My 8th grader wrote a song to help people who are feeling down these days. Take a few minutes to listen. I think it will encourage you.
All eyes on You, Lord
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: encouragement, look to the Lord
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Step 3 of Six Steps to an Easier Bible Study Time — Live With a Verse for a Day (part of the “I Just Don’t Get It” Series)
Six Steps to an Easier Bible Study Time — Using Easy Tools Step 2 of the “I Just Don’t Get It” Series
Image by Polly Warring
Step 2 of the “I Just Don’t Get It” series — Using easy online tools
And now, for the long-awaited step 2 in this series. You are going to learn about some tools I use to dig into God’s Word. Sometimes, it’s so common to read a passage and not quite understand how it applies to your life, or what it even means. Someone might talk about a passage and you think, “Is that what the Bible really says there?” We are to be like the Bereans and keep our teachers and each other accountable by checking what is said with God’s Word. To do that, you need to understand God’s Word for yourself. It all starts with talking to God as you read His Word. Ask for His wisdom to help you understand. (Paul talked about the Bereans here in Acts 17:10-12.)
. A good start is to buy a reliable study Bible in a version that you can understand easily. One of my favorite first Bibles was “The Student Bible”. It assumed I didn’t have any background knowledge in theology and was an easy read to find background and context in the notes as I read the Bible. My parents gave me a study Bible when I graduated from college (thanks Mom and Dad!). I loved it. It was full of notes on each verse and gave a thorough background for chapters.
One good thing about the internet — there is no shortage of good Bible tools available. You just need to make sure they are teaching sound doctrine, and not their own agenda. Here are a few free online tools that I like to use.
I love, love, love the website EnduringWord.com by David Gudziak. The online commentary is free (scroll to the bottom of the home page). His commentary is very relatable and full of information. He takes it verse by verse and even includes information from other commentaries. This is my go-to source these days for explanations of difficult passages. I often use it to flesh-out my understanding of common verses and usually learn a new way to look at a familiar passage.
The YouVersion app is a free Bible app that I have enjoyed for quite some time now. They have new content to keep your quiet time fresh and free Bible studies categorized by subject/group. There are videos and text versions to available. Under their “Read the Bible” tab, you can access various Bible versions of a verse you are studying. I like doing that. It usually brings a new perspective into play. I like using the NIV, NAS, NET (it has asterisks you can click for original word explanation), Amplified (expands on words like a thesaurus), and Hawaiian Pidgeon translation (found that one through a youth pastor). Side note: My dad was stationed in Hawaii when he was a young sailor, and some of the Hawaiian phrases made it into our family vocabulary. I was surprised how some of the Hawaiian version sounded slightly familiar in a few places because of Dad. It’s a fun version to read and compare to more familiar Bible passages.
When I first started really learning to apply the Bible, I would hear Beth Moore say, “Now in this passage, when it says “cry”, it doesn’t mean the-tear-trickle-down-the-face cry, it means the all-out-pull-your-hair-and-cry-in-anguish cry.” I wanted to know how to find that out for myself. (I don’t speak Hebrew or Greek.) I asked a friend how I could learn the different words and their original meanings and he showed me how to look it up in the Strong’s Concordance. (Thanks, David!)
Turns out there are free online concordances everywhere. It is kind of neat to find out the context of the passage by looking for how the word was originally viewed in that time. (Here is a page where you can click on the highlighted words to see their original meanings in Greek (NT) or Hebrew (OT) for Psalm 1). Using a concordance can help you picture the scene more vividly in your mind. You can also end up running around in circles if you get too much into chasing down meanings versus looking at the text as a whole. God wants us to understand and apply His Word as we read it. I might need to do a post on how to use the concordance.
My last tip: Look in the children and youth section of your local Christian bookstore for books about the Bible. They can take big subjects and simplify them for the youth and children.
Phil Vischer, of Veggie Tale fame, has done an amazing job of adding “meat” to children’s ministry by creating a series of videos called, “What’s in the Bible?”. They tackle books like Leviticus with sound doctrine and a really fun variety show format for kids. My children even learned all of the names of the Judges of Israel from one of the songs on the Judges video. (Seriously, when you get done reading this and making a clever comment below, go watch it — these guys are funny.)
Tony Evans, a Dallas preacher who is a regular on the radio, has some books out for kids that would be great for adults (I’ve read them). The one I really like talks about the Names of God and explains each one while giving a way to remember what it means in a kid-friendly way. He has another one on the Armor of God.
Bruce and Stan’s Guide to the Bible is written for adults and is for you right-brained visual folks out there. It really helped me understand the layout of the Bible when I was first learning it. Of course, their sense of humor helped make the whole thing not so intimidating, too.
I could talk about this stuff all day, but I better let you get back to what you were doing. Let me know in the comments if you try any of these sites/resources out, or if you have some resources that have helped you. I don’t receive any compensation if you follow these links, I just wanted to make them easy for you to find.
Leave me a comment if you get a chance. I read each and every one!
Six steps to an easier Bible study time — Part of the “I Just Don’t Get It” series
Image by Polly Warring
“I Just Don’t Get It” series
Step 1: The Proverbs Pause
Today, I am going to start a series that has been a long time in coming. I wanted to give it a name that reflected the angst a lot of us feel when we first decide to make Bible reading a part of our everyday lives. We make the decision that we need to have God’s input in our day, I mean it is His inspired word after all. We grab a Bible, open it up, and ten minutes later, we are confused, overwhelmed, or just plain bored. Like a diet, within three days, our resolve is gone because we haven’t seen any results.
Usually, I would start with an intro why Bible reading is important, how God has changed my life through it, and how to get a Bible that works for you. We don’t have time for that, this is the internet, some of you are already about to click on to the next thing. But, don’t do that, I’m starting right now.
Here we go: I call it “The Proverbs Pause”. Grab a Bible, one with real pages, or digitally produced. If it’s a real pages one, turn to the middle of the book. That should get you around the neighborhood of Psalms. Proverbs is the next book over. Now, before you start reading, pray. Ask God to teach you something in His Word. This is important. Don’t skip praying. It doesn’t have to be a big production with a bunch of thee’s and thou’s, just a simple, “Help me understand.”
Okay, you are in Proverbs, you have asked the Lord to help you know what you are reading. I’m starting with Proverbs because it is full of great sound bites. Our society loves sound bites — quick, easy ways to say something wise. Proverbs is highly readable and can even be entertaining. For example, Proverbs 26:14 says, “As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.” Short and to the point. (And something that pops into my head easily when I am prone to procrastinate by taking a longer nap.)
Now, for the Proverbs pause. Proverbs chapters 26 and 27 are a good place to start. Let’s look up a Proverb and try it. Look up Proverbs 26:20.
My version says, “Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.”
Let’s break that down. Most of you know how a fire works. You gather wood, light it, and a fire happens. To keep a fire going, you know that you have to add wood every once in a while. The funny part is, you don’t usually have to add a lot of wood. Just enough to keep it going. Well, this proverb says that quarrels work the same way. Gossip is the wood that fuels a quarrel. Nice illustration, and easy to remember. Also, very convicting… My mouth gets me in trouble sometimes.
Okay, your turn. Find a proverb with the “something is like something” format and try this out. You read the first part and picture it in your mind. In our earlier example, we would picture a campfire or a fireplace. The fire is going nice and strong, but it will go out soon, as the wood is consumed. It will only keep going with more wood. Then, we read the next part “without gossip a quarrel dies down”. Interesting. We usually want quarrels to die down. So, this Proverb gives us a hint at what will help a quarrel die down. Stop the gossip. Now, I can ask God to remind me about that as I go about my day and be on the lookout for Him to point out when I am feeding the fire of a quarrel. You can do the same with your verse. Be on the lookout for its truth in your life today.
I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment in the section below and let us know how the Lord works this into your life. Do you have a favorite Proverb or verse to keep in your thoughts all day?