Five Techniques To Help You Get More Out of Your Bible Study

As a christian, the importance of the Word of God cannot be over emphasized. It is truly our daily bread and we have to dig into it every day in order to keep our souls and spirits healthy and alive

When I first started growing closer to the Lord, one thing that I deeply hungered for (still do) was His Word. I wanted to dig in as deep as I could and get everything out of it. It was a deep desire in me that just didn’t seem to be satisfied. The more I knew, the more I want to know and that’s still the case today. Everything we need for life (literally EVERYTHING) can be found in the Word of God. The vastness of the wisdom, knowledge and might of God is incredible.

When you get this hunger and thirst in your heart to get more out of this Word that just seems to be a bunch of words or phrases put together (sometimes really complicated ones), you try to find different ways to study it, different ways to fully understand and apprehend it. So that’s exactly what I did. I found different ways to study the word of God. Over the years, the methods and techniques I use for my bible study have changed a great deal. I keep trying new ways in an effort to get the most out of it. So I’m going to share with you today a few of the techniques I use to get more out of the Word of God. I suggest you try them out and I hope they can be of help to you too.

Journal it

I actually started using a journal for my bible study only this year (2017) and I can’t tell you just how much journaling has improved my bible study! It really does change a lot. All you need to do is find a journal (book) to use specially for your bible study. Each time you want to study the bible, have it by you and write down what you get from the passage you’re reading; how you understand it and what your interpretation of it is. You could also paraphrase the sentences in order to make them more apprehensive to you. Doing this has really helped me understand a lot more and sometimes the Holy Spirit reveals new things to me as I write. This has also been a way to keep me accountable and committed to my bible study. I strongly recommend you try it out.

Research it

Okay ‘research’ may sound a little too deep but it really isn’t. What I mean by ‘research’ is just going through what other people have said about a particular passage or how they interpreted it. For example if you’re reading from 1Corinthians 13, you could just Google ‘1Corinthians 13’ and read various commentaries and articles on it. You might get interpretations of the passage that are different from how you understood it and you’ll get a wide array of information about that particular passage that’ll help you look at it from many different angles and get much more out of it. Be careful though with everything you read on the internet. Whatever you read, be sure to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what is true and right.

Discuss it

This is a little bit similar to research. By ‘discussion’, I mean talking about the bible with a friend or group of friends. You could bring it up in your group chat or when you guys are hanging out and just talk about it. You’ll get different ideas and different messages that they got out of the passage and this will increase your own understanding of it. Actually talking about characters in the bible is so interesting! I love having such conversations. The bible actually asks us to talk about the word of God not only with unbelievers but with each other. It tells us to ‘teach’ each other the word; that is talk about it (Colossians 3:16).

Memorize it

Memorizing bible verses is a great way to internalize and store up the word in you. During your bible study, you could choose any verse from the bible passage your reading and make it a memory verse for the day. If memorizing one verse everyday will be too much for you (because it is too much for me sometimes, I tend to forget them), you could memorize one verse each week. You’ll be amazed at how these verses will come up in your heart just when you need them.

Personalize it

This is another excellent way to make your bible study more meaningful and productive. Personalizing it means just putting yourself in there. If you are reading a passage about a person or a prayer for example, you put your name in place of theirs or pray the prayer for yourself. The book of Psalms is a great example. There are many prayers and songs of praise written by David and another author in there. When reading those you could personalize them by putting in your name. For example Isaiah 14:1 goes thus; “The Lord will have compassion on Jacob; once again he will choose Israel and will settle them in their own land. Foreigners will join them and unite with the descendants of Jacob.” So if you were studying this passage, in the place of ‘Jacob’ and ‘Israel’ you could put your name or the name of whoever you want to pray for and read it again – bu this time like a prayer.

Also when reading about what is required of us as Christians (mostly in the letters of the apostles), you can personalize it by doing an honest introspective check to see if you are actually living by those standards. For example Galatians 5:22 & 23 talks about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. When reading a passage like this, you should stop for a second, take some time to really ask yourself if you have these fruits in you. When you do this, your actually making the bible your mirror and that way you will be blessed in all you do (James 1:23-25).

So there you go. These are some bible study techniques I use to make my bible studies more meaningful and profound. I hope these could help you too.