2 Cents

If you're a Christian, I hope you're trying to form the habit of reading the Bible consistently on your own.  This is perhaps the most important discipline of them all for Christians to incorporate into their lives.

Sometimes when we're reading through books of the Bible by ourselves we come across a passage that we don't understand.

What should we do when this happens?

Well it depends.

Some people do not have access to helpful resources that explain hard-to-understand passages.  Some people just have their Bibles and that is it.

Is that a problem?  Not necessarily.  You can be a perfectly obedient Christian with nothing but a Bible and a heart willing to obey and submit to Jesus as Lord.

If this is the case for you, my advice would be to make a note of the passage and find someone that you can ask later, or go to a library to check out a book that can help you.

There's nothing wrong with doing that and moving right along to the next verse.  Most of what the Bible has to say you will be able to understand just fine.  The most important messages of the Bible should be easy enough for the average person to comprehend without the help of commentaries or other extra-biblical resources.

But don't just accept the fact that you don't understand it and never will.  Commit to finding the answer later.

Your first place to turn should be your minister or pastor at the church you attend.  As a biblical Christian I hope you are involved and immersed in a community of other believers at a particular local church.  E-mail the minister and see what he thinks.

Next you could turn to a trusted commentary.  Your minister can give you a couple good suggestions for commentaries you can trust.  Like any other genre of books there are commentaries you should trust and commentaries you shouldn't.  One website that I use to help me in this area is BestCommentaries.com.

While I would encourage every Christian, especially those not in ministry, to slowly start developing a library of commentaries to help you understand your Bible, you won't always have the money to buy a commentary every time you come across a difficult passage.

So one good solution is to borrow them.

Chances are your minister at church will let you look at one of his - but make sure you bring it back!!!

Also, you can always go to your local library.  "But my public library doesn't have any good commentaries," you might say.  Well our public library in Owensboro is like that.  But you can request they get a commentary sent in from another library through an inter-library loan.  This can usually be done at no cost to you, or at least a minimal fee.

Another good solution is to drive to a seminary or Christian university library, if you have one near you.  In the city of Owensboro, Kentucky Wesleyan College's library has many solid Bible commentaries.

Finally I would suggest you invest in a good study Bible, which has notes along with the Bible text to explain the passages that are harder to understand.  My favorite is the ESV Study Bible, which comes in numerous binding options.  You can also purchase the iPad and iPhone version for just $15, which includes all the study notes of the printed version!