Studying God

    There is a difference between Bible study and Bible devotionals. This may seem obvious to you; but to me it is something I seem to either miss entirely, or somehow try to combine the two. I do no think it is necessarily a bad thing to getting both at once; however, they are both unique and should be practiced as such. Bible study deals primarily with learning about God through His Word, whereas devotionals focus on cultivating a personal relationship to God through His Word. Unfortunately, I tend to gravitate more towards Bible study than devotionals. Why is this? I think it has something to do with my mostly intellectual nature; being a man of proof and thought, rather than of faith and deep relation. I wish I was not like this. Yet, this is how I was made. And that is good.
    I believe what I need to work on is not literally study God’s word, as I usually do, but to migrate away from that into simply a study of God. I need to probe not his words to find meaning and thought and evidence in them; I need to probe those words as He were speaking directly to me, revealing his very nature, conversing with me on a deeper level than that of mere education. But how can this be done? It is difficult to focus on your heart purposely, almost impossibly for me. So how can someone like me do this?
    I think that maybe the best way to focus on devotional reading, a study of God’s nature and relationship to me, is to plainly stop thinking so much. There is only so much my mind can understand; therefore, quite logically, there is only so much more that my heart may understand! Because where the mind drops off, the heart picks up; and it is there where I need to be. I need to step out of the realm of mere academics and theology of God and cross into the threshold of His presence, conversation, and love.