Raise your hand if you've been to a Bible Study! Many of us are familiar with Bible studies and I myself have been leading and sitting through them for over twenty years. Much to my surprise, after all my "Bible study" experience, I realized that I have not been studying the ACTUAL BIBLE for all of those twenty years and unfortunately I'm not as Bible literate as I thought I was.
Many "Bible studies" these days aren't actually where groups of people study THE BIBLE. In today's culture, a lot of what goes on at Bible studies are topical discussions, gossip sessions, self help talks, and book clubs. Now, HEAR ME!, I am not calling anyone out because I have been there, done that, with all of the above and I think there is certainly a time and place for those things (besides gossiping). BUT I think it is important to take the label of "Bible" study off of those meetings and call them what they are. In my opinion, we send the wrong message to new Christians or those exploring the faith that we, as long-time believers or "devout" Christians, "study the Bible" by throwing out a few popular verses like Jeremiah 29:11 or John 3:16 while over analyzing someone's drama.
I want to share some extremely helpful information with you that I learned from Jen Wilkin's book, Women of the Word. This book is an solid resource when it comes to how to read your Bible in an intentional way. It wasn't until I read this book, that I truly understood the magnitude of what I could take away from my Bible studying if I just had a system in place. The leader of a Bible study (on Hosea) that I'm currently attending at my church said something at our first meeting that has stuck with me. It's so simple but was a major DUHHH moment! She asked why we tend to open our Bible all willy nilly everyday to a random page and just hope something jumps out at us. We tend to read a passage or a verse and try to apply it to our lives but truthfully we have no idea the context of the verse because we are not familiar with the chapters and verses before and after. The Bible is a story!!!!! She went on to explain that we do not just open a chapter book to a random page and start reading. If you did, your questions would be, "Who's that?," "What are they referring to?," "Why are they going there?," etc. The Bible should not be approached this way either. It is important to study ALL the books- not just the ones that makes us feel good or that are easy to understand. HELLO New Testament!
With all that being said, these methods that come from Women of the Word were such a help to me in my approach of actually STUDYING the Bible. She explains these "five P's" in great depth. (They each take up a chapter.) I'm going to write a quick paraphrase using her summaries and info in Chapter 8 of the book.
1. Study with PURPOSE: Understand where the text you're reading fits into the Big Story of creation-fall-redemption-restoration. Point to themes of metanarrative, which is essentially "the story about stories, encompassing and explaining the little stories it overarches."
2. Study with PERSPECTIVE: Understand the "archeology" of your text and it's historical and cultural context. Use a study Bible and/or *trusted* commentary to answer questions like, "Who wrote it?," "When was it written?," "Who was it written to?," "In what style was it written?," and "Why was it written?."
3. Study with PATIENCE: Resolve to not hurry; set a realistic expectation for your pace of study, focusing on the long term. Be patient with yourself and your circumstances i.e. momming babies, working crazy hours, big life changes.
4. Study with PROCESS: Begin methodically reading for comprehension, interpretation, and application. Pay attention to footnotes and write down big ideas in the margins. Read the text in multiple translations and create an outline in your journal. There is no wrong way. Everyone will do this differently.
5. Study with PRAYER: Ask the Father to help you before, during, and after your study time. At each of these times incorporate the acronym PART (Praise, Admit, Request, Thank) for the key elements to your prayers.
I hope that this can guide you on your way to finding a more intentional way to study your Bible. Jen's goal is to help women become more Bible literate and this book and these steps were a great starting point for me. I highly recommend grabbing this book and digging deeper.
Click HERE for the link to the book, Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin
ANOTHER AWESOME RESOURCE I JUST FOUND!!!
Click HERE to go to Youtube and be connected with videos of Jen guiding women through the "Five P's" in the book of James. This link is to the first video but the others should pop up there also!
