Yeah, you're a scholar

A functional, not technical, scholar.  You do it all the time.

You ask questions at the landscape nursery and do research online before you choose a tree that's going to shade that dining room window from the blazing afternoon sun.  How big will it get?  How fast will it grow?  Will it work in your area's climate?  What color is it in the spring and fall?  How do you plant it?

You may not know it's etymology, or country of origin, or it's genera or subgenera -- you're not a botanist.  But you can learn enough to get the tree you need.  You study it.

Same with recipes and cooking.  Iron Chef may intimidate you, but you don't need to do that -- you just want to eat and feed your family well and maybe enjoy being in the kitchen.  And you can, without being Bobby Flay.

Before we went to New York I studied the subway system.  I don't know the kinds of cars they use or who builds them or how many miles they go before they fail.  I can't give a lecture on rotary converter technology.  But I knew what time I had to leave Yankee Stadium and what transfers to make to get to the Port Authority and then my hotel so we'd get to The Phantom of the Opera on time.  I studied it.

You study to learn what you need to know at the time (that's how Abraham Lincoln learned law!).  And when you study, you use scholarly people and sources -- the National Gardening Association, Rachael Ray, Paula Dean, the MTA maps.

That's the same thing you do (or can do) with the Bible.

You don't have to know Hebrew or Greek of Aramaic.  You don't have to be a seminary graduate.  Of course, you won't know all that seminary graduates know.

But you can be a functional Bible scholar.  You can learn enough to know how to think and what to do.  All it takes is the same interest, curiosity and diligence that you use all the time in other areas of life.  You have to want to -- need to -- know. 

And just like in landscaping or cooking or traveling, it helps to use sources from others who are technical scholars (for example THIS or THIS or THIS).

Then, incredibly, there's that extra-special, mind-blowing, supernatural bonus -- that makes this kind of study different from anything else you'll ever do:

"If you do not understand a book by a departed writer, you are unable to ask him his meaning, but the Spirit, who inspired Holy Scripture, lives forever, and He delights to open the Word to those who seek His instruction" -- Charles Spurgeon