Easy Way to Study a Book of the Bible

Most of us read the Bible like it’s a magazine, flipping it open randomly each day and finding a few good verses.  If we were to be honest with ourselves we’d say that we were intimidated by all the information and by all the things that we did not know.  Or maybe you have the common thought, “I’m not a Bible scholar, so how can I study the Bible in depth?”  You may think that about the book of Ephesians or the book of Revelation but the Lord gave the Bible for the common hungry person.  I am confident you can understand every book of the Bible given the right time, energy, focus and hunger.  You have 20-50 years to study the Bible before your die and then billions of years to study the Bible after you die.  Just think of all the books of the Bible you could have depth in by the time you are 50, 60 or 70.

Here are a few easy ways to feed yourself on the Word of God:

1.   Make a Plan

Choose a small book of the Bible that you are interested in and want to study first.  A smaller book will seem less overwhelming for your first time than a larger book.  Map out how much time you want to study it each day of the week and put it in your schedule.   Most people do not get this far, so doing this is foundational.  Map out each step of the process like I have below.  Keep going until you are done.  Writings things down will be the best way to steward what God gives you and it will help you organize your thoughts.  Give yourself a few weeks or even a few months to get through one book.  You may go faster or you may go slower than you thought.

2. History and Context of the Book

      Use the internet or any bible resource to read a little bit about the book of the Bible.  Find out when it was written, who it was written to, who wrote it and the purpose of the book.  This will help you in your verse by verse study.  

4.  Read it again and again

Read the book of the bible in one sitting.  It may take you 30minutes to an hour but read it all the way through to get the flow of the book and to familiarize your heart with the content.  Do this a few times a day or a few times over the first week.  You can never exhaust this step of the process.  The Spirit will show you themes and trains of thought as you continue to read the book in one sitting.

5.  Outline the Book

Now that you have read the book a few times, get out a computer or notepad and outline the book.  The purpose of this step is to help yourself see the flow of the biblical author’s thought.  Your outline may change over the next days, weeks and years.  Start general and notice the breaks in thought, breaks in the storyline or breaks in themes.  These breaks will be every few paragraphs.  Title those sections.  Then go back through and notice smaller breaks within each larger thought, story or theme and title those.  These breaks will be every few verses.

Make your own title for each large and small section in a way that describes the section.

6.  Verse By Verse Study

Go verse by verse and type thoughts, questions and prayers onto your laptop or notepad. You may have questions on a verse that are answered in other parts of the Bible.  Find those verses and write them in your notes.  Questions are the sign of hunger.  God speaks the most when you have questions.  Write things down for every verse.  Go verse by verse until your are done for the day.  It’s best if you take your time going through each one.  Don’t feel the need to get a number of verses done each day, just use your scheduled time.

Take time with each verse to ask the Holy Spirit to teach you things.  Pray prayers from John 14-16, “Teach me things Holy Spirit.  Lead me into the truths of these verses.  Reveal the heart of God and the plans of God to my mind and heart.  Strengthen me with these truths.”

The Bible verses exist so we can talk to God about them, not so we can study them outside of God.

7.  Themes, Topics and Character Studies

You may find some interesting bunny trails during your studies.  Some themes, topics or Bible characters may stick out to you and you are free to study those things whenever you would like to.  You may want to write those interests down so you can look at them after you’ve finished all the verses of the book.  Or you may want to follow your hunger and spend a couple days reading more about those things in the Bible and making notes on them.  For example, you could study the life of Peter, his failures and his successes, when you study 1 Peter.  That may change the way you look at the books he wrote.  Themes may stick out to you in the section or in the book and you could write a few paragraphs about it in your studies.  You may notice biblical topics that interest you like the resurrection of the dead or the grace of God……..

8.  Teach it

Find a friend, small group or spouse and tell them about what you’ve been studying.  You can do this in formal ways or informal coffee times.  Speaking things out, processing and teaching people is one of the best ways to gain more understanding.  You will find out that YOU are your favorite teacher.  Lead a small group and study the book you are studying or have studied.

New Tiling Project-almost done!

Beforehand: Extending our entry way by peeling back the carpet

 

The Tools

 

The Concrete Hardiebacker first layer down… looking good!

So one day Jeff and our roommate Kyle ripped up the linoleum in our front entryway… and then within 24 hours we got all the tools (mostly borrowed-thanks Will!) and all the supplies (thanks Lowe’s! and that patient guy as we asked him about all the details) and then Kyle started tiling the next day! He is going to be starting a business called Kyle’s Tile Styles soon-haha!

Doesn’t it look great?

Jeff will be doing the grout within the next few days. It was fun to jump over our entry way for 24 hours to let it dry… tiling takes a long time to get done, but it’s fun.

Now, I just have to convince them to do the kitchen and the bathroom!!!!

-Bethany

The hired worker- our roommate Kyle!

 

Mortar is holding down these beautiful tiles! Grout yet to be put on…

A million dollar egg!

We haven’t actually ate it yet!

But this is our first egg from those chickens we just bought! (honestly not sure if our chickens are popping out eggs, it could be from another chicken) but we are excited nonetheless! Hats off to Micah and Kaitlyn for caring and loving our chickens, we can now tell them all apart.

Sadly Roni and Chocolate Thunder get picked on the most… Chocolate Thunder has a drooped over red flappy thing on the top of her head, and Roni has a small upper beak… I guess we would call that an under bite! Haha!

But other than that things are going well here on the farm…. (i feel like more of a farmer, owning chickens, getting my hands dirty in the garden- and i love it because I am definitely in the city!)

-Bethany

More Pictures from Our Sprouting Garden!

Fenced In Eden- from the outside perspective

 

A butterfly graced our garden with it’s beauty!

Look at our ONIONS!

 

Our mounds of cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini and cucumbers:)

 

Weeding

 

Jeff working them muscles

We bought some chickens!

Chickens that are real and alive! Not the frozen ones! But real, egg-laying chickens!
My brother Micah and his wife Kaitlyn has a chicken coop in their backyard and decided that they wanted some chickens that could lay eggs! So they built a fence and built a chicken run, and we went on the price of the chickens so that we could get some real nice healthy eggs:)

Here is a picture of Jeff holding the box when we helped go get them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
We were trying to coax them out of the box! But we ended up just dumping the box over:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here they are!
Roni and Chocolate Thunder are their names:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll keep you updated if they lay an eggs! So far, it’s been 5 days, and nothing. We are praying that they will produce:)
-Bethany

Living with a Heart of Wisdom – numbering our days (Psalm 90)

I’ve been struck over and over again with the issue of time.  Every human being has 24hrs in a day and 168 hours in a week.  Everybody does something different with those hours and it reflects in their life.  Time is the most precious thing we can steward from God and everybody gets the same amount. You can’t chose what family you’re born in, what nation you’re born in or even the giftings you’re born with but you can chose how to invest your time.

Psalm 90 was a Psalm of Moses and he prayed that God would help him number his days.  He correlated the understanding of the weightiness of time with a bright heart (wise heart).

I’ve thought a lot about what I can do with the time God has given me to steward, the next 10 years, the next 20 years and the possibly the next 50 years.  What things could you master if you set yourself right now for a 50 year journey?  What heart qualities could you have if you set it in your heart and prayed for it every day for the next 50 years?  What books of the Bible could you have deep understanding in if you made a 50year plan now?  How much money could you give away over 50 years if you set it in your heart now?

I used to struggle with giving hours a day to television and movies and it pains me to look back at my youth in that area.  The average American watches 3-5hrs a day of television.  3hrs of television a day from the ages of 10-20 would add up to 456 non-stop days of my life just watching tv.  5hrs a day for those 10 years would equal 2 full years of my life wasted in front of a tv. 3hrs a day for 50years would be 6.25 complete years of life wasted.  I believe I watched at least 3hrs of tv a day for those years and I wonder what I could have invested in with my time that would have paid off for all eternity.  We all have to forget what lies behind and press on towards the goal in Christ but there is also the place of remembering and learning from the past in order to live rightly in the future.

In a second 10 years will have gone by and in a minute 50 years will have gone by for each of us.  We have a precious gift to steward and every little chunk of time matters.  I want to ask the Lord to help me feel the value of every hour so that I can invest it rightly before His eyes and receive the prize for all eternity.

Jeff

Our Garden!!!

This is Eden, our Garden!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eden from the front gate entrance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Beans and Peas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

poolside Eden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another shot of the garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lettuce from eye level-nothing is growing yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a pool folks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep- Here is our latest news…

We have a pool within our Home Owner’s Association on our street, but it’s been inactive for many years. After some vandalism that was done, they decided to completely fill it in with dirt. (and concrete and fence pools and bricks-we found that out the hard way) Anyways Bethany went to the HOA monthly meeting and gave her suggestion to use the filled in pool as a community garden, and quickly became the community garden manager!!! We quickly got started on our own plot of ground as you can see from above, and 16-20+ man hours later (and that includes blood, sweat and some tears) Voila! We have a garden, and it’s filled with all kinds of delectable vegetable seeds. We need to pray for growth, because it has a lot of clay under there.

We will probably post again once they all sprout.  We’ll be on the lookout!!!

Meeting with Grandpa Mootz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff and I got to go visit with Grandpa Mootz in Minneapolis in March when we went up to South Dakota to meet with family. We traveled early in the morning with Jerry, Jeff’s dad, to go on a tour of his hometown and stomping grounds. On the way we got to hear Jerry’s stories, and then visit Grandpa Mootz’s former home and where Jerry grew up! Grandpa Mootz is a godly man and we were privileged to be with him, hearing war stories of World War II and also just visiting with him, catching up.

I told Grandpa Mootz that I was honored to have his name, and he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, paused, and said, “Well alright, I guess you can have it!”  He is the definition of what it means to have a godly inheritance planted in your children and your children’s children.  We love Grandpa Mootz!

 

Understanding Jesus through the Symbols of Song of Songs 5:9-16 – Jeff

The book of the Song of Songs has been something I have wanted to understand for several years.  I have been going through the book little by little the last months and hope to have studied each verse by the end of the year.  I was meditating on Chapter 5 of the book during our Bridegroom fast in December and I have been stuck in the chapter ever since. A teacher challenged our class years ago to go after this chapter for years in order to mine its depths of understanding about Jesus.

Each descriptive symbol is a treasure to search out in scripture and in meditation.  I have been surprised at how much is in the Bible on each symbol and how clear some of the ideas have been from the Old and New Testaments.

The Song has 2 main characters, Jesus and the Bride of Christ.  In this chapter the Bride describes the revelation of Jesus to other believers in the midst of her great trial.  They ask her what He is like and why she is so in love with Him.

She introduces Him as the most beautiful One among ten thousands times ten thousands and then goes into detail on each feature of His heart.  There is a general description of Jesus’ beauty, followed by 10 detailed descriptions and then another general description to conclude the proclamation.

Each of these facets of the Beauty of Jesus will strengthen our hearts in love for the Lord as we say them back to Him in meditation.

(Check the teaching section for short notes on each symbol of the chapter.  There will also be  separate documents for each verse)

Song 5:10 “My beloved is white and ruddy, Chief among ten thousand.”

White = dazzling, bright, radiant in His internal and external beauty

Ruddy = red, healthy, vibrant and filled with life in every area of His heart

Chief = most distinguished, highest ranking, banner lifted up,  leader, transcendent

Ten Thousand = An uncountable number, ten thousands times ten thousands

Fasting to Experience the Desire and Delight of God in our Hearts

The Lord has been speaking to me about resisting the religious mindsets that I so easily fall into.  It is easy to get into the daily routine of praying, studying the Bible and worshiping but the  difficult thing is to remember why I am doing these things.  It seems like the more I do the disciplines the more I become familiar with God and the more I assume I know about Him.  I’ve been seeking the Lord with all of my heart for the past 8 years and I know more bible verses than I ever have before but the temptation to become familiar with God is harder than ever.  The temptation to go through the routines for routine sake or the temptation to assume I know deep things about God because I know the verses is harder than ever.

We were made to encounter God and the disciplines were given by the Lord as ways of positioning ourselves before Him.  The Lord is reminding me again to humble myself before every verse as if I knew nothing about it.  He called it a poor spirit in the sermon on the mount.  But even more specifically He wants to encounter me with His desire and affections.  He knows the greatest way to awaken my heart from a religious mindset is to reveal His desires, affections and emotions to me.  We were made to encounter God’s desire for us so that our desire for Him could be awakened and set ablaze.

In Matthew 9:15-17, Jesus revealed a new type of fasting.  He introduced a fast that would be birthed and motivated by longing and desire for God.  It would not be a fast for revival or a fast to turn back judgment.  It would be a fast that would grow the capacity of the human heart so that it could experience more of God.  Jesus declared Himself to be a God of desire in the same passage.  He connected fasting with experiencing Him as a Bridegroom God of desire.

He is reminding me of this fast because it shatters every religious thing.  Experiencing His desire for me causes the disciplines of the faith to be fueled by desire instead of daily routine.

I invite you to fast this next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to experience more of God’s desire for you.  Many people around the world have said yes to fasting the first Mon-Wed of every month and have called it the Global Bridegroom Fast.  It is a lifestyle of fasting that cries out for intimacy with God and results in a heart that is plumb lined to the Psalm 27:4 destiny.

(check out the teaching section if you are interested in the Bridegroom Fast of Matthew 9:15)