A Plan for Practical Bible Study
There I was, sitting in my college dorm room, with my Bible on my lap and my pointer finger ready. “God, please speak to me!”, I prayed aloud as I opened my Bible and dropped that finger onto a random verse. The verse I landed on had less to do with what God wanted me to know and more to do with the physics of flipping pages.
God graciously met me in my desperation in my dorm room because His word is alive, but I’m thankful to report that He refused to leave me in the place of what I would call biblical illiteracy. The Holy Spirit and lots of amazing resources taught me how to read the Bible in all of its transformational power and fullness. He can most assuredly do the same for you.
One of the definitions of illiteracy is a lack of knowledge about a particular subject. Every Christian experiences biblical illiteracy at the beginning of their discipleship process, and this is normal. I once heard renowned Bible teacher Beth Moore say that we all have to start in the same place when it comes to God’s word: the table of contents!
There are many opportunities for believers to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). In fact, the world has never before seen the vast amount of access to the Bible (as well as the sheer number of study resources) we have at our fingertips today. However, the scriptures define the word of God as a sword, and Christians who want to be victorious have to train with the weapon they’ve been given. So how do we become biblically literate? It helps tremendously to have a PLAN!
P -- Pick what you will study.
The Bible itself tells us that we can’t go wrong in reading any selection of it. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true...” (2 Timothy 3:16). While all of God’s word is profitable to us as disciples, it’s wise to consider a few things as we approach the topic of what to study:
Brand-new believers and/or Bible readers should consider studying the Gospels first. Reading about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ aids us in understanding the rest of the Bible. It is the key to unlocking the entire Old Testament and the catalyst for the entire New Testament.
Studying the same book that your church is teaching can greatly enhance your church attendance and increase your reading comprehension. It can also help to see the Bible passage and/or book from multiple perspectives.
What do you need to work on when it comes to your relationship with God? If you have a specific growth area, ask your pastors or mentors for help with choosing a book of the Bible that will empower you with help to transform your heart and renew your mind.
L -- Learn the context.
A few months ago, I threw my husband a surprise 40th birthday party. Later, I asked him if I had successfully caught him off-guard, and he said that he hadn’t noticed anything ahead of time. Afterward, he could see that there was some fishiness happening! In other words, the context of the party changed his views of what happened around it.
The same is true with the Bible. The more information we gather about each book, the more it will help us understand the intention behind it.
Who was the human author who partnered with the Holy Spirit to write it?
Who was it originally written to?
What was the time period and what was life like for people then?
Why was the writing needed? What was the purpose of it?
Questions like these help us discover what God intends for us to learn. The context reveals the things we may miss as 21st century readers of an ancient (but LIVING) text!
A -- Ask for God’s help.
Inviting the all-knowing and all-wise God into your study is even more important than how or what you end up studying. The Holy Spirit is known to us through the Bible as a counselor. This has been so meaningful to me that sometimes during my own study time, I imagine the Spirit sitting next to me giving me the insight I need to be more like Jesus.
Prayer before, during, and after your time in the word will make the difference between acquiring knowledge and true heart/mind transformation.
Another way we can invite the Lord into our study time is by asking Him to help us memorize the scriptures. Constantly wearing your spiritual weapon, the sword that is the word of God, will lead to deeper and more significant spiritual victory. If you can memorize I Want It That Way, you can memorize a Bible verse!
N-- Notice the little things.
A couple of years ago, I was reading in Mark 7 where Jesus healed a man who was hearing and verbally-impaired. There were a few words in verse 33 that made me dig deeper. “After he took him aside, away from the crowd…” I stopped reading and asked inwardly why Jesus walked the man out of the crowd, and I wrote it down. As I read the rest of the story, I realized that Jesus pulled him away to keep the noisy crowd from overwhelming and confusing this man after his miracle. It would have hurt his ears! Upon this realization, I prayed that God would make me as aware of others’ needs as Jesus was.
Some of us have heard the same stories since we were children, and the rest of us have heard stories OF stories, so we can easily miss deep meaning if we don’t read carefully.
May this PLAN acronym make you not only more biblically literate, but also more like the Savior you follow and serve, and may you never have to rely on the physics of flipping!
