Studying

In John 4:23, Jesus says that the Father is seeking true worshipers—who worship him in Spirit and in truth. One purpose, then, of listening, reading, and studying the Bible is to grow in knowledge so we can fulfill the goal of worshiping him in truth. But we need more than intellectual understanding of who God is. We need a relationship with him. I strive to look for three things with any scripture I’ve studied: life lessons, prayers to pray, and scripture to meditate on. Let’s take at them one at a time.

Life lessons are those places where scripture speaks a truth I need to hear. What I need to hear one time is not necessarily what I will need to hear another time. This is why no matter how many times I read a passage, I often learn new life lessons. Here are examples of some of the life lessons I wrote in a journal the last time I studied Philippians:

• God began a good work in me—he will complete it (1:6). This is a truth I need to remember because sometimes I find myself dealing with the same sins and I can be discouraged. But I see places where I have changed and I know that God has begun a work in me. I need to trust to him those areas where I still struggle.
• The antidote to anxiety is God’s peace—which I receive by making known my needs to God with thanksgiving (4:6-7)
• Paul has learned to be content in all circumstances (4:11b-13). He identifies the secret to contentment in this way, “I am able to do all things through [Christ], who empowers me.” His focus is on Christ, not the circumstances. If he is in need, he can trust Jesus to either supply the need or give the strength to respond rightly to the unmet need. If he has abundance, he does not put his confidence in it, but in Christ. I think the bottom line is that he has learned to be content in all circumstances because he does not look to his circumstances for his welfare, but to Jesus. He has realistic expectations. Circumstances change and if they are my source of contentment, my contentment will come and go. Jesus and his love are unchanging. He also empowers me to meet whatever life throws at me. Keep my focus on him—in difficult times and in good times.

Scripture also provides us with many opportunities to see ways we can pray for ourselves and for others. Sometimes we can just take a prayer straight out of scripture. The Lord’s Prayer would be a common example. Paul in his letters tells different churches what he is praying for them—Ephesians 3:14-21, for instance. These are also good prayers to pray. Sometimes we can also see things to pray for based on passages that are not prayers. For instance, in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, Paul says they can know they have been chosen by God “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” I desire my church and the ecumenical fellowship I’m a part of to receive the gospel in word, in power, in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. I also desire that we would be a part of the way God can, in the same way, bring his gospel to others. So I pray these two things regularly.

It is my experience that the main way scripture moves from being something I know in my head to something I believe in my heart is through meditation. This is what can make the lessons for life stick. This is what can produce changes inside me. One example of a way I have been changed by scripture meditation is that I used to avoid ever telling God, “Do whatever it takes,” when praying about changes I knew needed to be made in me. After a topical Bible study, I ended up meditating on Isaiah 48:10-11. It says, “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” About a month later as I was praying I found myself saying, “Do whatever it takes.” It completely shocked me and I asked myself if I really meant it. Much to my surprise, I found that I did. I would prefer to go through a furnace of affliction than be someone who causes God’s name to be profaned. This was a profound change! Another example is meditating on the 23^rd Psalm. It made me realize that the shepherd loves the flock because he loves the individual sheep. I had come from a perspective that God loves “the world” and because I’m a part of “the world,” I got in on the deal. This psalm made me realize I had it backward. God’s love for the world flows from his love for the individuals who make up the world. These are changes in my heart beliefs, and they affect me and my relationship to God in significant ways.

Because of the importance that I see of meditating on scripture, I plan several posts on that topic. How we meditate will vary—depending both on what we are like as individuals (my husband wants the facts and I want the stories) and what kind of scripture we are meditating on (theology, history, poetry, etc). I will cover what meditation is and some different ways I meditate based on the type of scripture I’m pondering.

One of my favorite things to do when studying the Bible is word studies. I may be partial to them because I like words and word etymologies. I do, however, find them to be really helpful in broadening my understanding of many passages. Here are a couple of examples. In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” In doing a word study I saw that the word “deny” could also be translated “disown”. I really like using “disown”. God created us for a purpose. It is reasonable to assume that there will be things he calls us to do that we will enjoy; that we will experience as fulfilling. Disowning my life means that I give God the choice of what I do with my life, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that I will dislike his choice. Denying myself, on the other hand, to me does imply that if I follow Jesus I will have to do what I don’t want to do or not do what I want to do. Sometimes God’s call on my life is hard, but sometimes he asks me to do something he has already given me a desire to do. To follow Jesus, I no longer choose the path; he does—and it can be to some places I really like. The second example is from 1 Peter 5:7, where we are told to cast our concerns on God because he cares for us. That word “for” is the Greek word “peri”. While “for” is a perfectly acceptable translation of the word, a key way it gets used is to mean “around”. I find that it gives me a greater sense of God’s personal care for me to know everything around me is something he takes an interest in.

Sometimes when I want to study a topic, I read through the Bible to find everything I can on that subject. It makes for a long project! But when I want to do something that is quicker, a concordance or searching a digital Bible is very helpful. It is easy to search for a word using these kinds of tools, although to do a thorough search, it’s good to keep synonyms in mind. A topical Bible can help if it covers the specific topic one is interested in. That’s because it will not be tied to a specific word, like a word search is. For example, I am currently doing a topical study on joy. I chose to do it by reading through the Bible, but if I were to do it as a word search, I would also want to look up words like joyful, rejoice, glad, or delight. The more synonyms looked up, the more thorough the search is.

For both word studies and searching digital Bibles my favorite resource is called e-Sword. Advantages:

• It’s a free download—available even if I don’t have internet access
• it has many translations to choose from
• it helps with word studies by showing numbers linked to definitions of original language words (shown as tooltips and clickable for other uses)
• it has a search button
• it has its own note-taking feature.

Disadvantages:

• some translations have to be purchased (due to publisher requirements)
• the word studies are only available in a King James version, which uses a different Greek text than most modern versions.

I also have a New Testament study Bible (called The Complete Word study New Testament—also a King James version) that shows the parts of speech for all the Greek words. My favorite way of using it is to find out if a verb form designates a one time action or if it is a continuous or a repetitive action. I am fine with being told that we are to keep asking, seeking, and knocking in Matthew 7:7-8, but very grateful that when it says in James 4:9, “Be wretched, and mourn, and weep,” it’s not meant to be ongoing!

I’ve never done a Bible study that only uses the things talked about in this post. While these are helpful tools, they do not replace paying attention to context, comparisons, contrasts, or other relationships. The concepts I wrote about in studying the Bible with only the Bible as a resource are, to me, the backbone of Bible study. These tools help flesh out that study.

Cross-references, commentaries, Bible encyclopedias and dictionaries, and books about particular scriptures can all add to our understanding of the Bible. My personal preference is to study a passage for myself before looking at outside resources. I value the pleasure of gaining insight directly from God’s word over reading about someone else’s discovery from God’s word.

I am asking my husband do a guest post on reference material, while my next post will be about what I do after I’ve studied a Bible text.

There are many tools available that can help a person to study the Bible, but I’d like to start with how to study the Bible with only the Bible as a resource. (This keeps the post shorter and less complicated.)

I like to make notes, underline words, and draw lines between comparisons and contrasts when I study the Bible. This means I prefer to use a Bible with wide margins and to have colored pencils beside me. Otherwise, I use a digital Bible to copy and paste the scriptures I’m looking at into a document that allows me to highlight and use italics to emphasize different words. If neither of these appeals to you, use a notebook to jot down things you see.

Looking at Context:

When I am studying a whole book of the Bible, I find it helpful to read the entire book before embarking on the study. This gives an overall understanding of the purpose of the book and provides context to the individual verses within the book. It can also help avoid errors that come from misunderstanding the context. For example, Judges is written about a time when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” This is not God complimenting the people! The stories should not be considered an expression of the life God desires for us. Job’s friends are told they did not speak what was right about God, but I’ve seen their words quoted as if they expressed truth about God or life. The letters in the New Testament are written to churches or people giving encouragement and/or addressing particular needs. It is helpful to have a basic understanding of a letter’s purpose. The gospels, of course, teach us about Jesus’ words and actions, so it makes sense to make those central to what I am trying to learn through studying a gospel. Reading the whole book before embarking on a study of it can also be helpful for understanding how to organize what I learn. I find Paul’s letters to move logically from one point to another (at least for the most part), but John’s letters seem more random. This means if I’m studying one of Paul’s letters I will probably outline the book. If I’m studying one of John’s, I organize by themes.

If I want to study one verse, or a group of verses, and not the whole book, I might not read the whole book to find context. It is still beneficial, however, to see how the verse(s) I am looking at fit in with the verses that precede and follow.

Looking for Relationships:

There are many words that show relationships between ideas, people, or events. These are worth noting. An old line goes that you “should see what the ‘therefore’ is there for,” but many other words show relationships, too, such as:

The value of doing this was really brought home to me when I saw a Bible study done on 2 Peter 1:3-4. I’m going to italicize words that show important relationships.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

It was well worth looking at those connections. I saw a clear link between God’s power at work in my life and my knowledge of him, his glory, and his promises (and it led to reading through the whole Bible looking for God’s promises.)

Another way of looking for relationships is to look for contrasts and comparisons or to make lists. While many contrasts and comparisons are revealed by words that show relationship, sometimes we can see these in events or people without such words (the variety of responses to the gospel in Acts, for instance). Some lists are obvious and can be highlighted by numbering them right in the text or listing them in the margins (example: 1 Timothy 2:1, “…I urge that entreaties, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men”), while other lists may be thematic (example: 1 John has a repeating theme about abiding in Christ) and can be summarized as a list.

Make your own cross-references:

Many Bibles come with cross-references, which can help you pursue a topic in other places in the Bible, but be open to making your own cross-references. If one passage reminds you of another one, make note of it. Matthew 6:22-23 contrasts a single eye and an evil/bad eye. It made me think of Proverbs saying that a man with an evil eye hastens after wealth. That connection helped me to see the Matthew passage more clearly, so I looked up the citation and wrote it in the margin of the Matthew passage.

Write down what you’ve learned:

I like summarizing what the passage I’m studying is about, then writing down insights and lessons from studying that portion of scripture, as the process of summarizing and/or organizing what I’ve learned helps me retain the lessons better. By writing them in the margins of my Bible, I have a reminder of those lessons easily available. (And sometimes what’s written in the margins is exactly what I need to hear again.)

My next post will be about resources available for studying the Bible and how they can enhance our study of scripture.