How to Study the Bible

While God’s plan has been to give His people leaders and teachers, there is no substitute for personal study of the Bible. Many have found that they get more from their teachers when they become personally involved in regular Bible study.

One way of reading the Bible is to only draw conclusions from a passage once we’ve read it carefully and considered all the key words and events within it. After asking God’s Holy Spirit to help us, this kind of Bible study requires us to explore the Bible’s words with the intensity of a someone looking for something more valuable than gold (Proverbs 3:13-18).

This approach of Bible study follows this pattern:

Observation Interpretation Application

Step #1—Observation:

What does the context say? The primary purpose of this stage is to collect as many facts as possible about the context (the situation and substance) of the Bible text. We shouldn’t take anything for granted about the passage we’re reading. We need to ask and list as many questions as possible of the text: Who’s writing? Who are they writing to? Where? When? How? Why? What words need to be looked up to determine their meaning? What ‘flow of logic’ markers can be found, such as therefore, then, and, also, but, however, etc? What is the main point of the section? What recurring words indicate a main idea? What elements, arguments or illustrations does the author use to support their main point?

At this stage, a chapter might be outlined or a sentence pulled apart to see how the ideas of the author relate to one another. The purpose of this stage is to discover the meaning and point of the text.