Pick up a quick tip to get more out of your Bible study

I've taught for over twenty years and I can help you go deeper when you open up the Word.

Study tip: Seek God

The ultimate purpose of Bible study is to deepen our relationship with the God who reveals Himself in its pages. He promises us ‘you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.’ (Jeremiah 29:13) It will increase our wonder and our worship of our God ‘who called you out of darkness into His glorious light’. (1 Peter 2:9)

So with each passage, each you study, ask yourself what it reveals about God or His ways. In the two quick examples I cited, we find out that God encourages us to seek Him and promises to honor every sincere search. He wants us to know Him. Ponder that for a moment or two. God… wants me to know Him… challenges me to… How could I refuse an invitation like that? How could I slack off on Bible study when God is effectively asking me to sit down with Him?

That phrase from 2 Peter gives us the gospel. God called us. He didn’t move us Himself. He called and we had to respond, but when we did, everything changed as much as it could possibly change. From darkness into light, and not just any light, His glorious light! God wants us to join Him in that light, so He calls us. How could you not love a God like that?

One more example- This one is a little more obscure. I was reading in 2 Kings this morning and hit this verse in chapter 17. “And it was so, at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they did not fear the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.” The context is that Assyria has taken the northern kingdom into captivity and repopulated the land with people from all over their empire. These folks brought their religion with them, and when they practiced it in the Promised Land, lions came and attacked them. What does that tell you about God? Mess up church and you’ll get eaten? Maybe. I think the Old Testament consistently reveals God’s character. In this odd verse, we see that He takes assaults on His holiness very seriously. The people failed to revere Him alone, and He brought swift judgment. Thankfully for us, His grace often delays that judgment, but He has that right.

Of course, it’s always a good idea to makes notes about all these observations in your notebook.

Study Tip: Break It Down

By Paula Wiseman

One of my favorite things about teaching is getting to share something that might be familiar to me, but completely fresh to my listeners. It makes me stop and consider what I’m teaching, and come up with a way to interpret all the ‘jargon’. Next time you study one of your favorite verses or passages, break it down word for word. Ask yourself what the significance is of each word choice the writer used. What idea does that word convey? What difference does that word make in the rest of the passage?

Here’s an example. Yesterday, I got to break down the gospel for the kids at church camp. We used 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 as a framework.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Since we weren’t studying Paul or Corinth, I skipped the first part and concentrated on the gospel as Paul defined it.

Christ: Paul doesn’t call Him Jesus here. He wants to draw attention to His title – the chosen Son of God, born for this purpose
Died: Even though He was God, Christ allowed Himself to die a physical death
For: The reason it happened
Our: Christ’s death is sufficient for the sins of every individual person
Sins: Everything we say, do or think OR fail to say, do or think that is contrary to God’s perfection
According to the Scriptures: It is recorded, not made up and God’s reputation is staked on its absolute truth.
Buried: The fact that Jesus was buried is proof that everyone there was thoroughly convinced He was dead.
Raised the third day: Resurrection is awesome enough, but it means His death was acceptable to God as payment for sins and whoever accepts that payment to cover his or her own sins gets to raise from the dead as well, just as God promised.

Dear God, may we never get so familiar with Your word that it loses its meaning and impact in our lives. Like Your compassions and mercies, Your word never fails. It is fresh and new every morning.

Study Tip: Keep a notebook

By Paula Wiseman

This tip may be a little obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway. Use a notebook. I don’t remember everything – and less all the time – so my notebook is essential to my studying. I’ve kept a study notebook at least since I was in college. Sometimes I enjoy going back to see how my insights have grown over these “few” years since my college days. (20 is a few, right?)

What should you write in your notebook? It’s your notebook. Write whatever you want. Here are a few ideas.
I make it a point to write the passage and the date. Then I go verse by verse and write my own questions, or comments.

Here’s an excerpt from my notebook: January 22, 1995 Galatians 5:1-26
v.1 This is not freedom to sin but freedom from sin and its eternal penalty
v.2 To say circumcision is necessary for salvation denies the faith that God requires…

I also keep a running list on my computer of some topics I’m chasing. One is ‘fear of the Lord’. Anytime I come to a verse dealing with that topic I make a note. Today I hit Psalm 31:19
Oh, how great is Your goodness,/ Which You have laid up for those who fear You,/ Which You have prepared for those who trust in You/ In the presence of the sons of men!
So in my notebook I added:
Fear and trust are equated. To fear God is to trust Him completely. To begin to trust our own judgment is to begin to put ourselves in God’s place. We can only trust one. The result and reward is God’s goodness- goodness so great He can’t give it to us all at once, but it must be laid up in store. His goodness is not in secret, but will be publicly given as a further testimony of His goodness.

Sometimes I just copy down verses that hit me-
The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, “Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass,/ And as I have purposed, so it shall stand: … For the Lord of hosts has purposed,/ And who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, And who will turn it back?”
(Isaiah 14: 24, 27)

Finally, I write down questions I have for God that I need help with- These are from November 2007.
Question: How can you know that you are doing what God wants (called/willed) without reinforcement? Failure always causes me to question my course of action. However the failure may not be my fault, may be something God is doing in someone else…
Question: How can I know when I should maintain the course THRU the failure and when should I take that as a hint to abandon that direction? In other words, how do I know the difference between a closed door, and a challenge?

The notebook can be anything you want as long as it helps you stay in God’s word, because His word works! (BTW- If you know the answers to those questions… I’m listening!)

Study Tip: Complete Sentences

By Paula Wiseman

I posted Tuesday and nine o’clock or so last night, I realized Tuesday… should’ve been a Study Tip Tuesday! So… Here it is on Thursday (still starts with a ‘T’- that counts for something, right?)

The previous tip dealt with how chapter breaks sometimes interrupt the flow. Today we’ll consider the fact that occasionally the verse ends before the sentence does. In 2 Corinthians 1:3, we read “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,”. The verse ends with a comma telling us the thought isn’t complete even though it may sound that way.

If we consider verse 4 alone, it’s even more obvious that something is missing. “who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Not only does the verse start with a lowercase letter, but reading it, we know we’re in the middle of something.

Taken all together, we get the complete thought-
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Another example is in Ephesians 1:3-6.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

Paul writes a sentence/paragraph that is divided into 4 verses in our Bible. Granted the sentence is packed, and the verse divisions may help us digest it, but they also may cause us to lose the interconnectedness of the ideas.

Watch for this especially in the New Testament epistles. (And especially in Ephesians!)

Study Tip: Chapter Breaks

By Paula Wiseman

When God inspired men to write His words, divisions for chapters and verses were NOT included in that divine revelation. In fact, it was hundreds of years before those were added. I’ve heard one story that a monk rode his donkey while he copied the Scripture. Whenever the donkey’s gait caused the monk’s pen to jerk, that became a new verse. Whatever method was used, the man-made system is sometimes less than perfect. Sometimes, if we get away from the chapter divisions, we see some fresh connections.For example, my Sunday school kids have studied these verses in the last couple of weeks-

When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

(That’s Matthew 3:16-17 and 4:1) Of course, we studied the baptism of Jesus one week and the temptation the following week. And of course, these are two separate incidents, but the chapter break may prevent us from realizing the connection between the two events. God the Father had identified Jesus as the Messiah, the sacrifice for sins. Now the Lamb was going to be examined to ensure that He was without any blemish or defect. He would be tested to prove He was an acceptable sacrifice. Matthew’s whole point in writing a gospel was to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, that He fulfilled all of God’s law.

Matthew 4 into 5 is another example of a bad break. Chapter 5 begins “And seeing the multitudes…” And? You can’t start a chapter with ‘and’… What multitudes? Where’d they come from? The end of chapter 4 tells you that Jesus healed a bunch of folks and so huge crowds were following Him from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and beyond Jordan…” (We’ll save the geography lesson for some other time.)

As you study, watch the words at the beginning of a chapter and notice how they connect to what precedes them.

Study Tip: Repeat, Repeat

By Paula Wiseman

One way to improve your Bible study is to be an active reader, notice what’s in the text. One of the first things you’ll notice are repeated words and phrases. For instance, Psalm 26:1 says ‘I have walked in my integrity’. Verse 3 says ‘I have walked in Your truth’. Verse 11- the next to last- says ‘I will walk in my integrity’. The Psalm begins and ends with walking in integrity.

From the dictionary (and last week’s tip) integrity means a strict adherence to a moral code; genuineness, and your walk is how you conduct yourself through this life. ‘Your truth’ from verse 3 tips us off as to what that code is.

So a key idea God wants to teach us in Psalm 26 is to live day by day with an honest, genuine commitment to His truth. (His truth is the ONLY truth, but that’s another topic altogether.)

If God says something in His word, it’s important. If He repeats Himself, then we should take notice.