I Don't Read My Bible Enough

Ron Smith

I Don't Read My Bible Enough

Copyright 2004

Ron Smith

501 Blacktail Road

Lakeside, MT 59922

ISBN-0-9641913-7-7

All Scripture references taken from the Revised Standard Version unless noted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

If you are 30 years old and read your Bible five minutes a day until you are 70 years old you can read the whole Bible more than 12 times.

This book is for you.

Ron Smith

Christmas 2003

Thank You

First of all, thank you to the reader. I trust God will help you be more of what you want to be in your own Bible reading and Bible study as you work your way through this.

Second, thank you to my wife Judy for allowing me to dominate our office to get this out. As well, your example through the years in the Bible has been challenging to watch and encouraging to try to imitate. You have taught me a lot.

Third, thank you to some very challenging friends. I have watched you and admired you through the years as you have worked your way through the Word of God. These friends include: Wanda Pace, Danny Lehmann, Kay and Alec Lindley, Loren Cunningham, Scott and Anna Contival, Don and Denise Gillman, Tami Barnett, Robin Lim, Pierre Tami, Kerry Neve, John Briggs, Sam Wilson, Andrae and Jess Braun, Tom and Donna Petter, Jerry Crow, Bruce Tibbett, Aaron Larson, Sean Ellis, Sean and Regine Gebler, Phil Leage, Michael and Amy Stevens, Mark and Dawn Masucci, David Ross, Joe Valenzuela, Kerry Hurst, Stan Cosby, Tommy Thomson, Jo Rush, Rob and Joy Penner, Tim and Lisa Robertson, Tim and Brenda Gordon, Carl Armerding, Jerry Smith, Fred Hartley, Gordy and Rene McDonald, and Pete Sifuentes.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

How God Got Me into the Bible

Chapter 2

Delighting in God's Word

Chapter 3

Reading the Bible Book-by-Book Start With the Shortest Books

Chapter 4

Listen or Watch (Tape, CD, DVD)

Chapter 5

Read Through the Bible Paragraph-by-Paragraph

Chapter 6

Reading the Bible Together with Friends

Chapter 7

Read Swiftly Like a Summer Novel

Chapter 8

Reading Books Over and Over

Chapter 9

Study Topics

Chapter 10

Read Aloud Thirty Minutes a Day Genesis to Revelation

Chapter 11

Write It Out Long-Hand

Chapter 12

Read It Through, Creating Outlines and Memory-Aids

Chapter 13

Thirty Minutes of Bible Study Each Day

Chapter 14

Inductive Bible Study

Appendix 1

Listening to Teaching Tapes

Watching Teaching Videos

Appendix 2

Reading Commentaries, Sermons, Magazine Articles, Books

Appendix 3

Thinking Through Bible Books

Other Books by Ron Smith

For my students and friends.  You have taught me far more than I have taught you

In Honor of

G. Campbell Morgan

Morgan read Bible books 50 times through aloud before teaching them in Churches.

"I don't read my Bible as much as I should, I don't pray as much as I should, I don't witness as much as I should."

John Wimber

Vineyard Movement

"I have failed many times, and I would do many things differently...I would spend more time studying the Bible and meditating on it's truth, not only for sermon preparation but to apply its message to my life."

Billy Graham

Just As I am, p 723, 724

"It has been my earnest endeavor ever since I have preached the Word, never to keep back a single doctrine which I believe to be taught of God.  It is time that we have done with the old and rusty systems that have so long curbed the freeness of religious speech. The Arminian trembles to go an inch beyond Arminius or Wesley, and many a Calvinist refers to John Gill or John Calvin as an ultimate authority. It is time that the systems were broken up, and that there was sufficient grace in all our hearts to believe everything taught in God's Word, whether it was taught by either of these men or not.  If God teaches it, it is enough.  If it is not in the Word, away with it! Away with it! But if it be in the Word, agreeable or disagreeable, systematic or disorderly, I believe it."

Charles Spurgeon

Chapter 1

How God Got Me into the Bible

I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the 1950s. I was a good kid growing up, but I knew very little about the gospel. I heard it for the first time with understanding at the age of twenty.

Billy Graham preached on the topic of hell in a televised message. I sat there with my two friends drinking beer and watching Billy preach on hell. I turned to them and said "He's right."  By that time I was no longer a "good kid." I was in college, with "drugs, sex and rock and roll." We got stoned that night in 1971.

In July of 1971, I woke up on the first Saturday morning and thought "your going to hell." I didn't want to go to hell. I called my mom that morning and asked her if I could move home from the fraternity house I was living in. She, of course, said yes. I was a bad influence on the people around me, and they were a bad influence on me.

As well, I called the girl I was dating and told her, "I can't see you anymore. Give me some time and I will explain to you what has happened to me."

Having done those things, I had no idea that I was becoming a Christian at the time. I did not know I was repenting when I repented. As well, I brought in some distasteful habits.

I smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. I continued smoking for almost a year after that July morning.

I cursed like a sailor; my mouth spewed vile metaphors. One day I let out a string of swear words and at the end of the sentence I said, "I'm gonna be a preacher."

I did not know that Christians were supposed to read their Bibles. I did not own a Bible for the first seven months of my Christian experience. I wanted to learn about God, but I knew nothing about how to go about it.

Throughout that first seven months, I think I had come to know three verses from the whole Bible. One of those verses was Psalm 4:7 where it said that God had put more joy in my heart than other people have when their grain and their wine abound. I knew a passage from Mark where it said that Jesus would "baptize with the Holy Ghost." The last passage I knew was from Hebrews were it said that God would write his law on people's hearts. This was all I really knew about the Bible.

I witnessed to people (sometimes in a bizarre fashion). In November of 1971, I led a young man to the Lord. He was a marathon runner and spent the previous weekend drinking and smoking (I was still at a pack and a half). In fact, I took the cigarettes for myself that he had bought the previous weekend. Did I still read the Bible? Not at all!

During this time, six Pentecostal students decided to pray for me. I knew nothing of their intercession. They prayed an hour a night, five days a week, for six weeks. God eventually heard their prayers.

Around this time, I decided to fast for the first time as a Christian. I overheard a couple of these six Pentecostals talking with each other about fasting in our college's post office.

So, in early December 1971, I fasted for the first time. I decided to fast for three days with no food or water, just cigarettes. I only made it for a day and a half, then I could not stand it any longer. I did not know that fasts included special

prayer times as well. So I just lay back on my bed in my dorm room looking up at the ceiling, smoking and fasting.

A few days after my attempted fast, I woke up with an incredible desire to read the Bible. The only thing I can compare it to is physical hunger. It was that intense.

I read through the New Testament one time before the end of the month in December 1971. I reread the New Testament the following month of January 1972.

I read in Acts about the early apostles being filled with the Holy Spirit. I was hungry for this experience. In March 1972, I experienced prayer in tongues and the filling of the Holy Spirit. As well, I stopped smoking and the terrible cursing habit also came to a quick end.

Then, in the spring of 1972, I had finished reading the whole Bible through - both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

I studied under liberal theologians in my undergraduate years. My New Testament professor tore pages from the Bible in front of more than two hundred students to illustrate that the Bible is "only a book." He stated with a chuckle that Jesus was as surprised as everyone else about his Easter resurrection experience. This professor was a graduate from Columbia.

My "Introduction to the Old Testament" professor felt that Ezekiel was psychologically off because of his weird visions. In fact, he used words like "psychotic" psychosis, etc. He felt forced to teach Ezekiel because "it is in the Canon, so we have to study it," but he believed very little of it. He was a graduate of Princeton University.

These professors were both curious and alarmed over the Holy Spirit's activities among some of the young Methodist students.

One of the most important questions we can ask is, "How do young college students survive the Bible classes in an environment like that?" The answer is that they don't survive it. Many of my friends, who were on fire for God, left that school either wounded or in a spiritual casket.

I remember, vividly, the weekly prayer meetings in the student bathroom next door to one of my classrooms. A friend and I prayed before our class "The Life and Teaching of Jesus." As I look back, I am grieved over our weekly prayer, "God protect us from this class."

As I think back, constant Scripture reading, a stubborn desire to be faithful and a grace-induced loyalty to the Scriptures protected me.

In 1974, I went to seminary at Gordon-Conwell. I continued to read the Bible on my own apart from the class assignments.

I sat stunned in the "Christology of the New Testament" class. Our evangelical professor opened the class by proclaiming that half of the New Testament department believed Luke 8 was accurate concerning Jesus' statements, while the other half of the New Testament department did not believe he said it. In other words, some of Luke 8 was only church tradition and not what Jesus really said. I returned only once-to take the final.

More than once I thanked God that I knew the Bible before I went to seminary. My roommate left seminary after the first semester. Why? The "New Testament Interpretation" class hurt him. He expected encouragement in his faith. Instead, he got large doses of unbelief at an evangelical seminary (no less).

I continued reading the Bible through my years at Gordon-Conwell. I worked on memorizing the gospel of Matthew in the NIV during those years but never finished.

I remember sitting through a "Christian Ethics" class. I sat in the back of the room flabbergasted again. One student waxed elegantly on the gay relationship between David and Jonathan. And once again, I thanked God that I knew the Bible before I went to this class.

Between the second and third year of seminary, we went from Boston to Dallas. Judy taught vocabulary development to high school students, and I taught the Old Testament (I was 25 and Judy 26 at the time). While in Dallas, God allowed me to continue growing in the Word because of relationships with other Bible teachers. I ran into people from Dallas Seminary and was both challenged and encouraged by them.

I continued reading the Word as a seminary student [sometimes I missed days, here and there.]. The summer between my second and third year as a seminary student, I studied the prophets. As I graduated from seminary. I thought a lot about how much of the Bible that seminary students knew after graduation.

I pastored a small church in northern Massachusetts from 1978 until 1980. The Bible reading and Bible study continued through these years.

Phil Parshall surveyed missionaries in 1987. They responded that maintaining a daily devotional life was the number one issue that produced stress in their lives.

In 1980, I went into missions. I read the Bible and have continued to read faithfully [for the most part] for the last 23 years. Presently, I try to read 15 minutes a day and meditate 15 minutes a day. I miss a few days here and there. Once in a while, I miss it for several days.

The pages that follow detail how I have been successful when I have succeeded. It will encourage you that you can do that too or something like it.

One further thought: My wife and I started a Bible school in 1981. This school multiplied from one school (with eight students) to over four hundred schools throughout the years with thousands of students worldwide. We conduct about forty schools simultaneously worldwide. We take our students through the Bible (the whole Bible) several times in nine months.

You can read the whole book of 2 John in less than five minutes.

"If I were the devil one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible."

J.I. Packer

Chapter 2

Delighting in God's Word

Right at the outset of the Psalms, David defines the blessed person as one who delights in the law of the Lord. It is an important theme for David. So much so that he repeats the same message several times over in Psalm 119. He says:

Verse 14 - "In the way of thy testimonies I delight as much as in all riches."

Verse 16 - "I will delight in thy statutes, I will not forget thy Word."

Verse 24 - "Thy testimonies are my delight, they are my counselors."

Verse 35 - "Lead me in the path of thy commandments, for I delight in it."

Verse 47 - "For I find my delight in thy commandments which I love."

Verse 70 - "Their heart is gross like fat, but I delight in thy law."

Verse 77 - "Let thy mercy come to me, that I may live, for thy law is my delight."

Verse 92 - "If thy law had not been my delight, I should have perished in my affliction."

What does David mean when he says he delights in God's Word? The dictionary defines delighting in something

as that thing becoming a cause or source of great pleasure for us. In this case, God's Word was that great source of pleasure for David.

Most of us have experienced, at some time or another, being away from home and getting a letter from someone we love. Perhaps it is a girl friend or a boy friend or a parent or a brother or a sister, or perhaps a close friend. When the letter arrives, we tear it open and read it. And then read it again. And again. When we have finished reading it, we do not crumple it up and toss it in the garbage. Instead, we neatly fold it and put it in a safe place. Why? Because receiving and reading the letter brought us much pleasure. It stirred up pleasant memories of home and of the person who wrote us the letter. Later, we want to take the letter out again and delight in it some more. We want it to be a further source of pleasure to us. So we keep the letter and reread it often.

That is what David meant when he talked about delighting in God's Word. He is talking about making God's Word a great source of pleasure. So much so, that we would constantly want to read it and ponder its implications in our hearts.

For David, the law of the Lord meant the first five books of the Bible. He delighted in those books. He meditated on them day and night, and he was rewarded with deep insights into the nature and character of God and how he was to relate to Him. These insights form the basis for many of David's psalms, among them Psalm 1.

It is interesting to note that Psalm 1, the introductory psalm to the book of Psalms, is basically the declaration of the importance of meditating on God's Word. David declares the person who delights in and meditates upon the law of the Lord to be blessed. He also goes on to compare the person who meditates to a strong and healthy tree.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

That yields its fruit in its season.

And its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

(Psalm 1:3)

Watching a tree grow is not a very exciting way to pass the time of day. A tree's growth is almost imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. But go away and come back in two years. You will see that tremendous growth has occurred in the tree. That growth has occurred in imperceptible daily bursts as the roots of the tree have drawn up nutrients from the soil.

The huge Sequoia trees in California's Redwood forests are remarkable specimens of nature. Yet no one has ever watched a Sequoia tree grow even an inch. Over the course of many hundreds of years we can not deny the fact that they have grown from small seeds to mighty trees.

The Bible meditator is like one of those Sequoia trees. Ten to twenty minutes of Bible meditating will not suddenly make us spiritually mature and sensitive, but ten to twenty minutes a day spread out over a period of time will bring great growth and change to our spiritual lives. Like a giant Sequoia tree, growth for the Bible meditator requires day-by-day, week-by-week feeding on God's Word.

Psychologist, Dr. Paul Meier of the Minirth-Meier Clinic in Dallas, Texas, states that he has observed spiritual and emotional growth in people as a result of meditation. It takes time to occur, he points out, taking on average about three years of consistent meditation before such sustained growth is truly evident.

Everything of value, including the practice of Bible meditation, takes time to develop and even more time before the spiritual growth benefits are evident to ourselves and to others. In our instant society, this is not always a comforting truth, but it is a truth, nonetheless. A truth that David knew well. Years of his life were invested into delighting in and meditating upon the Word of God and the results were evident in his life.

David goes on to tell us in Psalm 1 that the Bible meditator is like a tree "planted by streams of water." Not just a stream of water, but streams of water. Often, when there are many streams of water running together, they form a swamp or a marsh.

Perhaps you have had the opportunity to visit some of the swamps in Florida. If you have, the first thing you probably noticed was how green, lush and alive everything appears. Saw grass, wild orchids and ferns cover the saturated ground. Also, up from the midst of all this lush growth soar tall Cypress trees. These trees flourish in the swamp environment. With the ever-abundant supply of water and nutrients they grow strong and tall. And that, David tells us, is what the Bible meditator is like, a tree planted by streams of water, able to draw nourishment from the Word of God. That nourishment allows the meditator to grow strong and mature in his spiritual life.

Then David continues on to tell us that the tree "yields its fruit in its season."

A banana tree produces an abundance of fruit, but it does not produce that fruit by simply reciting to itself, "I'm a banana tree and I'm going to make bananas." Bananas are produced naturally as the tree grows and is nourished. Fruit is the natural consequence of the process of growth and development that occurs in the tree. As a result, when the season is right, the banana tree bears fruit.

For the Bible meditator, the process of spiritual growth that occurs with ongoing Bible meditation produces fruit in his or her life. That fruit is often expressed in the form of spiritual character as it was in the life of David. It is that same fruit that can nourish the lives of others.

Then, on this tree that David compares the Bible meditator to, "Its leaf does not wither." When the leaves of a tree wither, it is a sure sign that the tree is not getting enough nourishing water from the ground. The tree is dry and if it finds no nourishment, it will die.

The Bible meditator should not experience dryness in his spiritual life. The daily nourishment he draws from the Word of God will keep his spiritual life dynamic and fresh. We speak often and openly in the church today about going through dry periods in our spiritual lives. There may be those times when God, in the process of teaching and training us, allows us to experience such a dry period. For the most part, though, these dry periods may occur because of neglect and poor planning.

Suppose we want to plant an apple tree so that when it has grown we can enjoy its fruit. So we plant the seed in the ground. Do we then sit back and wait for the apples to appear? No. To do so shows a lack of understanding on our part. As a result of our lack of understanding, we end up neglecting the tree.  If we fail to correctly fertilize and water the apple tree, it will not produce large and healthy fruit. As anyone who has planted an apple tree knows, the tree must be nurtured. It must be regularly fertilized, watered and protected from pests and frost. With such nurture, the apple tree will grow strong and produce sweet, ripe apples for all to enjoy.

Bible meditation is a nutrient we need if we are to experience growth in our spiritual lives. Our failure to plan for the adequate nurture of our spiritual lives causes growth and development to be stifled, allowing long periods of spiritual dryness to creep into our lives.

Bible meditation, though, is not some ritualistic activity we put ourselves through. It is a two-way activity. It is planting God's Word in our heart and then allowing Him to release the power of that Word into our lives. That is God's part. When, like the tree, we do our part by drawing in and absorbing the Word of God into our hearts, then God will cause growth to occur.

In essence, then, meditation is a two-way relationship; it is fellowship with God.

Scripture records two major points of failure in David's life. Both of them occurred when David neglected his fellowship with the Lord. His first failure was committing adultery with Bathsheba and then trying to cover his tracks by having her husband, Uriah, killed. The second failure was that of numbering the people of Israel against God's will. I am sure if David were around today for us to ask him why he did these things, he would say it was because of a lapse in his meditating and communing with God. The leaves on his once healthy tree had withered. His relationship with the Lord had become dry and, as a result, he fell into sin.

Thus, when David declares meditating on the Word of God to be of paramount importance in the life of a child of God, he knows full well, from positive and negative experience, the absolute truth of what he is saying. He knows the importance of being like a tree and letting his roots go deep into the Word of God to draw in spiritual nourishment. David delighted in the Word of God and God raised him up to be a leader of his people.

But David is not the only dynamic leader in the Bible who knew the importance of and practiced Bible meditation.

Joshua

"Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

(Joshua 1:7-9)

After Moses died, God raised up a new man to be in charge - Joshua. He was to lead Israel across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. Along the way they would face the barbaric Canaanites. These cruel people sacrificed their first- born children and placed their sacrificed bones in an earthen jar that was then built into the walls of their homes. Their wickedness had offended God, and Joshua was to bring God's judgment against them. He was to lead the army of Israel to conquer and annihilate the Canaanites. It was a huge task that Joshua faced.

As the Lord called Joshua to undertake this task, he also promised him success. "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you" (Joshua 1:5). It was a great promise, but perhaps more interesting is how God directs Joshua to attain this promise. As Francis Schaeffer has noted, even though Joshua had served faithfully beside Moses for forty years, the Lord did not tell him to remember all Moses had done and think about it. Instead, God commanded Joshua to search out for himself from Scripture the wisdom he would need to fulfill the task. "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it." (Joshua 1:8). If he would do this, then God would be with him always and he would have good success.

Before anything else, God called Joshua to have an ongoing devotional life with meditation as a priority. Day and night he was to meditate on the Word of God, but that did not mean he was to just sit and cogitate. Instead, he was to meditate on God's Word in order to obey it himself and enjoy God. He was also called to lead the people in obedience to it.

God calling Joshua to undertake all that he wanted him to accomplish, while at the same time commanding him to be constantly meditating on the Word of God, raises an interesting question. How was Joshua supposed to accomplish both of these seemingly full-time tasks?

The apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 that we should take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. That is what God was asking Joshua to do. He was to make his mind, his very being, captive to God's Word. His heart and mind were to be completely focused in an obedience to the Word of God. He was to delight in God's Word, mull it over in his mind and open his heart to receive new levels of understanding from God regarding his Word and how he should obey it. This process was to continue together with the things God had asked Joshua to accomplish. This constant meditation was designed by God to provide Joshua with the wisdom he needed to accomplish the task.

Now this was a very different training approach from the physical, intellectual and tactical training today's military leaders receive. By staying true to all that God had commanded him, Joshua experienced great success in leading Israel to claim the land God had promised them. Supernaturally, Joshua led the people across the Jordan River. He conquered Jericho, Ai and Bethel. He saw God stop the sun and moon in mid- heaven. As well, in the book of Joshua, chapters 11 and 12 list thirty-one kings that he and his company conquered. Joshua accomplished all God had asked him to accomplish. Joshua 21:43-45 declares that God honored all the promises He had made to Joshua and Israel. As a result, they, along with Joshua, prospered.

It is obvious that daily meditating on the Word of God shaped the life and character of both David and Joshua. Both of them became great leaders of their people. Everything they did prospered. This is not to say that they never stumbled, but God used both of them in a dynamic way. The prerequisite God set for them was that they meditate on His Word.

The experience of Joshua and David is not just for God's chosen leaders, it is for all Christians. All that Joshua and David did was rooted in fellowship with God, and the basis of that fellowship was meditating on the Word of God. God's instruction to Joshua was that he should meditate on God's Word day and night, is also for us today. As David points out, we should delight in God's Word. It should be a source of great pleasure to us. When it becomes that source of pleasure to us, we will enjoy a healthy, vibrant, mature and prosperous relationship with God; just as David and Joshua did.

You can read the book of 3 John in less than 5 minutes.

"My experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull."

Horace Bushnell

Chapter 3

Reading the Bible Book-by-Book

Start With the Shortest Books

This is a great method for overworked people with a feeling of too little time in a day. Moms, businessmen and missionaries all complain about the same thing and ask the same question. "Where do I find the time to read my Bible?" Then there are those days when we simply do not want to read the Bible. Those are the "lazy days." On those days we need a large dose of "Holy Spirit hunger" for the Bible.

We can read any of several books in the Bible in less than fifteen minutes. On a lazy day, I can get out of bed and read 2 John (it has only 13 verses). I can read it in less than three minutes.

The really good thing about this is the alleviation of daily guilt involved in being able to do this. I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel guilty on the days I miss reading my Bible. On those days when I miss my bible reading, I must confess that I really don't read my Bible enough.

After I read through one of these short Bible books on a lazy day, I checkmark the Table of Contents in the front of my Bible. One of my Bibles has checkmarks next to every Bible book. Of course, the big books cannot be completed in a short fifteen-minute sitting. Books like Jeremiah or 1 & 2 Samuel will take several days to work through.

There are about twenty-five books in the Bible that can be read in less than thirty minutes. These books include: Ruth, Ezra, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.

It is remarkable how much we can achieve if we repeatedly focus on the production of small victories. Think of it. You can read through almost any of half of the books in the Bible by reading less than thirty minutes a day.

We can package small efforts in otherwise "dead times" during the day. Psychotherapist, Paul Hauck, wrote his book on self-discipline entitled How To Do What You Want To Do. He wrote parts of that book in 15-minute intervals here and there.

David Howard, former President of IVP, stated that anything can be read at the rate of ten minutes a day so long as a person is patient and persistent.

Behavioral Scientist, Al Secunda, wrote The 15 Second Solution. Secunda's thesis is that people can accomplish a lot by simply deliberately thinking about a long-term project for fifteen seconds a day and applying himself or herself toward it. As a person applies himself or herself, often the fifteen seconds becomes fifteen minutes a day or even longer. Secunda's thesis is that a small amount of concentrated effort daily can render huge results.

Assume you have fifty years left to live. You can read your Bible a minute a day for six days a week. That is 266 total hours of Bible reading. A person can read the Bible through completely in one hundred hours. So, anybody can read the Bible through almost three times in their lifetime by reading only one minute a day.

You can read the book of Jude in less than

10 minutes.

"I'd like all my books to be destroyed so that only the Sacred Writings in the Bible would be diligently read."

Martin Luther

Chapter 4

Listen or Watch (Tape, CD, DVD)

We live in a multimedia generation. I was in the Tokyo airport recently and saw the most amazing thing. Sitting at a restaurant table, four young Japanese women talked on their cell phones simultaneously and none of them spoke with each other.

There are some Christians who cannot read or, worse yet, will not read. God, in his great condescending readiness, makes a way for these Christians to study the Word of God. Watch or listen to it on media.

About five or six years ago I bought myself a set of NIV audiotapes for my birthday. I had wanted to listen to the Bible on tape for a long time as I had kind of burned out on straight reading through the Bible. I found listening to these tapes a great way to stay in the Word and not become slack in my Bible intake. Jesus spoke constantly to his disciples about the importance of what they heard. Romans 10:17 tells us, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." I recently purchased a New Testament set of CDs. I carry these everywhere I go in my car.

Through the years, I have been somewhat amazed at Christian listening practices. I remember about ten years ago one of our Bible students constantly had her headphones on and listened to really bad music while studying God's Word. I have never been able to figure out how someone could be studying the Psalms and listening to rock musicians sing about violence, rape and murder, or country western fans hearing about "my girlfriend left her shoes under my bed last night."

Another wonderful media is video and DVD. Not long ago, I remember sitting in front of the TV with my wife watching "Jeremiah." This movie was a very faithful rehearsal of that long, long Bible book. I taught Jeremiah to a Bible class in Hawaii after that. I purchased the video and showed it to the class. The students seemed to really enjoy it. Enjoyment for all it's worth is really not the point though. We want to know God's word and be constantly saturated with His revelation. One of the great ways is through the new video and DVD productions.

Learning theory practitioners tell us that most Westerners are visual, mental processors. If that is the case, visual communication is incumbent upon us in the church to pass on God's message to future generations.

If you think of it, God left us a book to read [which is visual]. In the original communication, God often matched what He said with visual signs and wonders. Not only did the people hear God's words, but they also saw his activities in history.

This also confirms the findings from laboratories of the nonverbal communication experts. They tell us that over 60 percent of our communication experience occurs via nonverbal modalities. As well, nonverbal experts tell us that if a person says one thing and does something else, the actions speak more persuasively than the words.

Seeing the contents of God's word, actually played out before our eyes, is a wonderful way to learn the content of Scripture.

You can read the book of Obadiah in less than 10 minutes.

"In truth you cannot read the Scriptures too much; and what you read, you cannot read too well; and what you read well, you cannot too well understand; and what you understand well, you cannot too well teach; and what you teach well, you cannot too well live."

Martin Luther

Chapter 5

Read Through the Bible

Paragraph-by-Paragraph

Reviewing it to myself in my own words

Have you ever had this experience in your Bible reading? You begin reading through your Bible on a good day. You fly through two pages and go on to the next. You get halfway down the third page and suddenly think to yourself, "Now what did I just read on the previous page?"

The method I am going to describe will help you remember what you read on the preceding page.

I remember studying 1 and 2 Timothy and 1 Corinthians this way when I was in college.  I sat in the football practice stadium by myself and read paragraph-by-paragraph - stopping between each paragraph. I asked myself, "now what is Paul trying to say to Timothy in this paragraph?"  If I could not come up with a satisfactory answer I went back and read it again.

Again, the learning Psychologists tell us that putting something into our own words and personalizing heightens the learning.

You can read the prophet Haggai in 10 minutes.

"The Bible is a very practical and totally balanced book."

Francis Schaeffer

Letter July 19, 1972

Chapter 6

Reading the Bible

Together with Friends

God blessed me in the last two and a half years of my college/university experience. I had several friends who were extremely zealous about Bible study.

One friend (a young woman named Jan) and a band professor (Roger) at our school studied the Word together with me for a period of time (almost two semesters). Before classes on one weekday each week we gathered in the professor's office for Bible study. This was formative for me in the early 1970s.

As well, we had a group Bible study on Friday nights. A former missionary (Sam) to Mexico and his wife (Betty) led it. I learned some important theology there.

Five friends and I decided to have Bible studies in my dorm room as well during my undergraduate days. This study was particularly interesting and quite stimulating. All of us were planning on going into the ministry. We borrowed a huge blackboard (probably twelve feet long) and moved it into my dorm room. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we gathered to hear each other teach the Word. One of these friends, graduated number one in our class, another got his Ph. D. from Notre Dame in devotional theology, three others became pastors in Northwest Texas or Oklahoma and I became a missionary. Nobody pushed or encouraged us to do this. We did it because we wanted to grow in the Bible.

When I went to Gordon-Conwell, Gordon Fee led a Bible study fellowship at his home. I attended it a few times. On Thursday nights Judy and I had a Bible study with a friend in Rockport, Massachusetts, just the three of us. On Friday nights, Dr. Harold Ockenga opened up the library next to his president's office named "Calvin Lounge" so that we could have a charismatic prayer meeting and Bible study there.

One of the most edifying Bible study with friends was with my fiancé, Judy, during our engagement. We read through the whole Bible together in about eight months (except for eleven chapters in Proverbs). I don't know why we missed those eleven chapters but we did.

In 1980/81 we led eighteen people on an evangelistic outreach to Maui in Hawaii. We went door-to-door to about 90 percent of the island. Two or three times a week we studied through the whole of the Old Testament. We studied through it for about fourteen weeks. We found it to be a very edifying time.

After we moved to Montana, we conducted various Bible studies through the years outside of our Bible class.

In 1991/92 some friends, John and Donna Briggs, hosted a Bible study on Monday nights in their living room. I remember going through Ephesians, Romans, Mark, Colossians, and several other Bible books together.

I participated in a Bible study at a restaurant in Kalispell, Montana for high school students. We met at 6:30 am. Several of those students went into missions. A friend of mine helped lead that Bible study, he later went to Taiwan himself as a missionary.

Church history is full of small group Bible study. We think of the Wesley's at Oxford, Luther and Melanchton working through the Bible together in the Reformation.

Only heaven knows the benefit of these Bible studies conducted informally. God's people, who are hungry to know him, gather together to eat God's spiritual nutrition.

Educators speak much about informal and continuing education. Looking through the Bible together with friends is a wonderful and informal way to learn from the Lord.

You can read the book of the prophet Nahum in 12 minutes.

"In truth you cannot read the Scriptures too much; and what you read, you cannot read too well; and what you read well, you cannot too well understand; and what you understand well, you cannot too well teach; and what you teach well, you cannot too well live."

Martin Luther

Chapter 7

Read Swiftly Like a Summer Novel

I travel a lot with my wife as we go to preach or teach. I have visited many nations and interviewed many Christians about their Bible reading. I have come to some sobering conclusions.

First, about 75 percent of the church worldwide has not read through the whole Bible. I say this after asking saints for more than twenty years the question, "Have you read through the whole Bible?"

Second, about 50 percent of the church has read the whole New Testament. Again, I have asked literally thousands of Christians worldwide the question, "Have you read through the New Testament?"

Third, many Christians feel guilty about their Bible reading, but don't really know how to remedy the problem.

Fourth, pastors and teachers usually do the following about this problem: they give up on their saints. Pastors and leaders can be a cynical bunch. They respond like Moses did with the children of Israel. They get mad and say, "To hell with all of you"-literally. As well, some pastors and teachers assume their sheep know more than they actually know. A survey was done sometime ago among Protestants in the United States. The survey asked Protestants to define "justification." Less than 50 percent succeeded. Luther stated that "the article upon which Christianity stands or falls" is unknown in American Protestantism.

In response to point one: It takes one hundred hours to read through the whole text of Scripture. As well, most church folks feel guilty that they have not read through the whole thing. I surveyed a large church (1,500 plus people) in Singapore ten years ago. I asked them why they thought they had not read the whole Bible. The usual response was, "a lack of self-discipline." That may or may not be true.

I think that Christians are more disciplined than they give themselves credit for. I think a large part of the failure has to do with appetite or "delight" as King David called it.

Spanish speakers have a noun "ganas." This noun refers to desire or "wanting it."

I think appetite and desire are lacking among Christians. We really do not believe that we will become spiritually malnourished if we don't eat (spiritually). I know extremely disciplined Christians who fail to read their Bible regularly.

Unfortunately, most Christians feel guilty about this. I suggest we pray for appetite for Scripture - appetite like our favorite food. God can give it.  He did it for me.

In response to point two: I think there is more than one reason why the New Testament and not both are read. First, theologies de-emphasizing the Old Testament subconsciously discourage Old Testament reading. This is far from Calvin, Luther or Wesley. Nevertheless, we find these theologies in the 21st century. Also, pastors and leaders hoist this opinion upon the sheep. So we feel that we are in the New Testament era and thus don't really need the Old Testament. Second, the sheer volume of literature in the Old Testament compared with the New Testament discourages people from reading the whole thing.

Whenever I inquire about this issue, I always try to build on the successes of the past for these New Testament readers. They are light years ahead of 50 percent of the church.

Again, I believe we need to pray for a bigger appetite in the church.

In response to point three (the guilt problem): I attended a missions minded church for a number of years. It is a nondenominational evangelical/charismatic church. The head pastor exhorted the saints to read the Bible week after week for all of the years I was there. I never saw a lot of instruction in "how to read the Bible."

I suspect many left those weekly exhortation sessions feeling pounded upon around the head and shoulders - unfortunately without much relief from their guilt. How can we alleviate our own guilt and the guilt of the saints? In my opinion, the only way is to help people find ways to get into the Bible. Then we must also lead by example. Ezra's testimony in Ezra 7:10 instructs us. Ezra set his heart to study the law of God, to do it and to teach it.

I think the order in that verse is important. Study, do, and then teach. More doing would facilitate more teaching (effective teaching).

In response to point four: Pastors and teachers can not give up on the sheep. We are looking at hungry sheep (or without hunger that need it). They are God's sheep and not necessarily sinful, lazy or indolent. They are malnourished and starved.

Cynicism answers nothing and feeds no one. Unfortunately, I have found some of that in the ministry through the years in the clergy. I have been guilty of it myself at times. Anger repels people. If someone beats up the sheep, he will not feed them.  They don't need to be spanked. They need to be fed.

Finally, we cannot kid ourselves about the knowledge level of the average church member. I remember thinking about this as I graduated from seminary. I was sorely tempted to ask all of my classmates to recite the Ten Commandments or to tell me all of the names of the Old Testament major and minor prophets. I knew that many, if not most, could not do it and I graduated from a good seminary.

John Calvin wrote the Institutes as a primer for lay people in the 16th century during the glory days of the reformation. Today we train pastors with Calvin's primer for lay people. Amazingly, at Gordon-Conwell, we received double credit for reading the Institutes in our Systematic Theology class.

If the pastors of today are where the laity of the 16th century were expected to be, how much can we realistically expect from lay people today? Unfortunately, not much. They are malnourished, starving for the Word. We cannot look at starving people and decree them well fed.

I have written all of this as a rather long introduction to an important method for Bible reading. In fact, I recommend this method for people who have never read through the whole Bible. Read it like a summer novel.

How do we do that? First, I believe there is a certain "summer novel" mentality. That is relax and don't worry about how much we will remember of it. We read these books to relax and usually we read them quickly.

I recommend this style as a first-trip through the Bible. Determine to read through it quickly.

Second, in following the "summer novel" mentality, I recommend that readers skip the "boring parts." What would I label as "boring parts" for first readers? Well...

How about the name lists in Genesis 5 and 10. How about the name list in 1 Chronicles 1-9? These name lists have stopped well-intentioned first-time readers.

I also suggest readers skip chapters 26-39 of Exodus. This is a set of building plans for the tabernacle. I think chapters 13-21 of Joshua can also be skipped. This is a set of real estate boundary lines set out by Joshua for the children of Israel.

I also recommend that the first-time reader keep a pen and paper handy. This is to note the things the reader does not understand. There may be a lot of them. The point is to learn without holding back the speed of reading through the Bible.

I also recommend that the first-time readers ask their pastors or ministry leaders if there are mysterious passages. This will actually be good for the pastor. Why? Because this forces the pastor to get into his or her Bible as well.

I also recommend that the reader set a maximum amount of reading time each day. The first time I read the Bible through quickly on purpose, I gave myself two months to do it. I decided to read a book a day no longer than an hour a day. This is challenging when we consider how long Psalms and the major prophets are. I remember actually reading through the Bible this way during the summer of 1997. I read during July and August. I had already been through the Bible for many years before I seriously thought how much of a "human" book the Bible actually is. I concluded that during that read through.

C.S. Lewis reread books through quickly during his old age. I recommend we do that with the Bible.

You can read the book of Titus in 12 minutes.

Will

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate

Can circumvent, or hinder or control

The firm-resolve of a determined soul.

Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;

All things give way before it, soon or late.

What obstacle can stay the mighty force

Of the sea-seeking river in its course,

Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?

Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.

Let the fool prate of luck.

The fortunate is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,

Whose slightest action or inaction serves

The one great aim.

Why, even Death stands still,

And waits an hour sometime for such a will.

Ella Wheeler Cox

"I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hands in several chapters."

Charles Spurgeon

Chapter 8

Reading Books Over and Over

I remember reading about the life of G. Campbell Morgan with incredulity. Morgan taught the Bible at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries in England and the United States.

Early on he made it his practice to read through Bible books fifty times aloud before attempting to teach them. I heard this for the first time at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Harold Ockenga held him forth as an example of preparation for preachers.

I have found that reading and rereading Bible books in a concentrated way can be very helpful and I have done it on several occasions.

The rabbis spoke of repetition in their teachings. In fact, one stated, "A rabbi's whole life is one constant repetition."

I remember writing in the introduction to my doctoral thesis that I had read through Galatians and through Titus five hundred times each. Even after that I still can not quote Galatians by heart. I can tell you where everything is, but I'm not sure I could give you the exact words. I have quoted Titus by heart through the years.

Pastor John McArthur wrote a small book in the 1970s entitled, God's Will is Not Lost. In that book he described some of his Bible study. He writes:

"Let me share how I study the Bible, and how the Bible has come alive to me. I began in 1 John. One day I sat down and read all five chapters straight through. It took me twenty minutes. Reading one book straight through was terrific (The Bible wasn't written as an assortment of good little individual verses. The Bible was written with flow and context.) The next day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through again. The third day, I sat down and read 1 John straight through again. The fourth day, straight through again. The fifth day, I sat down and read it again. I did this for thirty days. Do you know what happens at the end of 30 days? You know what is in 1 John." (God's Will is Not Lost, John McArthur, p. 16 Victor Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1973)

When I taught the Bible in Dallas at a Christian high school, I took the last six weeks of the school year for review of the whole year's work. There is no substitute for review and rereading.

I remember teaching this in South Africa a few years back. I received an e-mail about three or four months after having been there. A man heard me teach this and immediately started with Ephesians. Then he did 1 John. He told me that he was quite surprised at how much he learned of these two books by simply reading and rereading them for a month.

The difficult thing in doing this is striking a balance between broad intake of God's Word and a concentrated study of the Word in this way. This is similar to balancing reading and meditation.

So I suggest that if you find yourself interested in a particular Bible book, read and reread it for a month. Here's a thought for you. If you did this with the entire Bible you would be through the Bible thirty times in five years!

You can read the book of 2 Thessalonians in 12 minutes.

"The Bible can be a very dangerous book."

Security Guard at Heathrow Airport

Leonard Sweet,  Aqua Church, p. 63

Chapter 9

Study Topics

The first time I ever fasted was humorous at best and a fiasco at worst.

I had been a believer for less than six months. I had brought two bad habits into my Christian life. I cussed like a sailor and had a bad cigarette habit of about a pack and a half per day. As well, I did not know Christians were to read the Bible.

Six young Pentecostals on the campus were praying for me. One day at the campus post office, I overheard one of those young men say to another one "Where is Tommy?" The other responded, "Oh, he is out fasting for three days." From then on I knew I wanted to fast. So I fasted for the first time in December of 1971 with no food, no water-only cigarettes. I knew nothing about either the proper health implications of fasting nor what the Bible teaches about fasting.

Soon after that fast, I began reading the Bible. I read through the New Testament for the first time in about two weeks.

Through the years, I have studied various topics throughout the Bible.  One is fasting. The Bible mentions fasting seventy times and most of the bright lights in Scripture fasted. I could go on and on about fasting but that is not the point of this chapter.

I want to talk with you about studying the Bible topically.  When I say "study topically" I mean that I go to the Bible looking for its teaching on a specific topic (like fasting, love, grace or any other of the thousand possibilities).

I believe that Christians often go to the Bible looking for answers to life's problems in this way. Unfortunately, the answers we come up with may very well be "Biblical" but they are also quite askew. What I mean by that is that there is either unbalance in the conclusions or the conclusions are quite out of context.

So what do I suggest for the popular type of Bible study?

First, if you go the Bible looking for its teaching on a topic, look up every reference on that topic from Genesis to Revelation. For instance, to study fasting responsibly, it is necessary to find every reference to it in Scripture. The way to do this is use either an electronic concordance or Strong's Exhaustive Concordance or Young's Analytical Concordance to find them all.

Second, I recommend this kind of Bible study for Christians who have already been through the whole Bible a few times. This rules out about 90 percent of the weird Bible study problems occurring in the church. As well listening to a constant diet of topical preaching is not as fruitful as preaching through whole Bible books. The Reformation was built by preaching through Bible books as literature and not by topical preaching.

Remember, I wrote that 80 percent of the church has never read through the whole Bible even one time. That means 80 percent of the church should not be doing this kind of Bible study primarily.

Third, once we find references to topics, I believe there is a correct method for assessing its meaning in Scriptural context.

I suggest looking at the context of the specific passage in three ways:

Local - Once we have the reference, it is wise to read ten verses above the verse in question and ten verses below.  This is to be sure we don't yank it out of its immediate context.

Whole book - Ask yourself what does this verse mean in context with the whole book of the Bible it is found in

Whole Bible - What does this verse mean in the context with the Bible?

I have studied hundreds of topics through the years in the Bible. Two or three of the earliest ones I centered on were: fasting, the resurrection of the dead, baptism, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and others. For my study, I followed the topical method that I suggest for you.

20 years old? Read the Bible two minutes a day and you would have read through it six times by age 70.

"Four out of ten Americans read the Bible once a week."

George Barna. 2002

Chapter 10

Read Aloud Thirty Minutes a Day

Genesis to Revelation

I began reading the Bible in 1971. For the first two months of 1972, I read the New Testament through at least once. I cannot remember the method I used except that I read it through.

I remember being on my knees in my dorm room. I meditated on Psalm 119:13, "With my lips I declare all the ordinances of thy mouth." It seems very spiritual but that is what happened. I meditated very little in those early days.

As I pondered this passage in light of my own experience, I felt God spoke to my mind, "I want you to read the Bible out loud." I never thought of this before or could have predicted it beforehand. So, I started reading the Bible aloud.

I decided to begin in Genesis and read right through to Revelation. I set a goal of reading aloud thirty minutes a day, everyday.

For the most part, I was faithful-as always I missed a few days here and there. Readers get through the whole Bible aloud in about seven to eight months. For the next seven or eight years, I read the Bible that way. All through my twenties, I read the Bible that way.

I remember sitting in a large meeting in Amarillo, Texas, in 1973. Derek Prince taught on praying for the government. He spoke about the traditional Hebrew method of reading the Old Testament. Prince stated that the contemporary Hebrew idiom for learning something by memory was to "learn it by mouth."

Rabbinic history underlines this practice. Birger Gerhardsson wrote that for a "person to repeat something aloud in the very words of the teacher" was the embodiment of true learning. As well, the rabbinic spirit was that "he who repeats a matter ninety-nine times is not to be compared with he who repeats it one hundred times."

The cultures of both the Old and New Testaments read out loud. The Ethiopian eunuch read Isaiah aloud and Phillip heard him reading.

Ezra read the Word aloud to the nation of Judah after returning to Jerusalem. Revelation and 2 Timothy both refer to publicly reading the Scriptures aloud.

Educational psychologists tell us interesting learning dynamics about oral reading. Their studies tell us sobering statistics about long-term memory. These same studies honor the rabbinic calling in many ways. Rabbis made a science of remembering.

The psychologists teach that most forgetting occurs during the first forty-eight hours of exposure, and 70 percent of total forgetting occurs within two hours of exposure. Anything to buttress memory helps against this phenomenon.

Oral reading facilitates memory. People forget 90 percent of silently read material. This is a good value added return a 100-200 percent return on study time. If someone reads aloud and writes longhand, the memory goes even higher. If someone reads aloud, writes, and acts out the Scriptures, the memory goes higher still.

Another value of oral reading is that some contemporary cultures encourage it. The Chinese value group-learning activities. When communism moved to stamp out the church, one primary outlawed activity was group learning and small group cell meeting. Singaporean Christians all meet in small groups. This is Chinese style learning. Oral reading encourages this small group style.

St. Augustine experienced shock over silent reading to Ambrose. Oral reading set the standard for reading throughout early church history as well.

I read aloud this way several years. When we started the School of Biblical Studies, our first reading through the Word was an oral reading.

The wonderful thing about reading aloud is capturing not only the content, but the emotion and movement within the passages of literature. This is important since the Bible is literature. One of the largest challenges I face is getting people to treat the Bible as literature.

Many Christians treat the Bible as a magic charm. This is exemplified in a man named Stan who worshiped in my church. He kept a Bible on the dashboard of his truck. I asked him why and he replied, "It's the Word of God." I agreed and then reminded him that the purpose of the Bible was to be read and not set as a protective amulet on the dashboard of the truck.

I have read through the Bible several times orally. One of the results was that people asked me about my Bible memory program. I reply that I have no Bible memory program. I established a Bible foundation in my life this way.

How to do this:

1.     Find a place where you can read aloud without disturbing someone else.

2.     Set a time limit for your reading. I suggest a daily limit and a long-term limit. Set doable goals

3.     Do no de-motivate yourself by setting too high a goal.

"However diligent we apply ourselves, there is room enough to increase our knowledge in divine truth."

Jonathan Edwards

Chapter 11

Write It Out Long-Hand

Deuteronomy 17:14-15 describes certain requirements for the King of Israel. Moses, inspired by the Spirit of God, accurately predicts the thinking of God's people four hundred years after Moses' death. He says, "when you come to the land which the Lord your God gives you and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like the nations that are round about me,' you may indeed set as king over you him whom the Lord your God will choose..."

In 1 Samuel 8:4, we read a story set four hundred years after Moses:

"Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, 'Behold you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations,'" Moses exactly predicted what the people would say.

In Deuteronomy, we do not read God's emotion over this question like we do in 1 Samuel. In Deuteronomy, God said, "You may indeed set as king over you him whom the Lord your God will choose." In Samuel we read how both God and his prophet felt about the circumstance.

Samuel the prophet "was displeased" when Israel asked for a king (1 Samuel 8:6), so he immediately prayed. No doubt Samuel felt that the people were rejecting God as their king. God said, "Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them" (Samuel 8:7). In verse 19 we read that the people stubbornly refused to listen to Samuel's warnings about what their king (Saul) would be like. As a result, God gave the people what they wanted.

In Acts 13:21, Paul looks back and says, "Then they asked for a king; and God gave them Saul the son of Kish." Once the king was installed, we read that Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship. Among those duties was involvement with the Word of God.

Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 17:15-20 several stipulations for the king of Israel.

·      He must be an Israelite. The reason was that this was a part of God's symbol for blessing his people. They would be self-governing. The curse of foreign leadership came through their disobedience (Dt. 28, Lv. 26).

·      He must not multiply horses for himself. Opulent, self-indulgent symbols of power were out for the kings of Israel.

·      He must not cause the people of Israel to return to Egypt symbolizing their return to slavery and bondage. This is true in Jewish culture down to the present day. Jews hate slavery.

·      He must not multiply wives to himself. This was a common practice in kingly courts during Old Testament times in various nations.  They would turn the kings heart away from God.

·      "Nor shall he greatly multiply gold for himself." This was the greed watch over the king's heart.

·      He was to write daily the law of God for himself to keep himself humble and obedient before God.

Looking at these directions we see that Solomon certainly violated some of them, as well as Saul. King David, on the other hand, was the "law lover" among all the kings and probably obeyed the directions to write out the law daily.

So, how do we do that? Well, let me tell you what I have done. I have either written out longhand or typed the whole New Testament. I did this more out of a sense of academic and professional responsibility than out of a sheer desire to write out the Bible longhand. I worked with a team of six translators almost twenty years ago translating the New Testament for a Bible-less tribe. Needless to say, all of us did a lot of "Bible writing."

What will you find when you write the Bible out? You will first of all find it amazingly slow. It sure gives you a new and healthy respect for the Bible writers long ago. Second, you will find that you see things in the Scriptures that you never saw before.

I have found that with each different method of Bible study, I find new things that I never saw with the others. I wrote out Genesis and 1 and 2 Kings longhand. I hope to finish the Old Testament before I die. I set out to do it about three years ago, but after I got through Genesis and partly through Exodus the slowness proved to be counterproductive. I hope to take it up again.

I think of the story of the young man who decided to write the Bible out left-handed in order to learn it better (though he was right-handed). He found that he learned the Scripture thoroughly that way and found that he could detect quickly if someone was misquoting a passage of Scripture. That was a wonderful exercise.

Most Christians have never read through the whole Bible.

"Nothing is more perilous than to be weary of the Word of God.  Thinking he knows enough, a person begins little by little to despise the Word until he has lost Christ and the gospel altogether."

Martin Luther,

Commentary on Galatians 2:14-16

Chapter 12

Read It Through,

Creating Outlines and Memory-Aids

In the spring of 1977, Judy and I were going into our last year of seminary working toward our Master's degrees. Around April or May of that year, I felt God put an idea into my mind. I felt he was directing me to spend the entire approaching summer to learn the prophets. We finished that spring semester around the end of May.

The trepidatious part of studying during the approaching summer was our lack of money. This was a constant struggle through our early years of marriage in the seminary. I wrestled with providing for my new wife and simply taking the summer to study.

I disobeyed the Lord (initially). My friend, Rich, owned a tree removal and tree surgery company in Salem, New Hampshire, not far from where Judy and I lived. He called me one May afternoon and asked me to work for him from May until September of 1977. He told me he would pay me $75/day. This seemed like riches untold to a young seminary student with no money. I immediately jumped for the bait, and bait it was.

At the end of the first day of work, I severely injured my back. I was bedridden for about a week. I literally had to crawl slowly to the bathroom. One afternoon, God spoke to me. He asked me the question, "Are you ready to obey me now?" I responded, "Yes, how have I disobeyed you?" The Lord immediately put his earlier instructions to learn the prophets into my mind. He reminded me of my disobedience.

I immediately repented, and God healed my back instantly. I got up out of my bed and sat down at the desk across the room and opened my Bible to the prophet Isaiah.

I decided at that time to create outlines for each of the prophetic books as well as give each of them titles which would quickly remind me of the content of each book.  I studied each book in three basic steps. First, I read through the prophet two or three times. Second, I put a memorable title on each book. Third, I made a memorable outline to remind myself of the overview of each book. Reading through the books:

Step 1.  Read through the book

I honestly can't remember if I read through them silently or aloud but I read them enough to get a handle on them. Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel takes two or three hours to read through while Obadiah, Haggai or Malachi take a few minutes. The important thing is to read them.

Step 2.  Create a memorable title for each book

I created these titles based on the following criteria:

·      The content of the book

·      The spelling of the prophet's name

·       Something I could quickly remember

The Titles were as follows:

Isaiah – Is Salvation

Jeremiah – Judgment

Lamentations – Lament

Ezekiel – Electric Experiences

Daniel – Daring Dreaming Daniel

Hosea – Home Life

Joel – Judgment Poured Upon Judgment

Amos – Against All

Obadiah – O Edom

Jonah – Joy Ride

Micah – Missing the Messiah

Nahum – Nineveh

Habakkuk – How He Judges

Zephaniah – Zap Many with an Eye on a Jew

Haggai – Hag Build the Temple High

Zechariah – Messiah

Malachi – Madness

Step 3. Make a memorable outline

The outlines relate to the titles. The relationships of the titles to the outlines are as follows:

Isaiah - His Salvation

*  Salvation passages in the book

Jeremiah – Judgment

*  Judgment on Judah and other nations

Lamentations – Lament

*  Lamenting fall of Jerusalem

Ezekiel - Electric Experiences

*  All the weird things God asked him to do

Daniel - Daring Dreaming Daniel

*  The courage and supernatural vision in the book

Hosea - Hosea's Home-Life

*  The prophet's life is a picture of God's relationship to Israel

Joel - Judgment Poured Out Upon Judgment

*  The book is divided in three parts

1.   Judgment (1:1-2:11)

2.   Spirit poured out (2:12-28)

3.   Judgment on God's enemies (3)

Amos -Against All

*  The prophet prophesies against everyone

Obadiah - O Edom

*  God judges Edom for their hard-hearted unfaithfulness towards Judah

Jonah - Joy Ride

*  Jonah went on two joy rides; one in a boat, one in a whale

Micah – Missing the Messiah

*  Leaders of the nation are missing God.  The Messiah is coming!

Nahum – Nineveh

*   Talks about the destruction of Nineveh

Habakkuk - How He Judges

*  Describes the mysterious way God judged Judah

Zephaniah - Zaps Many with and Eye on a Jew

*  Describes God's judgment on Judah and sparing a Jew (the remnant later for restoration)

Haggai - Hag Built the Temple High

*  Describes rebuilding the temple in 516 BC

Zechariah – Messiah

*  Describes the coming of Christ in various ways

Malachi - Malachi's Madness

*  Describes the prophet's anger over lack of commitment in the returned exiles

We can do this with all the rest of the Bible books as well.

"Everyone shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that they be ready to give an account of their proficiency therein."

Harvard University Rules and Precepts, 164

Chapter 13

Thirty Minutes of Bible Study Each Day

Decide on a book of the Bible that you want to study for one month. Before you begin, purchase a folder to store all your insights from your study, and write down all that you know about the book that you plan to study.

Day 1

Read the book through in one sitting, rapidly, aloud.

Day 2

Read the book through again, and write down the big idea of the book.

Day 3

Read the book through again, looking for repeated words or phrases.  Write down these words or phrases, and then ask why the author uses them. Record your work.

Day 4

Ask WHO. Write down all the people mentioned. Which ones are the main characters? Who are these people? Why are they important? Are they mentioned anywhere else in the Bible? Check your concordance. What have you learned about these people? Summarize your thoughts.

Day 5

Ask WHERE. List the geographical locations. Which ones are important in understanding this book? Find these locations on a map. If they are cities, pick one or two and read about them in a Bible dictionary. If they are countries, choose one or two and read about them in a Bible dictionary. Think about how this information helps you understand the book. Write down your ideas.

Day 6

Ask WHEN. Look for words that indicate time: before, after, while, during, then, no longer, as long as, etc.

This should help you see the sequence of events. What happened in the past? What is taking place presently? What are future events?

Day 7

Ask WHAT. What events are taking place in this book? What topics are discussed? Write down your answers.

Day 8

Observe and record contrasts. These can be broad contrasts, such as two contrasting characters, contrasting events, or contrasting themes. They can be less broad, being contrasted within a paragraph and identified by the conjunction, but.

Day 9

What illustrations does the author use? Are they from everyday life situations, from Scripture, from past history, or from personal experience?

Day 10

Write down any words or terms that you don't understand. Go through the following steps to discover what words mean.

1.     How is the word or phrase used in this book? Write down anything you learn from its use in each passage. Consider the context of the passage. What is this passage talking about? How does the main idea of this passage help you understand the word or phrase? Consider this for every passage where the word is used in the book you are studying.

2.     How does the author use the same word or phrase in other books? Use a concordance to help you find this information.

3.     Look the word up in a concordance, and check the original Greek or Hebrew. The introduction to the concordance will tell you how to do such exercises.

4.     If you have a word-study book, look the word up in that book.

5.     Look up the passage in a commentary.

6.     Ask someone else for their insight.

7.     Look up the word in your native-language dictionary.

8.     Read the passage in another translation.

What do you not understand in the passage?

Day 11

Do the same as Day 10. Finish the work for Day 10, or find the meaning for another word or term.

Day 12

If the book is six chapters or less, write a brief summary of each paragraph. If the book is more than six chapters write a brief chapter summary.

Day 13

Think through each paragraph and ask these questions: How does each paragraph lead into the next? Does the following paragraph continue on the same topic or does it change topics, characters, ideas, or events? How does the paragraph fit with the overall message, the big idea of the book?

1.     Can you discover how the author has organized his material? How is the material organized: biographically, geographically, chronologically, logically, or thematically?

2.     Does the author use a series of questions? Does he move from a problem to the solution, from general to specifics, from theology to practical application? (If you are working with a book with more than six chapters, you may want to go chapter by chapter for Day 13.)

Day 14 and Day 15

Continue working through Day 13

Day 16 and Day 17

Consider historical background. How did the original audience receive and understand this book?

1.     If the book is a letter to a church, answer the following questions:

a.     When was the church founded? Can you find any information in the book of Acts? Consult a Bible dictionary.

b.     Who founded the church? What kind of reception did these original evangelists receive?

c.     Read through the letter and discover the church's strengths and weaknesses.

d.     Imagine what it would be like to be a member of this church.

e.     What is the prevailing religion in the area?

f.      What religious beliefs did these Christians have prior to their Christian experience?

g.     Are there any customs or cultural insights that would be helpful to know?

h.     Do some reading in outside sources.

2.     If a book is an historical narrative:

a.     What was happening in Israel's (or the early church's) history before and after this book?

b.     What was happening in the surrounding cultures?

c.     How does this book fit into the overall history of God's people?

3.     If the book is one of the Prophets:

a.   When did this prophet minister?

b.   What was going on in Israel's history at the time?

c.   Who received the prophecy?

Day 18

Ask the literary question: What type of literature is being used in the whole book, or the passage under consideration? The first distinction is to determine whether the passage is prose or poetry. Poetry uses figures of speech and is not to be interpreted literally. Learn to recognize the following types of literature. Read about them in a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia. Understand their specific characteristics so you interpret correctly.  They are as follows:

1.     Epistles - the New Testament letter form; composed of various parts.

2.     Gospels

3.     Parables

4.     Oracles: found in the Prophets

5.     Didactic literature: having the purpose of teaching

6.     Apocalyptic literature. Examples: Revelation, parts of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah

7.     Historical narrative: literature that traces the history of Israel or the Church.

8.     Wisdom literature: found in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. It is also very important for you to read up on Hebrew poetry so you can understand the Psalms and the Prophets.

Day 19

Meditate on either the whole book or a certain passage. Just spend today thinking about the book. Write down your insights.

Day 20

Finish anything you haven't completed, or decide for yourself what study you want to do today.

Day 21

Observe progression. Does the author move to a climax of ideas, emotion, or story line? Does he move from specific to general? From a question to answer? From a statement to an illustration? From teaching to application? Observe and record your insights and then ask: Why?

Day 22

Wrestle with a difficult passage. Read through the passage several times. Meditate on the passage. Bombard the passage with why questions. Answer the why questions that you asked. Consider the context and main ideas of the surrounding paragraphs. How does this difficult passage fit into the overall message of the book? Write down your conclusions and ask yourself if this is a reasonable interpretation. Does it go against any major truth or teaching of the Bible? Ask someone else his/her opinion of this passage.

Day 23

Discover the author's main concern. What does he want the readers to know and understand? What are the readers’ main concerns? Have they asked certain questions that the author is answering? Write down what you discover.

Day 24

Read the whole book through again in one sitting. Think once again about the overall message of the book.

Day 25

Bombard the text with why questions. Write out your questions, and then try to answer them. Is the answer found somewhere in the book? Just sit back and think for a while; sometimes the answer just involves allowing yourself time to think. Be sure to write down your answers; don't consider them unimportant. Share your ideas with someone else.

Day 26

Same as Day 25

Day 27

Summarize the basic truths of the book. Ask yourself how these truths apply to your life in the twenty-first century. Does the book: Teach me something I don't know? Bring correction? Bring encouragement? Help me understand more about God or mankind?

Day 28

In light of these truths (what you wrote for day 27), ask, "What changes need to take place in my life? Am I to change what I believe? Am I to change in my relationships with others? Try and personalize the book into your life. Write down your answers.

Day 29

What truths or applications could you make from this book if you were teaching it?  Write them out.

Day 30

Pray through the application process. Write out your prayer as a permanent record of your application. Review what you wrote about the book before you began your study, and be encouraged with your progress. Store all your questions and answers in a file.  Now, decide what book you will study next.

"No one yawns when the Scriptures are read with the skill they deserve."

John Killinger

Leadership Magazine

Chapter 14

Inductive Bible Study

I remember being at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in the 1970s. Our head missions professor Dr. J. Christy Wilson Jr. urged us to "master the English Bible." He quoted his father who had been a missionary in Iran. Dr. J. Christy Wilson Sr. often urged Princeton Seminary students to do the same thing earlier in the 20th century. "Master the English Bible."

Dr. Harold Ockenga was president of our seminary and he urged the same thing for preachers and pastors. Dr. Ockenga often spoke of personal Bible reading and Bible study in the life of a pastor.

Our New Testament department taught very detailed and technical aspects of Biblical studies. These included text criticism, Greek and various interpretational methods. They mentioned all kinds of "criticism." There was form criticism, redaction criticism, "lower" and "higher" criticism. For all of my time there, I don't remember hearing any of these New Testament professors discuss "Inductive Bible Study." In fact, the only class in our seminary titled "Inductive Bible Study," was taught by an evangelism professor, Dr. Richard Peace. He taught the gospel of Mark.

Inductive Bible Study has become quite popular in the 20th and 21st century church. Dr. Robert Traina's book Methodical Bible Study is probably the magnum opus in the movement. Intervarsity, Campus Crusade, The Navigators and Youth With A Mission all encourage this mode of Bible study.

Inductive Bible Study focuses on three basic steps. These three steps are:

1.     Observation

2.     Interpretation

3.     Application

It is amazing that I never even heard the phrase "Inductive Bible Study" through all of my undergraduate days. I studied under Ivy League educated professors as well. Let's think about these three steps:

Step 1. Observation

Look and look closely at what is in the text. Throughout my years teaching the Bible, I have observed that this is the primary mistake that most Bible students make. They fail to observe thoroughly. I have noticed that close observation is something that often must be taught.

Sir William Osler taught medicine in London for many years. As well, he taught the physicians-in-training how important good observation is in medicine.

On the first day of class he presented a urine specimen to the class. He held it high in front of them. He told them to thoroughly observe the urine specimen exactly as he had.

He shook the bottle, smelled it, dipped a finger into the urine and then placed a finger in his mouth to taste. He urged the class to do exactly as he had done.

Passing the specimen bottle around, the students imitated Osler and then gingerly tasted the contents. Osler retrieved the bottle and stated, "This is your first lesson in observation. If you had watched me closely, you would have observed that I placed my index finger in the urine and my third finger into my mouth."

The way we carefully observe a Bible passage is by asking the right questions. These questions can be as simple as the five basic questions any reporter asks in a story: who, how, what, when and where.

A person can work through a passage of Scripture over and over asking each of these five questions. As well, we can ask any of the following observation questions of a passage:

1.       Find repeated words.

2.       Find repeated ideas, themes.

3.       Ask who questions. Observe the main character, people.

4.       Observe; commands, advice, promises, warnings, predictions.

5.       Observe atmosphere, moods, and emotions.

6.       Observe key words. They may be key because they are repeated frequently or they are key because their meaning is essential in understanding a passage.

7.       List the things you don't understand: meanings of words, statements, theological concepts, etc.

8.       Put in your own words the main idea of the paragraph.

9.       Observe the author's logic in his argument.

10.    What type of literature is the book/passage -Historical narrative, Gospel, Apocalyptic, Epistle, Poetry, Prose, Didactic, or Parable?

11.    What illustrations are used? Are they illustrations from Scripture, everyday life situations, personal experiences, etc.?

12.    Ask the when question. Note the time elements.  Observe words that identify time sequences: before, after, during, while, then, until, when, etc.

13.    Observe any geographical locations on a map.

14.    Observe conditional statements: if...

15.    Observe any summary statements that the author makes. Watch for words such as: therefore, so, finally, last of all.

16.    Observe progression. Does the author move to a climax of ideas or emotion? Does he move from general to specific, from a question to an answer, from a statement to an illustration, from a teaching to an application, from a need to the remedy?

17.    Observe the beginning and the ending of the book or passage.

18.    Observe contrasts. Simple contrasts can be identified by the conjunction but. However, look for broader contrasts such as contrasting ideas, characters, events, concepts, and attitudes.

19.    Observe comparisons. Comparisons are introduced by words like or as. Also note comparisons of ideas, character, events, and attitudes.

20.    Observe pronouns: I, he, she, it, they, them, us, who, me, etc.

21.    Observe verb tenses: past, present or future.

22.    Ask the question “What.” What events are taking place: What is the order of these events: What was said? etc.

23.    Observe figures of speech.

24.    Observe questions that are asked and the answers.

25.    Observe rhetorical questions. These are questions that stir up the reader's thinking.

26.    Ask the where question. Note the places.

27.    Observe emphatic statements: truly, behold, indeed, I tell you, (I Paul), verily, etc.

28.    Observe any lists. Note the order in these lists.  Is there a definite progression?

29.    Observe nouns. Notice who is doing the acting.

30.    Observe important connectives which reflect reasons, results, and conclusions, such as: therefore, yet, however, likewise, so then, nevertheless, etc.

If you go through a book or passage and ask only these observation questions, you will be amazed at how much you can get out of a text of Scripture.

Step 2. Interpretation

Interpretation is interested in finding out what the text or book meant to the original reader. This phrase can also be catalyzed by asking questions.

An interesting psychological study was done about the power of question in adult education. This survey found that adults learn faster and more thoroughly when they generate questions around a text they are reading.

As well, educational psychologists tell us that there is a time when small children learn twenty-five times as fast as an adult. That time is when they constantly are asking questions about how and why things are done.

Basically, Inductive Bible Study encourages reading with an active mind. I spoke with a lawyer in Singapore about this. I mentioned that it seemed to me that reading law while asking Inductive Bible Study questions would be a good thing and he agreed. There is a basic bridge question to approach interpretation. That question is "Why?" Asking "why" over a passage seems to help us bridge all of the barriers: time, culture and language.

Robert Traina describes the interpretation phase of Bible study with the word "Reconstruction." In essence we want to reconstruct the original circumstance of the writer, original readers and in some cases the event itself.

I have a friend whose father worked for an airline company. His father's task was "reconstruction." Any time there was a problem or a plane crash, he had a large and difficult task. He would go to the very site of the plane crash and literally reconstruct the plane from the available pieces of the plane in the wreckage. From this reconstruction, the airline could conclude what the cause of the crash or problem was.

Our task of interpreting the Bible is no smaller or less demanding. We go back to the original scene and attempt to reconstruct exactly what happened in order to more ably interpret a passage's meaning for its original readers.

Good interpretation feels like speculation at times. Thoughts like, "maybe they thought." or "perhaps." or "possibly the author was facing." This requires active mental reading and alertness.

Some other questions we can ask when interpreting include:

1.     What are the author's concerns?

2.     What are the author's emotions?

3.     Ask what questions the readers were asking.

4.     How does this passage fit with the whole Bible?

5.     Think in terms of context.

a.     Immediate to the surrounding verses

b.     How it fits with the whole book

c.     How it fits with the whole Bible.

6.     Ask if the language is literal or figurative language.

7.     Ask meaning questions like "What does this verse mean to the original readers?

Although observation is the usual oversight of most Christians in Bible study, I deducted the most points for lack of interpretation as a teacher when I was grading papers for seventeen years. I think it is difficult for students to step into uncharted territory saying, "Well, maybe this was happening" or "Maybe it meant to the original reader."

The following is a list of more interpretation questions we can ask while studying the Bible:

1.       From the text, what do you see are the author's concerns, characteristics, convictions, emotions?

2.       Likewise list the reader's concerns, questions, emotions, characteristics, convictions, strengths and weaknesses.

3.       Ask meaning questions.  What is the meaning of this word?  What is the meaning of this phrase, statement, or theological concept? What did it mean to the  author?  What did it mean to his audience?  To develop this, one should ask, how is this word, term or concept used:

a.     in context of this passage?

b.     in the rest of the book?

c.     in other writings by the author?

d.     look it up in the Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words.

e.     look it up in a concordance.

f.      look it up in other word study books.

g.     look it up in a dictionary of your mother tongue After doing all this then relate your findings back to the original context of the passage you are studying.

4.       Does the author give his own interpretation? Does he state why he wrote the book? Does he interpret the use of symbols?

5.       Is this literal or figurative language? Interpret accordingly.

6.       What is the significance of this passage, idea, word, or statement?

7.       Does the author quote Scripture? Look up the passages quoted and observe their context. Why does he use this passage? Does it prove a point, illustrate a truth, support the author's argument or contribute to the emotion of the passage?

8.       Pay careful attention to the context. How does this passage fit in with the overall message of the whole book? What is its relation to the surrounding paragraphs?

9.       What is the historical context?

a.     Who is addressed?

b.     What cultural issues need consideration?

c.     When did the events occur?

d.     Determine whether the issues addressed apply to the local situation in the author 's day or universally to all believers. Are they temporal or timeless?

10.    In the Epistles, determine from the text what questions the believers were asking, and what struggles they were encountering. This is like listening to one side of a phone conversation. For example, in Paul's letter, we know what Paul says, but we must do some thinking as to what the congregations may have been asking or thinking that would result in Paul responding as he does.

11.    If you're having difficulty then ask yourself if you need to backtrack and do some observation.

12.    Interpret figures of speech.

13.    Bombard the text with why questions.

14.    Read the book or the passage in another translation.

15.    Ask; what does this mean?

16.    Ask: why is this said?

17.    Ask; what does this imply?

18.    What elements of composition or structure are used in this book or passage?

19.    How does this passage prepare me for what follows, for what went before?

20.    Write out a summary statement of the book, a division, a section, segment or paragraph: "It seems that the author is saying..."

21.    Summarize, meditate, reflect on the material you've observed and interpreted. Does your proposed interpretation agree with the rest of Scripture? The New Testament interprets the Old Testament and clear passages are to shed light on the unclear and obscure passages.

22.    Have I taken into consideration the type of literature? Poetry? Prose?

23.    Consult a commentary. Do this last. Use the commentary as a tool, not a crutch. Dialog with the commentary. What did you learn from the commentary? Do you agree or disagree with the author's conclusions? Indicate the sources used in your notes.

24.    Consult Bible dictionaries, atlases and historical background resource materials for unanswered questions or more information.

The following are some extra helps when doing interpretation:

1.     It is very important to do thorough observation first. You must gather facts before making conclusions. Use material gained in observation to back up your interpretation.

2.     Seek to understand the author's intention and purpose. Consider carefully observation questions 1,2 and 10. Keep in mind the BIG PICTURE of the book etc.

3.     Make it a habit to ask the WHY QUESTION. This is the bridge between observation and interpretation. You'll never get far in interpretation if you don't start asking and answering WHY questions.

4.     Scripture interprets Scripture, and the New Testament sheds light on the Old Testament. Scripture will never contradict Scripture. If it seems to, then rethink your conclusions.

5.     Don't assume that you know everything on a subject because you've seen the subject in a few places. A BIG PICTURE of the whole Bible is necessary.

6.     Use clear passages of Scripture to interpret obscure passages.

7.     Interpret the Scripture in a simple fashion. Don't treat the Scriptures in a mystical fashion. Interpret the Word of God in a natural, normal sense as you would any other book. This means that you do make allowances for different types of literature and figures of speech and elements of composition.

8.     CONTEXT - Context is probably one of the most important things to consider in doing interpretation.  Context is the connection of thought that runs through a passage; it is those links that weave it all into one piece. The interpreter's goal is to discover this link that runs through the whole book or passage. How do things fit together? What is the connecting link? Are the points woven together around a certain theme, event, point of logic, character, time period, etc.? Context needs to be considered on various levels:

a.     Immediate: the surrounding verses

b.     Book: within the big picture of the book.

c.     Bible: within the whole counsel of God's Word.

9.     Always answer interpretation questions 5,8,9,10,18.

Step 3. Application

Application is "What does this mean to me and how should I respond?" Christians focus on this part of Bible study, which is a good thing. James wrote, "Be doers of the Word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves." At the same time, we can apply Bible verses prematurely and produce bizarre behavior.

I remember sitting in the back of a large Pentecostal church on the east coast of the United States. A whole row of about twenty people wore lampshades on their heads to church (literal large lamp shades). The pastor called one of the "lamp-heads" forward for an interview in the middle of the service. They declared church to be "a party" and that is the way people at parties act. The application of "the party" in the house of God produced this bizarre behavior.

Application focuses on how we can best obey God in a certain circumstance and best imitate Godly examples we find in Scripture.

With observation and interpretation as the groundwork, you are now ready to ask the question: how does the basic truth(s) of this book or this passage relate to my life in the 21st century?

The following are four application questions taken from Josh McDowell's book, A Guide to Understanding Scripture. We may apply the questions to the overall truths of the whole book or to a specific passage. You will need to write out your answers and be specific. This will take some time and waiting on God. Don't take this step lightly.

1.     What are the basic, timeless truths in this book or passage?

2.     How does this truth apply to my life? Be specific.

3.     In view of these truths, what changes would I make in my life?

4.     How do I plan to carry out these changes?  Be specific.

5.     Commit these changes to the Lord in prayer.

In determining the basic truths consider the following questions. Where is God specifically encouraging me? Where is He asking me to change? If it is a didactic (teaching) book then ask these questions:

1.     What am I to believe?

2.     Are there attitudes or actions that I need to change?

3.     What do I learn about my relationship with God, with people?

4.     What is the Good News for me?

If the book or passage is a narrative, then consider some of the following questions to get you thinking:

1.     What character do I identify with?

2.     What can I learn from that character's life?

3.     What were his responses to God?

4.     Or perhaps a certain event in the book coincides with where you are in your walk with God.

Application is looking into the mirror of the Scriptures and walking away a changed person.

According to Josh McDowell, there are some pitfalls in application that one needs to be aware of:

1.     Mistaking interpretation for application.

2.     Having an emotional response to a Biblical truth, but not following through to put the truth into action.

3.     Frustration may develop from not seeing quick results and changes in one's life.

The following are resource materials from which information was taken to shape the thinking of the Inductive Bible Study.

Jensen, Irving. Enjoy Your Bible, Moody Press McDowell,

Josh.  Guide to Understanding Your Bible, Campus Crusade

Mickelsen, A. Berkeley and Alvera M. Better Bible Study, Regal Books c. 1977

Morey, Dr. Earl W. Class lecture notes and handouts

Sire, James. Scripture Twisting, IVP

Traina, Robert A. Methodical Bible Study, Zondervan

Vos, Howard. Effective Bible Study Methods, Eerdmans

Wald, Oletta. The Joy of Discovery in Bible Study, Augsburg Publishing House c. 1975

"I manage, on average, to get about ten extra hours of spiritual "feeding" each week through the use of cassette teaching tapes. When I'm driving alone in my car, I listen to tapes or recite previously memorized Scripture."

Danny Lehmann

Before You Hit the Wall, p. 65

Appendix 1

Listening to Teaching Tapes

Watching Teaching Videos

Only God knows how many hours of teaching tapes I have watched or listened to. It is certainly into the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours. The earliest serious listening I recall goes back thirty years. I recall listening to various of the Pentecostal patriarchs, some of whom have gone on the Lord in glory.

I remember the winter of 1980 when Judy and I were at a large meeting in the Dunfee Hotel in Dallas. This meeting was a reconciliation meeting for the Charismatic movement. Judy and I had no idea why we were even there. I concluded that, for sure, we were the youngest people in the room.

David de Plessis invited us. We knew him from some previous ministry. Judy and I sat down one night next to Derek Prince. She turned to him and said, "I cut my teeth on your teaching tapes." Derek responded in his own inimitable Cambridge tongue, "I'm sure you have a fine set of teeth." Judy and I both chuckled.

Derek Prince tapes formed both of us spiritually in huge ways when we were young. I remember vividly some of his sermons even down to the illustrations and Scripture verses he used thirty years ago in his teaching.

Bob Mumford and Charles Simpson also taught a lot in those early days. I remember Charles Taylor teaching on the importance of praise. John Osteen gave his testimony of being baptized in the Holy Spirit.  I remember hearing Chuck Smith teach through the life of David. In the 1970s and sometime into the 1980s, Calvary Chapel sent out tens of thousands of free teaching tapes to anyone interested enough to listen.

The Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship used to send out their tapes of monthly meetings. This was always a great way to learn.

In 1975/76, I lived in Dallas. I went to the Christ for the Nations library regularly and listened to anything in their tape library for free. Some of their stuff was terrific.

At Gordon-Conwell I set a goal for listening to teaching. Harold Ockenga started the seminary. Billy Graham deemed Ockenga to be one of his mentors. I felt that if Ockenga had that kind of impact on Billy Graham it was worth my listening to all the tapes from Ockenga I could find. I listened to all of his tapes at Gordon-Conwell all though I was a bit surprised that there were not more of Ockenga's tapes and teaching available at the seminary.

John Wimber proved to be a rich resource for learning through the years. I listened to his series on spiritual warfare which contained some stories that took faith to believe they even happened. I also watched his series on signs and wonders which was video recorded at Fuller Seminary. I was astounded to watch what he did in that quite traditional evangelical seminary setting is southern California.

I listened to some of the more classic evangelical scholars; Edmond Clowney at Westminster, Stephen Olford, E.J. Young, Douglas Stuart. There are so many others but these all capture the heart of what I have done and continue to do.

I have not mentioned the self-discipline tapes. There are tapes that, although not specifically Christian, certainly underline the early verses in Proverbs about wise dealing, prudence and self-control.  I listened to tapes on time management, health, financial management, people management, communication and public speaking.

The great thing about so many of these tapes is that they are free at your public library, church library or seminary library.

"The way you defend the Bible is the same way you defend a lion.  Just let it loose."

Charles Spurgeon

Appendix 2

Reading Commentaries, Sermons, Magazine Articles, Books

I hesitate to include a chapter on this kind of reading in a book about Bible reading. However, I must admit that I have learned a lot about the Bible from these outside sources and feel that I must give credit where credit is due.

Let me begin by talking about reading in general. I remember that Dwight Moody said one time that it is amazing how much light the Bible throws on the commentaries. As well, George Mueller bemoaned some of his early Christian experience for spending more time in Christian Books than he did his Bible. As pithy and astute as both of those comments are, I think of something far more serious that I see on the contemporary 21st century scene. I see many Christians reading a lot of books "for pleasure" which have absolutely no Christian profit.

I have observed close friends, times without number, reading fiction novels or even comic books which will do them no good in eternity. I fear I sound like some of the harsher Puritan pilgrims as Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards or to lesser degree Charles Spurgeon. I admire all three of these men but there was little room for simply enjoying doing something. I do not want to appear that way, but at the same time they have a point. Let me list for you the authors or books that I have observed my Christian friends, most of them in the ministry, reading: Carlos Costaneda, Dune, Tom Clancy ( I have read a Clancy novel), John Grisham (I have read a Grisham novel), Louis L'Amore (I have some friends who have read over a dozen of his books), Stephen King, Tolkien. I'm sure if I thought longer I could think of more. None of this is sinful. In my opinion, I am not sure how much knowledge of Scripture or God they gained from these books.

It is true one would not read fiction books for "spiritual growth" usually. There is room for enjoying a good book though. This is good for relaxing and leisure time. It is important to spend adequate time with God and the Bible if we are going to take our down time and read these other works which contribute little or nothing to our spiritual growth.

So, having written all of that, let me describe some books and magazines etc. that I have found helpful.

I enjoyed reading Halley's Bible Handbook. This book goes book by book through the Bible making insightful comments and good outlines. As well, Halley's detailed historical background lends understanding to passages.

The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer has been helpful. Archer set out to respond to often asked difficult questions, such as dinosaurs, evolution, the dimensions of Noah's Ark.

Leland Ryken and Tremper Longman wrote A Literary Guide to the Bible. Ryken is an English professor at Wheaton College, Longman is an Old Testament scholar from Westminster Seminary. They set out to look at the Bible as literature book by book. This is a great help, especially for people who are literary curious.

Through the years I have read various dictionaries and encyclopedias which have proved to be helpful. For instance, I read through the five volume Zondervan Bible Encyclopedia edited by Merrill Tenney. This is not only a good exercise in discipline but a great way to learn a lot about the Bible. As well, the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary is helpful and yes, I actually read it. I assign the dictionary as reading for my students. Another good dictionary I have read is The Dictionary of Paul and his Letters published by Inter-Varsity. This is a great overview of all of Paul's letters.

Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians is a must in my opinion. Not only is this a great way to study Galatians, but also this book was the gasoline on the bonfire of the Reformation.

Christianity Today has some good Biblical insight. The Discipleship Journal published by the Navigators is another.

I have downloaded sermons from Charles Spurgeon on the internet and read them.

John Stott wrote A Guide to Understanding the Bible in the early 1970s. This is a great overview of the whole Bible.

Although these books are not the Bible itself, they are of great help in keeping our minds in the Scriptures.

"I am obsessive about reading a portion of Scripture every day.  It doesn't have to be a long passage."

Leonard Sweet

Soul Salsa, p. 64

Appendix 3

Thinking Through Bible Books

I wrote a book on Bible meditation a few years ago. This book concluded a few years of invitations to speak to various schools about Bible meditation.

The Bible talks about meditation over and over. Joshua meditated according to God's instructions in Joshua chapter 11. God said if he would do this that he would lead the people into the promised land and ultimately conquer it. Joshua 21:43-45 gives us the result of Joshua's obedience to meditate "day and night" on the law of God.

Joshua 21:43-45 says, "Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers; and having taken possession of it, they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers; not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass." Clearly, Joshua did what God told him to do in meditating through the law of God.

Interestingly, God told Joshua to think about the Word. Moses was a great role model and mentor, but God told Joshua to think about the Word of God. We don't know how much of the law that Joshua thought about each day, but we know he did because of the fulfilled promise of God in his life.

King David also extolled meditation in Psalm 1. He describes the man who meditates day and night on God's Word as "blessed." Meditation is focused attention. We want to see, hear and feel the Scripture verse as we meditate on it. The point of meditation, as God said to Joshua, is obedience to God.

When I wrote the meditation book, I detailed my daily practice of fifteen minutes a day through a single verse of Scripture. I have meditated through the book of Proverbs almost two times completely that way. This is a very edifying exercise.

Translating the New Testament in the 1980s was also a good meditative exercise. I have thought through whole Bible books at times. I remember being in the South Pacific and meditating through Ephesians as I lay on my bed one night in Tonga.

I unknowingly memorized the book of Titus in the early 1980s. I was preparing to lecture on the book in a discipleship school in Hawaii. As I enjoyed the beach one Saturday, I thought about thinking through Titus paragraph by paragraph. I began thinking through the book and realized I knew the whole thing. I wish I could say that is true of the whole Bible, but it is only true of Titus.

I have thought through many other Bible books, chapter by chapter, but have never really memorized much of these other books, although I know them quite well.

I have a friend who has memorized about twenty Bible books and he can simply stand and rattle them off in the good old King James version.

The basic supposition about thinking through Bible books is that we have previously read the book and therefore know what is in the book.

Francis Schaeffer meditated through the whole Bible books at a time.

Psalm 119

Vs. 15 - "I will meditate on thy precepts, and fix my eyes on they ways.”

Vs. 23 - "Even though princes set plotting against me, thy servant will meditate on thy statutes.”

Vs. 27 - "Make me understand the way of thy precepts, and I will meditate on thy wondrous works.”

Vs. 48 - "I revere thy commandments which I love, and I will meditate on they statutes.”

Vs. 78 - "Let the godless be put to shame, but as for me, I will meditate on thy precepts.”

Vs. 97 - "Oh how I love thy law, it is my meditation all the day.”

Other Books by Ron Smith

Grace Simply Grace

(A Study of Galatians) coauthored with Rob Penner

ISBN-0-92754-524-1

Dear Paul, Am I on The Right Track?

(A Study of Colossians) coauthored with Rob Penner ISBN-0-927545-58-6

Hooked on The Word

(Changing Your Life through Bible Meditation)

ISBN-0-9641913-0-X

Under the Mosquito Net (An Inside Look at Missions) ISBN-0-9641913-4-2

Born Already Ruined

(The Doctrine of Original Sin)

ISBN-1-59411-047-6

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Other Books by Ron Smith