information provided by the bible.
The bible was my instruction manual of how to build a good Christian. But I found that though I was builting myself according to the instructions in the manual, there was something missing.
It was a Person, the Spirit of the Christ Who I longed to be like.
I put the manual away and concentrated on spending time establishing a strong relationship with this Person. Since then He has be injecting His new Divine power into me and over time He has been changing me from the inside out.
The image I got from reading that bible manual was distorted. The image others formed from reading the same manual was distorted. But now that the Spirit of the original Designer and blueprint is living in me, He is transforming me independent of that partial instruction manual.
I found it has so many missing pages and therefore incomplete and incapable of assisting me to complete this task.
The thing was, the bible gave me general information and advice but it failed to give me specific tailored detailed information to me, for me, about the new me.
Now I simply rely on Yahweh to build me into the image He designed beforehand that I should become. And He has sent His master, extremly skilled Builder to complete the task. Thank God for His Divine Spirit Who moves on site and is reconstructing us from the inside out!
Now it is Him not me. The Spirit is my Project Manager not me. I fired myself and put away the incomplete manual. Life is still challenging, sometimes even more so, but now I know and have utmost confidence that this project is in great hands, the hands of the Creators Who said, Let Us make man in Our image.