Studying the Bible (When You Just Don't Know Where to Start)

I recently (this morning) decided that I need to slough off some of my anger towards God and start studying the Bible. I want to be one of those people that knows the Word back and front. I want to be able to quote verses off the top of my head when I need to make a snarky insightful comment on someone's Facebook status. I want to have these verses at my fingertips when I'm having a bad day or a bad hour. 

Despite being raised in a Christian household and attending DOZENS of different Bible studies throughout my life, I had never really learned HOW to study the Bible. Do I just open up to a random page and start reading, trusting that 1 Kings 2:3 is exactly what God wants me to hear? Do I need to find a good devotional online or at Family Christian Bookstore? Do I need a concordance or lessons in ancient Aramaic? (I hope not, but my dad would tell you there's no better way to read the NT!)

All I really wanted was a systematic way to read the Bible (just the Bible) and be able to hear for myself what God is saying to me. Nothing complicated, just a closer walk with Him. 

Of course, I started with Pinterest. And I came across something called "inductive Bible study." Once I read what it was, I knew it was for me. Inductive Bible studies rely only on God, the Bible, and you. The reasoning against listening only to sermons, devotionals, commentaries, and other study aids is that—while they are often helpful and sometimes downright Biblical—in the end you are only being taught someone else's interpretation of the verse. And if you're reading the Bible to try to further your relationship with God, letting someone else run the show isn't going to help, no matter how Godly they are.

So I found a couple of really interesting/helpful posts on Bible study and put them together to form my own roadmap for morning quiet times. (I know quiet times don't have to be in the morning, but it's better for me when I can start my day off on the right foot.) Using a combination of Inductive Bible study and the "SOAP" method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), I came up with my morning routine.

I really loved her suggestion on the Letters From Home blog about reading 1 chapter each day from the OT, NT, and Psalms. As you might guess, you will have a new combination of chapters every day, even after you have reached the end of one testament and cycled back to the beginning. Apparently, reading the Bible this way lets you in on a fresh perspective on how the entire set of books go together. I have only done this for one day (this morning), but I can attest that my poet's mind is going to thrive doing this!

You will need:

A Bible (The debate rages on about the best translation. I use this one or this one.)

A journal

A pen

A willing heart :-)

1. Read Your Passages (Scripture)

Using LFH's suggestion, I started out with Genesis 1, Psalm 1, and Matthew 1. Before I was even done, I could already see the common thread running through each of these chapters. Read each chapter slowly and thoroughly, trying to really picture it in your mind. Since I was reading the creation story, I had a lot of outer space images in my head.

2. Summarize Today's Lesson (Observation)

In your journal, write a paragraph or so outlining what you learned in the day's lesson. I write down a brief sentence or two from each chapter (whatever stood out to me), then once all my reading is done, see how they all fit together and then write a summary of the entire days' readings. The chapters I read today all had a feeling of "life brought forth from void," so that's what I wrote down. That God takes a barren land, a barren man, a barren heart and makes them into something beautiful and alive.

3. How Does It Apply to You? (Application)

Write another small paragraph stating how you can apply this teaching to your life. As you may know if you are familiar with me (or my blog, anyway), I wrote that God can take the barrenness of my grief and sadness and make it into something beautiful. Application is a crucial step, IMO, because it forces you to see God's word as a letter TO YOU and as instructions for YOUR LIFE. You can skip the part where you write everything down if you want, but please don't forget to at least think about what the lesson can teach you.

4. Talk It Out (Prayer)

If there's one thing I've learned about prayer, it's that you don't need to be formulaic or overly formal. You don't even need to close your eyes. And you shouldn't spend the entire time asking for stuff. Prayer, in my mind, is just talking to God. When you drive to work and you think "cool quiet time this morning, God," that's prayer. When you scream at Him for taking your daughter away, that's also prayer. Just talk to Him like you'd talk to a friend. Wait for a thought response to pop into your head, because it just may be Him. If a thought pops into my head during this time that I think might be God (and after walking closer with Him, you will learn to recognize His voice), I write those thoughts down with a "God said" notation.


This was only Day 1, but I feel like I got so much out of my quiet time that I'm actually excited to do it again tomorrow! (It's been a long time since I felt that way.) How do you guys study the Bible? What have you found to be the most effective ways for learning things and for staying motivated?