The Bible Study of a Cluttered Mind

(A Very Shefa Way of Digging)

This all started the way many of my God moments do—quietly.

A devotional. A verse in Romans. Coffee is getting cold while my Bible stayed open.

The devotional pointed me to Romans, but instead of staying put, my mind wandered (as it often does). I landed in Romans 10:9, the verse about confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart.

That word again.

Believe.

It felt too small in English. Too one-dimensional for something Scripture treats as powerful enough to save, transform, and commission a life. Belief, as I was reading it, didn’t feel like a thought. It felt like something meant to move.

So I followed the nudge.

I opened the concordance and stepped into the Greek. Strong’s 4100 — pisteuō. Believe means to entrust yourself. To place your confidence, your weight, your life into Christ.

That made sense. Beautiful sense.

But then came the second meaning.

The same Greek word was used when something valuable was entrusted to someone else.

That stopped me.

Belief wasn’t just about me trusting Christ. It was also about Christ trusting me with something—His Word, His gospel, His mission. That trail led me straight to Galatians 2:7, where Paul speaks of the gospel being entrusted to him.

Belief had suddenly become relational. Mutual. Alive.

And just when I thought the trail might be finished, it wasn’t.

Because if the Greek opened one door, the Hebrew opened the whole house.

In Hebrew, the word for believe is אָמַן (aman, Strong’s H539). And this is where my heart finally caught up with my head.

Aman means to support, to make firm, to nourish, to hold steady. It’s the word used for a parent holding a child upright while they learn to walk. Belief wasn’t mental agreement—it was being held and becoming steady.

Then I looked at the letters themselves.

Aleph. Mem. Nun.

Strength. Water. Seed.

In pictograph form, belief tells a story: God’s strength flowing as Living Water, nourishing the seed He has planted within us—so that what He entrusts does not remain hidden, but grows, matures, and carries life beyond us.

Then I noticed the numerical value of the word.

Aman equals 91.

In Hebrew numerics, 91 represents the joining of God’s sacred name (YHWH) with our spoken acknowledgment (Adonai)—the unseen and the spoken meeting together. Heaven touching earth.

Belief wasn’t just something happening inside me anymore. It was a bridge.

And suddenly the whole path made sense.

Belief begins with trust. But it doesn’t stop there. Belief leads to encounter. Encounter leads to stewardship. Stewardship becomes testimony.

That’s how my mind works.

This is my brain in Shefa mode. I follow the places where a word tugs at my heart. A devotional becomes a verse. A verse becomes a word. A word becomes a trail. Somewhere along that trail, God entrusts me with something living and says, “Carry this.”

Belief, when it’s alive, refuses to stay in our heads.

It steadies the heart. It moves through our lives. It plants something meant to grow in others.

That’s not overthinking Scripture.

That’s Yada.