Congratulations to all National Bible Bee (NBB) participants who have made it over half-way through the Summer Study! God’s Word is so precious, and all the time you have spent and will spend this summer studying is having an eternal impact on your life even now. This is also the point in the Summer Study at which it can get difficult to press on and keep studying. In today’s blog post, I interviewed Delie Hoverson (formerly Moss), a National Bible Bee alumna of four years, and winner of the 2015 NBBC Senior Division. She has a lot of encouragement and practical tips on this topic.
Thank you for joining me for this interview Delie! To start off, what was it that made you want to participate in the National Bible Bee?
We had an unusual path to participating in the National Bible Bee. The NBBC was two hours from where we lived when it was in Nashville, TN. We listened to some of the speakers and attended a little bit of the competition, which got our family excited about it. There was no host in our area, so my dad hosted that year and my family has been involved ever since!
The National Bible Bee is such a wonderful thing for the whole family to be involved in. Would you tell us a little bit more about your National Bible Bee experience?
The first year my family and I participated, we did not know much about the competition or how hard to study for it, so I barely qualified for the National Bible Bee Competition that year. I think the only reason I was able to do that well was because I had a seven year old brother who was not very strong in his reading, so I would do the Junior division study, and then the Primary division study with him. That gave me just enough of a boost so that I could qualify for the National Bible Bee Competition. After that I was definitely hooked, and each year after that I got more and more intense with my studying. I ranked higher each year in the competition, making it to the semi-final round, and then winning in my final year.
That is a neat tip to study NBB with a younger sibling who needs some extra help. That way you are not only helping them do better on the qualifying test, but you also get more review and study time in.
While some people’s goal might not be to win, others do have that goal. Either way, the priceless reward of studying God’s Word is well worthwhile! Would you tell us what motivated you to study hard and, by God’s grace, win the 2015 NBBC?
Each year I wanted to study more and more and advance more, but I really didn’t go into the 2015 NBBC thinking it was the year to win. That year I did want to try to make it to the semi final round since I had made it one other year, so that was a big motivator for me. Also, studying gets easier the more years you participate in the National Bible Bee because you get into a rhythm of memorization. It gets more fun each year, too, because you start bumping into familiar passages that you studied in previous years. Maybe a passage was a cross-reference one year, and the next year it’s a memory passage. The accumulative effect of all those things makes participating in NBB easier each year.
That is so true, and really encouraging! While sometimes competing for NBB can seem overwhelming, it gets easier and more rhythmic as time goes on, and as you participate more. At this point we are over half-way through the summer study. What are some tips/advice you would give to the participants to keep studying, even when it is hard?
It seems like there are two sides when it comes to motivation for studying. The one side is trying to find motivation to keep studying just one more hour or one more day, and the second side is trying to be motivated to study for the rest of the summer or fall. There’s slightly different strategies depending on which kind of overwhelm you are feeling. For the short term scenario, It helps to not underestimate the power of short bursts of study with short breaks in between. If you are struggling with being motivated to study for long stretches of time, a tip is that you can ‘trick’ your brain into doing longer stretches of study, if you simply change where or what you are studying. You could switch from memory passages, to Greek words, to Discovery Journal review, etc. Bouncing around those different areas while staying within NBB study can give your brain the break it needs, because it keeps your brain from getting fatigued from studying the same thing. Along with that, try to find breaks that rejuvenate you in a short amount of time. That could be something like doing 50 jumping jacks and eating a nourishing snack, or if you are a social person, maybe you could message another NBB participant friend and then wait to respond until you have studied a little more. On the other hand, something less rejuvenating like scrolling on the phone for a few minutes could turn into a longer break and not leave you feeling as refreshed.
As for finding motivation for the long term study, it might be necessary to take a day off from studying every now and again. Maybe that means taking Sunday afternoons off and getting rest for the week ahead. Community can also really help you not feel alone as you are pushing through the study during the difficult times.
Another motivation is to remember that building the character it takes to do things when you do not want to do them is a really good skill in itself. It’s a powerful combination in that you are studying the Bible and you are building that determination and ability to stick with something even when it is not as fun anymore. And that is a skill that will transfer into all kinds of things in life, as the study of the Word itself does! Know that it is okay to study even when you do not feel excited about it, and know that Scripture gives you more love for it as you study it.
Yes, it is so encouraging to know that God is stretching us and growing us in more ways than one. These character traits are so important to have in life, and the Word of God is a priceless treasure that is worth every minute we put into studying it!
Thank you so much for the encouragement and tips you gave for pushing through when studying gets hard. As a final question, what is one of your favorite things that you learned while studying for NBB?
I am grateful for the structure that NBB gave me for studying the Bible. Before participating in NBB, I read my Bible consistently and memorized a little bit, but it was not as much about knowing what Scripture was all about. I studied it with more questions about what a passage was telling me to do, what is this convicting me of, etc., which are great questions. However, I didn’t have a framework for seeing what Scripture is saying about Christ, and how the story is all about him. I’m grateful for how the NBBC got me deeper into the epistles and gospels, and it also gave me that big picture of what is happening throughout the Bible. It gave me a great foundation for having a more Christ-centered approach to reading the Bible, showing me that it’s not just a bunch of random things that I should be doing, but that it’s the story of Christ!
Interview by NBB Alumna: Victoria Hoverson
