How to Study your Bible

Has anyone ever asked you guys to do something, and you had no idea how to do it? They just expect you to know how to do it. Perhaps your parents, teachers, friends, bosses, or anyone else. It’s really frustrating when you’re expected to do something you have no idea how to do.

I know I felt this frustration as a young Christian back at the church I attended while in high school… I was expected to study the word of God, but I had no idea how to do so. No one had taught me how to carefully read this word we call the Bible. No one explained to me the purpose to doing so in the first place. I understood I needed to do so, but I had no idea why or how I was going to accomplish this feat.

Perhaps, that may be the reason that some of you don’t pick up your word except on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings. You hear your pastor tell you to study your word, but you really don’t why you are supposed to or how to. If you follow these notes you should see your time with God grow as you can’t help but dig deeper into the word of God.

When you first look at this thing it kinda looks like something you would be forced to read in a college Literature class. Its long, contains lots of weird concepts, and really doesn’t seem that exciting. I know for about the first 8 months after getting saved that’s the way I looked at the word. However, it wasn’t until I sat down and made a plan on how to attack this thing that I really realized just how amazing God’s word is. Tonight, each of us will hopefully make a plan for ourselves on reading the Word. However, first…

A. Why study the word?

You say, “I’ve got so much else to do. Why do I personally need to read the Bible every day? Besides, isn’t hearing my pastor talk about it good enough?” Well you can settle for the pastors in your life hand feeding you the word like a baby with a bottle, or you can grow up and learn to feed yourself.

• You will be blessed (Psalm 1:1-2) (Revelation 1:3)
• It will guide your life in Godliness (Psalm 119:105, Psalm 119:9, Psalm 119:11) This book will keep you from sin, and sin will keep you from this book.
• It encourages you
• It reveals to you the character of God (You’ll never truly God unless you read about him)
• It makes you stronger in your faith (Matthew 10:20)

Those are 5 short, but good reasons to read the Bible. Now you know why, so how do you do it. To begin with, here’s how not to do it!

• Just randomly selecting texts.
• Skipping entire books or sections
• Reading the Bible like it’s the newspaper ( you don’t read to be informed, but to be transformed)
• Before you go to bed or right after you get up, sleepiness will pull you into bed

Understand, those are all mistakes I made, and I can honestly tell you that whenever I made those mistakes I don’t remember learning anything. So now that we what not to do when studying the word how do we go about doing it?

First, get your supplies. It’s not just you and your Bible.

• You will need a pen or highlighter to highlight certain verses that mean something to you.
• Journal, whether in paper or online. Just reading it isn’t enough. You need to write down what the verses mean to you and how they apply to your life.

1. Develop a hit list, a reading plan.
   1. Figure out what you’re gonna read. The 5 books you want to read the most.
   2. Figure how much time you’re gonna spend daily reading those selections.
   3. Figure out what time of day you plan on beginning your studies
   4. Once you figure out what you’re reading, how much time, and when you’re gonna do it, you will have a few questions to ask and find out about each book you study

1. Make a year, 2 year, or however long plan to read the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation
   1. You can read around 3 chapters a day (10- 15 minutes a day) and have read the entire Bible in a year.
   2. Perhaps you want to finish sooner, just decide how many chapters a day you will commit to reading. Whether it’s split up in both Old and New Testaments, or in just one Testament at a time.

1. Lectio Devina

Whatever you do, the goal is to get into the word, and not just merely read it but think about it and meditate on it.