So I have been noticing that people that I dearly love and respect as leaders in the local body of believers have no idea how to study the Bible and think that they have studied when they sit down and read something random for 10 minutes. Now, I know people are busy but I think we can give Jesus more than 10 minutes in a given day! In this post I will give you some Bible study tactical guidelines for your time in the word with Jesus!
I have broken down these tactics into steps that I hope will be easy to use and understand. Here is an overview of the steps:
- Lamp the Text
- Look at the text
- Learn from the text
- Live out the text
Lamp the text
When first begining a study of a Biblical book you must pay careful attention to the genre of the what you are going to study. A study in one of the Psalms for example will be quite different than say a study of Proverbs or even a letter written by Peter. To begin a study is to first site down and Lamp the text. Read the letter or book through in a single sitting so as to gain a big picture of what the book is about. After this, make some notes concerning the author, recipients, purpose, tone, and major themes. Write these things down in a notebook (I prefer a moleskin journal) so as to record you studies. Also, after doing the above things write down what you think the BIG IDEA or the main point of the book is to start with. This should be one sentance. Now that we have read the book in one sitting and have taken a lamp over the entire book it’s now time to dig in a little more and take a closer look at the text.
Look at the text
By looking at the text, I mean making careful observations about what the writers of the books and letters are saying. I need to make a clear point here. Too many times people come to a Biblical text already presuming things about the text. This is technically called eisigesis (reading meaning into the text). What good Bible study does is reads out the meaning of the text which is called exegeisis. This means that as we go to the text we are always in the posistion of the learner. We are always going to be students of the text each time we sit down to study.
To take a good look at the text we will make observations in There and Then language. So let’s use Genesis 1:1 as an example.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Observations from this verse are going to be:
v1. God created the Heavens and the Earth.
v1. God created everything in the beginning.
Although this seems very elementary this is the essence of quality study. Understanding all of the little parts is crucial to a life altering time with Jesus in His word. When you have determined how much of a chapter you are going to tackle for the day (I usually follow the paragraph breaks for simplicity sake) I will make a least one observation per verse. Some verses may have more but I try and make one per verse. After making observations it is time to learn from what you have looked at.
Learn from the text
Learning from the text is nothing more than making summary statments of your observations. More than likely you will see a few observations fall into categories. Make summary statements that will capture the essence of your observations.
*If at any point you come to a hard passage of verse and you have a question. Mark it with a star and list out your question and know that it may be answered later on in the text or your question may require consulting a commentary.
Keep these summary statements in There and then Language (ex God is the creator). When these statements are written down and you have say 2-4 statements in the learn stage you will then take these statements and transition them all into applications so that you can live out the text.
Live out the text
Living out the text is where the rubber meets the road. Please always rememeber that information does not produce transformation, but rather information + application = transformation. Jewish Rabbis have often been quoted as saying “you haven’t learned until you have lived.” I know that they are right. Once information has been lived then is has been learned. So in this stage of Bible study we are going to make our applications SMART so that we can know exactly how we are going to act upon what the Holy Spirit is saying to us through the Bible.
Specific – put a day, time span
Measurable – put a quantity down so has to have a goal you can measure.
Attainable – is what you have written unattainable? Did you say you were going to the read the Bible in a week? Make sure you can succeed but don’t let yourself off easy and be a wuss!
Reasonable - This is just to make sure that you are being realistic in your application making sure you are not saying that you are going to sell everything you have unless that is exaclty what the Holy Spirit is telling you to do!!
Timely – Don’t push the application off into the future and don’t say that you are going to win a thousand people to Christ in two weeks by starting a chess ministry. This is timely or relistic! Make sure that you can actually meet the application you are setting.
When you are writing out your smart applications so that you can live out the text make sure to that you are writing in Here and Now language. Make this personal to yourself and then live them out. In my opinion this is the hardest part. This is where studying in a community of people is wonderful. So, I will offer myself to you to be in community to study with you. A friend and I are studying through the book of Philippians together. We would love for you to join us. Please email me if you would like to join us and we can track together online as we Lamp the text, Look at the text, Learn from the text and Live the text of scripture for God’s glory and our good!
