Meaningful Scripture Study (Elder Dallin H. Oaks)

Elder Dallin H. Oaks and a panel discuss improving and encouraging our scripture study. Make sure you catch Elder Oaks' concluding remarks about scripture study at time-stamps 4:37 and 9:33!!!
TRANSCRIPT: Encouraging Daily Scripture Study
Elder Oaks: The mention of scripture and of scripture study as a preparation for feeling the Spirit introduces our third subject: Encouraging daily scripture study. How can we encourage our students to study the scriptures?
Latter-day prophets have stressed the importance of studying the scriptures each day. President Harold B. Lee cautioned, “If we’re not reading the scriptures daily, our testimonies are growing thinner, our spirituality isn’t increasing in depth” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee [2000], 66).
There are few things that a teacher can do that would have a more powerful, long-range effect upon their students’ lives than teaching them the importance of studying the scriptures, giving them that experience, letting them taste the fruit of daily scripture study. In my judgment, that would go beyond any subject that might be taught from the scriptures, except the fundamentals in the first few articles of faith. Beyond that, I think the most important thing we could do as teachers of seminary and institute students would be to connect them with the scriptures and the results of daily scripture study....
Elder Oaks: There’s one thing that I’ve learned about scripture study that I wish I’d been taught when I was of an age to be attending seminary or institute, and that is that it is a great mistake to try to read the scriptures like you read a magazine or a newspaper. What I refer to is the fact that I pick up a newspaper and I just read it, or I pick up a magazine or a textbook and I just read it. But when I pick up the scriptures, I’m picking up the word of God, written by prophets under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord. Those should never be read without praying over them first.
When I go to the table to eat, I don’t take physical nourishment without asking the Lord to bless that food to nourish and strengthen my body. Similarly, I think when we study the scriptures, we should bow our head and pray-often it would be silently because of the surroundings-but we would pray that the Lord would bless us that we’d be able to understand what we’re reading and that the act of reading the scriptures would summon the Spirit of the Lord to guide us on things other than simply the meaning of what we’re reading. In this way the scriptures can be a Urim and Thummim to help us receive revelation. But it begins with prayer; it doesn’t begin with reading, like a newspaper or a magazine.
FULL VIDEO & TRANSCRIPT AT: si.lds.org/lib....