Individual instructors or editors may still require the use of URLs. Keep me logged in! Did you forget your password? Why won't my login from the old site work? Usernames should only contain letters, numbers, dots, dashes, or underscores. Passwords should have at least 6 characters. Your partnership makes all we do possible. Would you prayerfully consider a gift of support today? Our website uses cookies to store user preferences.
By proceeding, you consent to our cookie usage.
Bible Living
Follow the Blue Letter Bible on: Or subscribe to our Newsletter: No Delimiter — None — Jhn 1: Square — [Jhn 1: Parens — Jhn 1: Help Video Tutorials 1. Essentials - The Bible 3. Essentials - Word Searching 4. Help Quick Nav Advanced Options. Old Testament New Testament. Search Results in Other Versions. These are some of my favorite Bible study tools. What are some of your go-to tools when it comes to reading and studying the Bible?
Comment below and share your techniques! Complete this form and click the button below to gain instant access. SPAM is the most annoying thing in the world. Well, except for maybe traffic. If you can only get one Bible study tool, make sure you have this: Biblical commentaries are another great Bible study tool. Invaluable Bible study tools: Genres of Bible Content: Bible Study Basics On some of them, you can search on a word by just double clicking that word.
You can double click on a particular word and it will pull up a concordance of every occurrence of that word in the Scripture. You might be able to right click on that word and it will take you to a Bible dictionary that will describe that term. So it puts all of those tools right there at hand.
When we move a little bit further into our study, I'll bring a couple of Bible study software programs and show you how they work. Whether for teaching or for my own Bible study, one of the things that I appreciate about Bible study software is I can cut and paste. There are some basic Bible study software that you can check out and there are even some free ones on the Internet that you can download. And then the Center for Biblical Studies website at Union University has some links to different places on the web that can give you help.
You'll also need to reach out to somebody who can help you at points. And what I want to suggest is that you find a mentor, someone who can give you a little bit of guidance. That can be a tremendous help. There was a man named Bill Lane, who died of cancer a few years ago, a great scholar on the New Testament. Bill mentored me for the last ten years of his life. What do you think? How do you interpret this passage? We want to talk now about personal commitments. So I want us to think a little bit about our attitudes and perspectives, about how we are to approach the Bible for study and reading.
The first thing to consider is your pre-understanding. Pre-understanding refers to the preconceived notion that I have about a passage based on my culture, teachings I've heard, or even my past experience. Now pre-understanding is not wrong. It just means that I need to remind myself to look at many passages in the Bible with fresh eyes as I study them.
We may not realise it, but many things have been ingrained into us through the years such that it can be hard for us to look at those passages in a fresh way. And so we want to think through our own pre-understanding of the text when we read it. Now the commitment here is a commitment to truth seeking. What I mean by that is I want to come to the passage with the commitment to discern what God wants to say to me through this text. What is the truth that God wants to communicate to my life? I want to be more committed to that than simply advancing my own understanding of the text. So as best as I can, I want to say, "God, what I'm interested in here is understanding what this text really means.
One of my favorite parts of Scripture to think about this on is Christmas. I have a friend named Danny Hayes. Danny was a missionary in Ethiopia for a while and when he was over there he said, "You know, in the first Christmas play I ever attended in Ethiopia, I was sitting down front and these folks came in for the play. You have Mary coming in on a donkey and all these women were around her, excited and talking among themselves. Joseph was following along behind.
And when they came to the time of the birth, Mary had all these women around her. And Joseph was pacing outside and it was the women, the extended family, who actually helped Mary with the birth. And then when the baby was born, all the women went, 'La la la la la. That's probably more how it really took place. If you start probing the details of the Christmas story, some of the things that we hold so dear - like the three wise men, or even about Jesus being born in a stable - are not really there in the text.
There are various things that we can talk about there. I was teaching this in New Testament class one time and this lady came up.
Don Stewart :: What Tools Are Necessary for Bible Study?
She was so mad at me. She said, "You ruined all my nativity scenes. I mean that we just need to think through these things - why do I see the text the way that I do, coming out of my culture and my past experience. If we're really studying the text well, at times the text will change our mind about something. Now we're not talking about big picture issues like who Jesus was and what does salvation mean and did Jesus really rise from the dead.
Those are things that over the history of the church and over a long study in the church, we come to hold those as convictions. But there are a lot of details in the text that we need to approach with fresh eyes and we need to come, if you will, with a teachable spirit, to say, "God, what would you teach me? What am I not seeing here that I need to see? Kevin Vanhoozer says, "Pride does not listen; it knows. We're studying just to reaffirm what we already believe.
Basic Tools for Reading your Bible | Free Online Biblical Library
Then we do not have the right kind of commitment. We need to come from a standpoint of being teachable and being open for God to change our hearts and our minds. We will stop here today and look at the other commitments in our next lesson. Let me give you an assignment for next week. Take a look at chapters 2 and 3 in the little book. I also want to ask you to take a look at some of these tools that I've talked about. If you have a study Bible, go back and reacquaint yourself with the different things that are there in your study Bible.
Then we'll come back and we'll get into the step-by-step process of how do you actually study different aspects of the texts like the background, the context, and eventually, learning how we do word studies. One of my favorite stories is about a man who was visiting an African-American church and he came down and was sitting on the front row. And the pastor came out and started playing the piano and said, "Yes, Lord. Now you tell us what it is you want us to do. Skip to main content. How to Read Your Bible Lecture: Basic Tools for Reading your Bible I. Basic tools and commitments needed for Bible study I want us to get into this session on preparing for the trip.
- How to WIN the PICK 6: Horse Racings Big $$$ Payout?
- P.S. I Love You.
- 4 Essential Bible Study Tools: Bible Study Basics - Thrive;
Packing for the trip When you get ready to go on a trip, one of the big issues you have to face is packing. Basic tools needed for sound Bible reading and Bible study So, what are some of the most basic tools that we need in order to do sound Bible reading and Bible study? A good study Bible The first thing we need is a good study Bible.
Several translations of the Bible The second thing you need is several translations of the Bible. Let me mention a couple of other things quickly in terms of the tools. Bible dictionary The third thing that we need is a good Bible dictionary.