How Do We Study The Bible

Prayer Is The Key To Effective Bible Study

Before you begin your study each day, a quiet moment in prayer helps get your head in the game. We recommend finding a quiet, solitary place where youre least likely to encounter distractions. By intentionally turning your mind toward God, youre inviting His Holy Spirit to guide your study of the Scriptures.

While its absolutely true that the Bibles words were written for everyone, studying them still requires care, respect, and guidance. And the best guide you could ever hope for is God Himself, who sends us his Holy Spirit to help us understand His profound, infinite truths .

Rest assured that even if youve never prayed before, God hears you. He wants you to get to know Him, and the best way to begin that relationship is through His Wordthe Holy Bible. Simply acknowledging that you want to get to know Him can begin this process.

Your prayer can be as simple and straightforward as this:

Dear God, I want to believe in You. I want to get to know Who You are. I pray for Your guidance as I start studying the Bible. Amen.

Yes, thats all it takes to begin a relationship with God. He recognizes your decision to get into the nitty gritty of the Bible and learn more about Him. Even if it feels awkward or unfamiliar at first, remember that trying anything new can feel strange until it becomes a habit.

As far as habits go, putting these two things together is indeed the healthiest habit you can ever develop.

Creative & Unique Methods To Study The Bible

First the creative and artistic methods

Studying The Bible Requires Diligence And Dependence

We give ourselves to studythats diligence. But we must also pray for God to open our minds to understandthats dependence.

Paul said to Timothy, think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything . We do the thinking, God gives the understanding.

When the evangelist George Whitefield became a Christian, he started to read the Scriptures with intense, daily devotion. Notice his humble posture: I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books and praying over, if possible, every line and word. . . I daily received fresh life, light and power from above.1

Whether we choose to kneel when we study or not, that should be the posture of our hearts.

We do the thinking, God gives the understanding.

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Bible Study By Chapters

In the Bible there are 1,189 chapters in the Old and New Testaments. In a little over three years, a person could make an intensive study of the whole Bible, taking a chapter a day. It is usually a good practice to start your Bible study in the New Testament.

Time needed: 20 minutes.

Study the Bible by Chapters

Word Bible Study Method

Love the idea of using the letters that spell Word as an acronym to study the Word of God. I found this acronym on A Symphony of Praise.

W Write

After youve prayed, write the relevant verse in our journal. Remember to note the name of the book, chapter, and verse.

O Observe

Observe shows you the context and how the verse fits in the Bible. Ask the who, what, where, when, and why questions. The what will relate to the type of genre, whether its an epistle, history, narrative, poetry, etc.

R Relevant

What is the message for you? Did the passage encourage, instruct, or correct you? How are you going to apply it in your life?

D Declare

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How Do We Actually Study It

One simple way to start is to take a highlighter and mark every mention of God, including other references to him, like Lord, Jesus, Spirit, Father, Savior, and even pronouns used for God. Then, when you go back through the passage youve studied, look for the words surrounding Gods name. Heres what to search for:

Verse Mapping Bible Study Method

Sometimes you read a passage, and youre drawn to a specific verse. Verse mapping is excellent to break down that verse so that you can apply it in your life. The method helps you focus on Gods message youll notice youll continue to meditate on that verse until the meaning becomes clear.

• If you use different Bibles and Study Bibles, I recommend you note the Bible used for future reference itll be easier to cross-reference your notes in your journal with those made in the Bible margins. Highlight the verse in your Bible and copy the verse into your journal. Make sure you add the name of the Bible book, chapter, verse number, and version.
• Underline the words that stand out. Check cross-references and note the different terms used for the same meaning.
• Ask what, when, why, where, and how questions and prayerfully search for the answers in the verse.
• Always read and interpret a verse in context with the verses before and after it.
• Paraphrase the verse. Make notes of the things you want to remember, what youve learned, and the promises of God.
• Take action on how to apply the verse in your life.

Verse mapping doesnt have to be in a structured order you can use a mind map for Scripture verse mapping.

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Kids Bible Lesson Why Do We Study The Bible

Who knows why we go to school? Why do we study all those books that they give us? To get a good job, to learn what we need to know.

When you come to church, we also study a book. What book do we study? The Bible.

Who knows why we study the Bible?

The Bible is even more important than our school books because it tells us about God and Jesus. It tells us about how God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit love us and all the things that They have done for us and it tells us not how we can get a good job, but how we can be saved and go to Heaven when we die. It tells us how we are supposed to live our lives now. It tells us what kind of people God wants us to be and the kinds of things that He wants us to do.

Those are pretty important things, arent they? Thats why study the Bible to learn all those things.

Show students a popular childrens fiction book and ask, Who can tell me who wrote this book?

Now show them the Bible and ask, Who can tell me who wrote this book?

More than 40 people wrote the Bible, people like Moses and King David and Peter and Paul. It is a collection of books, a big book made up of a lot of smaller books. There are 66 books in the Bible. But those 40 different people werent just making up the Bible from their own ideas, were they? They werent just making up a story like this fiction book, right?

The people who wrote the Bible were writing true things, things that really happened. And they were writing the things that God gave them the idea to write about.

Reasons To Study The Bible And 7 Excuses We Make

The Bible is the worlds best-selling book, has been translated into over 200 languages, and is the foundational text of Western civilization. When we look at the life transformation this book has had on a global scale, our attention should peak.

So why does Bible study feel so difficult? To overcome this perception, we need to refresh ourselves on some key reasons why digging deeply into Gods Word is so essential, combat excuses, and see that Bible study is a doable, worthy, and awesome pursuit.

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Pay Attention To The Context

Paying attention to context is extremely important if you want to accurately understand what the Bible is saying. Some people just search its pages for an individual verse that speaks to their need of the moment, without paying much attention to the verses that surround it. Reading this way is kind of like treating the Bible as a fortune cookie or as a collection of inspirational memes. As you read the Bible, sometimes a verse will stand out and engage your heart in a very personal way. But when that happens, its important to see how that verse relates to the verses around it. If you dont pay attention to the context, you are in danger of trying to make the Bible say something that it doesnt actually say.

Every verse of the Bible is part of a chapter, and every chapter is part of a book, and every book of the Bible is part of one larger God-inspired message that unfolds across its pages.

Many people dont realize that the Bible wasnt originally written in chapters and verses. Each book was one continuous text contained in a scroll, and it was not until the late Middle Ages that someone came up with the idea of dividing it up into chapters and verses to make it more convenient for readers and as a tool for helping people locate specific passages that they wanted to remember. One should keep that in mind before pulling a verse out of its context and applying it to your life.

Study A Book Of The Bible

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Time:

Have you tried other ways to study the Bible and want to go deeper? Do you like to be challenged? Studying a book of the Bible, or doing a book-by-book study, is a great way to go.

Studying a book of the Bible is one of the more challenging ways to study the Bible because it involves a little bit of every method of Bible Study. It can involve studying themes, topics, characters, individual words, and cross-references.

A book study takes time and commitment, but it can also be the most rewarding! Its my favorite way to study the Bible because it takes me deeper and helps me wrestle with the text over an extended period of time.

You might see many Bible verses in a whole new light when you read them in their context. You might even find that some of your favorite verses mean something different than what you might have heard in the past.

If you take a verse out of its context, it can seem to mean something different than what the author intended. The advantage of a book study is that it helps you keep Bible verses in their context. You want to know what God is saying and not change its meaning.

What I love about doing a book study of the Bible is that I usually end up where I didnt expect. I start out with a general idea of what I think the book means. Then I end up in a surprisingly different place at the end. Also, whatever book I studied last becomes my new favorite!

Here are the 5 steps from that article:

How to Study Books of the Bible

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Excuses We Make Not To Study The Bible

1. Studying the Bible is hard and too time-consuming. Its a fair statement: studying the Bible can be confusing, difficult, and dry, but it is when were trapped in the fist of our excuses that we must look to the long-term goal over the short-term experience. Long-term, it affects our minds and souls and transforms us to be people who are resilient in crisis, can model Christ to others, and discern error in secular and Christian cultures.

2. Bible Study is boring. When we consider that God creates new life in us through its reading, how can new life be boring?! In fact, many times of Bible study can be rich and experiential, speaking directly to our current life circumstances and drawing us into a felt relationship. Having said that, Bible study can also be drycultural context can be confusing, and a lack of vibrancy to some of the text can be tiring to plod through. It is here where we cant allow our feelings to trump reason and we must ask ourselves if its worth the effort and what the alternative is. Not connecting with God is simply not an option.

7. My church doesnt offer Bible study groups. Because training people to grasp and engage with Gods Word on an accurate and personal level is a key component of discipleship, we can grab some friends together and be the solution to its absence in the church we attend.

Understanding The Bible: How To Study It

Understanding the Bible

Even if were trying our best every day, this imperfect world inevitably fails us. Who has time for more empty promises of success, wealth, or true happiness?

Enough is enough. We want lasting solutions for lifes challenges. We want to know the meaning underneath all this madness.

And what better place to look than within the #1 best-selling, most widely-distributed book of all time: the Holy Bible.

But what kind of book is the Bible? Sometimes it can be hard to figure out how or where to start reading it.

The Bible is a rich, diverse, complex collection of 66 books written over thousands of years, and by all sorts of different authors. Its an important book that has shaped major parts of historyand it can also help us find meaning, guidance, and insight as we get to know more about God, the Creator of the Universe, and His plan for each one of us.

If youre wanting to study the Bible, you dont have to do it alone.

The Adventist Church grew out of a quest for answers in Scripture. This group of believers didnt want to rely on tradition or hearsay, but on the Word of God.

What they found shed new light on the struggles we all encounter every single day. They found answers providing hope that someday, everything really will be alright, and that each one of us was created with a unique purpose .

So when it comes to studying the Bible, all of its complexity doesnt have to deter us from diving right in. It can actually be downright exciting!

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Theme Bible Study Method

The thematic method of Bible study is less intensive than the topical method.

• Select the Bible theme for your Bible studies.
• Create a list of Bible passages you want to study. Use Bible Study tools when making a list. Bible reference books, an exhaustive concordance, a topical Bible, or your favorite Study Bible are excellent Bible study resources for thematic study.
• Select the key verses relevant to the theme.
• Make a list of five questions to help you learn what the Bible teaches on this theme. Ask these questions with each Bible verse you study.
• Summarize what youve learned in your words.
• How will you apply what youve learned in your own life? Always pray to find the deeper meaning in Scripture.