Teaching – Learn from God Through Direct Bible Study

Learn from God through direct Bible study (D101)

Lots of ways to approach this, but here are the tidbits we’ve found most helpful…

1. However you do it, remember that the point of reading God’s Word (and of our existence) is to increasingly know God and help others know God (Acts 17:26-27, John 17:3, Philippians 3:8, Jeremiah 9:23-24). Therefore…
   • Avoid using sections, chapters, or time limits to determine when you’re done. Instead, stop whenever God is done describing or explaining something, just as you would when listening to anyone else.
   • Ask yourselves what that something teaches or reminds you about who God is. The ultimate goal is not self-help or academic dissection; it’s getting to know a person better.
2. If you’re wondering what to read, try the following…
   • For house churches pretty new to the Bible: Start with Luke and then Acts, which are really just one big book that tells the story of Jesus and the New Testament church in easy-to-read language.
   • For house churches familiar with most of the Bible: Read whatever’s not as familiar! Challenge yourselves in the depths of the Jewish law, in the visions of the prophets, in all those tiny little books you can’t pronounce, or wherever the pages are still crisp and noteless. Get to know all of God!
   • For house churches who would like ongoing or daily reading plans: Lots to choose from here!
3. If you’re studying a section or book of the Bible, rather than a topic, we suggest using the acronym LUCK…
   • Listen: Take a minute to settle your body and your mind in a place allowing you to best process what God’s about to say.
   • Understand: Read, summarize, and first ask what was confusing. Second (if needed), use biblegateway.com or blueletterbible.org to search the Bible for related keywords, giving God first crack at clarifying from the rest of his words as needed. Third (if needed), use the many resources at either site to further understand what God’s communicating.
   • Commit: Commit to do something specific this next week with what you learned. Or commit what you learned to memory, so you’ll have it ready whenever it’s most helpful. 
   • Know: Identify an opinion, attribute, or priority of God’s that you learned or were reminded of, so you know exactly how your relationship with him took one step farther today!
4. If you’re studying a topic or question, rather than one part of the Bible, we recommended a deductive approach…
   • Use biblegateway.com or blueletterbible.org to search the Bible for related keywords, gathering as many of God’s words on the topic as possible, especially from places you wouldn’t normally prioritize.
   • Then group these passages into categories if you want, and read them! Let God’s words set the context and scope of any potential conclusions.
   • Next, synthesize some conclusions about the topic consistent with his whole commentary. Write down tangential questions for later exploration, but stick with the question at hand long enough to arrive at a tentative answer. You can always hone it as further Bible reading encourages you to.
   • This maximizes God’s thoughts over ours. It’s too easy and common to subordinate his opinions to our own by only reading a few verses before spending most of the time discussing our ideas or those of other human commentators. Drawing conclusions from God’s words first prioritizes knowing him and appropriately limits answers to the scope allowed by his much greater wisdom and authority.
5. If you’ve read every passage you can find on a topic and are still flummoxed…
   • Listen to a WHC teaching on that question!
   • Check out the numerous user-friendly Bible-study tools at biblegateway.com or blueletterbible.org.

Enjoy getting to know God better!