Tools for Studying The Bible |
Posted: November 14, 2017 |
You are a Christian and you could be having that urge to study God’s word in-depth, but your tools and plans for studying don't give you the most out of your Bible study. The Bible can be a simple book to read and learn from, but to understand it better, you’ll need to incorporate different tools. Make sure you don’t miss the meaning of each and every word in any verse you read during your Bible study. Here are a number of crucial tools that you should consider incorporating into your Bible study lessons. Dedicate a Bible to the study Many study guides that are sold today may include notes, commentaries and other materials. These may distract your lesson at the expense of improving it. Learn to study the Bible itself and by yourself. Buy and dedicate a regular Bible to your lesson. Here, you can make short notes on it, you can mark important points you come across and more so, your lessons won’t be distracted whatsoever. Make your Bible study a habit by making it very interesting. Get an English Dictionary You may convince yourself that you don’t need a dictionary. You think you are a pro in the English language. Some words in the Bible are not very straightforward and you will need to look them up in the dictionary. Some other words could be used in certain concepts that may appear confusing and there you need your dictionary to understand their deeper meaning. To shade lighter, consider the book of Psalms 125:1 which talks about “Trust”. You will think you understand this word pretty well until you look it up in your dictionary to discover that it has more than four meanings. Exhaustive Concordance Being a serious student of the Bible, you must have this with you if you want to have wonderful lessons during your study. With an exhaustive concordance, you discover all the occurrences of the particular word or topic you are studying. The entries of the word you are searching for are listed in order of alphabet to ease your search. For instance, in your next lesson, you could be planning to study "Forgiveness". So you need to look up for the word “Forgiveness” in the concordance and it will list all its occurrences including the list of their references. You can then proceed to find each of the cited references in your Bible. This way, you will have studied about “Forgiveness” adequately. Bible Background Guide or Commentary A good Bible study requires you to have a basic understanding of the background and context of the lesson you are studying. Having a guidebook to refer to for information pertaining the Book of the Bible, author and cultural background is of great help on your Bible study. You can have this book as hard copy, soft copy or as an online version. A commentary enables you to access the background information, important historical figures, and glossary of cultural terms in each and every verse. You can look out for sda Bible commentary online. This commentary is found alongside other commentaries, however, it appears at the top of the page. When you are using the SDA Bible Commentary online, you can search by verses or you can scroll from one page to the next viewing each verse at a time. Journal Just like a student pursuing any other course, you need to take notes during your Bible study. Besides that, your notes should be well organized and kept safely. Consider having yourself a short-hand notebook and a pen just as the basic tools for note-taking. You can have your notes compiled in a more decent three-ring binder with dividers or something close.
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