Thessalonian Faith

Read

Read
God’s Word

“God wants us to read the Bible. He didn’t intend for it to collect dust on a coffee table or lie dormant inside a desk drawer. It is the means for getting to know Him.”1


“Oh, how I love Your law!
All day long it is my meditation.”
(Psalm 119:97)

This phase of the R3 Bible Study Process is where the foundational2 work is done – it inspires us.  Everything else we do depends on knowing what the author3 wrote. The goal here is to answer the question:

What does the passage say?

Reading the Word of God is not like reading a news article or weather report where all we do is collect facts. It needs to be more like reading a mystery novel where details matter.

The apostle Paul told Timothy to

“Make every effort to present yourself approved to God, an unashamed workman who accurately handles the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

We need to follow the example of the Bereans, who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day”. (Acts 17:11)

We can not do this by our own effort.

“For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” (1 Corinthians 2:11–13)

For that reason, Every time you open God’s word, to read or study, always start, proceed and end with prayer, asking God to guide you and thanking Him for His word.

Regarding Bible references

  • The Bible is a library of 66 books.
  • Each book has one or more chapters.
  • Each chapter has several verses.
  • To find a place in the Bible, we use a reference like this: John 3:16
  • That refers to the book of John, chapter 3, verse 16.
  • A list of the books of the Bible can be found at the front of your Bible, in the Table of Contents.  Chapter and verse numbers are imbedded within the text of each book.

There are a few things you can do to get the most out of your reading:

When reading the Bible4,
(for best comprehension)
do so …

Slowly – Don’t rush; give the words an opportunity to soak in and saturate your mind and heart.

Thoughtfully – Pause and think about anything that caught your attention. (This is sometimes referred to as meditating – thinking about, or mentally ‘chewing on’ what you read.)

Pausingly – Pause at the end of each paragraph and think about what you read. Take a moment to summarize the paragraph in your own words. Review your summary by looking back at the paragraph to make sure your summary is correct and you really do know what it says.

Repeatedly – so that you understand the boundaries, content and flow of the passage. The more often you see or read something, the more familiar it becomes to you and you can grasp both the overall concept (the Main Idea of the Text) as well as the details.  It works best if you read the same passage two or three times, especially from different translations. (The Blue Letter Bible, Bible Hub, YouVersion app and Logos have many different translations to read from.)

Out Loud – By reading out loud, your mind will pay more attention to what you are reading since it will not only keep your eyes moving across the page, but also engage your mouth, which will slow you down and give you an opportunity to hear the text as well as read the text.

At the right time – When you are not tired or distracted.

At the right place – Where you are not reclining and there are no distractions

MOST IMPORTANT: Prayerfully.  The Bible is “a supernatural book, it can be studied or mastered only by supernatural aid.”5 (see also 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, 12). So, whenever you read or study the Bible, always start, proceed and end with prayer.

MOST STRATEGIC: Attentively. Be sensitive to how the passage affects you – your initial reactions to what you read – allowing Holy Spirit to direct your attention to what He wants you to learn. 

Also, while you are reading the Bible …

In his book, A Key to Unlock the Bible (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1903), Joseph Agar Beet wrote,

We must endeavour to come into close mental contact with each sacred writer, even to the extent of sharing his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears. For many parts of the Holy Scriptures thrill with human emotion: and, unless we feel in his words the beating of a human heart, we cannot understand the writer’s thought.

Therefore, you need to pay attention to how your mind and soul react to the passage.  This is called “Visceral6 Observation“. In particular, be aware of when you emotionally react with a sense of:

  1. WOW! (Impression) What caught my attention, surprised or impressed me, or looked important or significant?
  2. WOE! (Conviction) What do I need to start doing, stop doing or change in light of God’s Word?
  3. HUH? (Question) What do I not understand, have a question about or need to study further?
  4. HOW? (Participation) How can/should/will I respond to, obey or participate with God and His Word?

These visceral reactions are NOT for purposes of interpretation; they are for identification – identification of impactful statements in the passage that you need to look into. Write down which reaction you felt, which statement in the passage (including its Bible reference) triggered your reaction, and a description of why you think you reacted that way.

Once you complete the Read study phase above, go to the Relate phase of the R3 Bible Study Process to investigate the passage.

Footnotes:

  1. How to Study the Bible and Enjoy It (Skip Heitzig. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2002), 2. ↩︎
  2. Foundational means serving as the basis, starting point, or fundamental building block from which something develops. It describes something so essential that all other structures, theories, or skills rely upon it to exist or succeed. ↩︎
  3. Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture (He used human writers to record His message): 1 Peter 1:10–12; 2 Peter 1:20–21; 1 Timothy 4:16-17 ↩︎
  4. These “When reading the Bible” concepts are derived in part from “How to Master the English Bible: An Experience, a Method, a Result, an Illustration” by James M. Gray.  Anderson and Ferrier, 1907. ↩︎
  5. Gray, James M. How to Master the English Bible : An Experience, a Method, a Result, an Illustration. Anderson and Ferrier, 1907. Pg 52 ↩︎
  6. Visceral: Refers to something that is felt deeply, instinctively, or emotionally, rather than intellectually ↩︎