Tag: bible study tips

Better Bible Study Tip #86: Set Challenging and Exciting Goals

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

So you’ve decided you’re ready to get back in the habit of studying your Bible daily – that’s great! But where should you begin?

Without a specific goal in mind, you might find yourself flipping through pages aimlessly, landing briefly in Proverbs, then jumping to Psalms, and finally skimming a passage from Matthew. While this might occasionally lead you to an encouraging verse, this way of “study” lacks depth. Without giving proper attention to context, the impact of the study will be shallow, leaving you unfocused and unmotivated to continue. Over time, this unfocused approach can turn Bible reading into a chore rather than a joy. When this is what Bible study looks like, its no surprise when people find it easy to skip or abandon entirely!

The solution? Set challenging and personally exciting Bible study goals.

When you approach your study with a clear, specific goal, it gives you purpose and direction. You move through Scripture with intention rather than wandering aimlessly. This makes your study time more fruitful and more enjoyable.

But don’t settle for goals that are too easy. Easy goals are boring goals. Challenging goals, on the other hand, inspire personal ambition. Ambitious goals push you and tap into your competitive spirit. They serve as a personal challenge to prove to yourself what you are capable of, transforming your study into an engaging and rewarding process.

For example, have you ever read your entire Bible, cover to cover? If so, how quickly can you do it? Can you complete it in one year? In six months? In three? Could you memorize the Sermon on the Mount? Could you write chapter-by-chapter summaries of the entire book of Isaiah?

Don’t misunderstand me – reading the Bible as quickly as possible or memorizing large portions isn’t the ultimate goal of Bible study. The real purpose of setting a goal is to to motivate you to spend more time immersed in Scripture, meditating on the text, thinking about its meaning, and finding ways to apply what you learn. Challenging and exciting goals are simply tools to spark enthusiasm and create sense of accomplishment. That excitement keeps you motivated to return to Bible study with consistency and joy, time and time again.

Once you’ve imagined a challenging goal, break it into a daily plan. This is what makes seemingly impossible goals feel achievable.

For example, if your goal is to read the entire Bible in three months, that may at first feel like a daunting challenge. But notice what happens when you break it down. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible. Over 90 days, thats roughly 13 or 14 chapters per day. Assuming it takes you about 5 minutes to read a chapter, you’d need about 70 minutes daily. Can you set aside just over an hour a day for three months? With focus and dedication, the answer is likely yes! By breaking your goal into smaller steps, you can transform it from overwhelming into doable.

The key is choosing a goal that excites you. When you’re personally invested, the process becomes fun rather than draining. With a clear plan in hand, your study time will feel purposeful and productive.

So don’t settle for easy, aimless reading. Instead, set personal goals, break them down into smaller steps, and dive in with enthusiasm and determination. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish when you approach your study with focus and ambition!

Better Bible Study Tip #78: Practice Christian Hospitality

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

On the surface, practicing hospitality may seem unrelated to the quality of our Bible study. But as I reflect on my own spiritual growth, I believe the two are closely connected.

By “Christian hospitality” I’m referring to the practice of welcoming strangers as you would welcome Christ (Mt. 25:35), by providing meals and comfort for them simply to help them feel welcomed (Heb. 13:2; Gen. 18:1-8). I’m referring to “breaking bread” and sharing prayers and possessions together with other Christians in your home (Acts 2:42-47). I’m referring to demonstrations of empathy and compassion for those who are hurting or in need (Rom. 12:13).

But how does Christians hospitality lead to better Bible study? When people feel welcomed and comforted, they are more likely to engage in deeper discussions, share insights, and ask questions. Open, honest, and even vulnerable communication about the Bible is more likely to happen where there is mutual respect and love for one another. Christian hospitality is necessary to develop these types of relationships.

Hosting others in your home can naturally lead to discussions about what we understand the Bible to mean, and how we think it can be better applied in every day life. A living room is the perfect place to introduce and be introduced to new Biblical ideas that haven’t been considered before. It’s a great setting to test ideas, by raising questions, hesitations, and objections, while at the same time developing greater kindness and respect. Meeting together in a home is one of the best ways to stir one another up to greater application of what is learned.

Hospitality is one of the most effective ways to help mentor younger Christians, or to learn from the experiences and studies of older Christians. Sometimes you may choose to open the Bible together in person. Other times, you may find yourself thinking about new things the next time you open your Bible for personal study. Either way, practicing hospitality will lead to better Bible study.

Hospitality can lead to greater accountability, and can offer great encouragement through difficult times. This doesn’t mean that every time you open your doors that you must turn the visit into a home Bible study. Just open your doors and visit. Talk about whatever is important to your guest. Chances are, when Christians spend time together, it won’t be long until the Bible comes up in conversation anyway.

Hospitality isn’t easy. It usually means cooking and cleaning are in order. It means setting aside other tasks that you might rather be doing. But do it anyway. Do it even if you can’t get your house as clean as you want (you never know when seeing your messy house is just the encouragement that struggling mom might need). Invite that new family from church over for dinner. Invite the youth group over for a devotional. Have that widow over for a cup of coffee. Let their wild kids play with your kid’s toys. Share personal stories. Laugh. Encourage. Listen. Ask questions.

Make Christian hospitality a greater part of your life. I can just about guarantee it will lead to better Bible study.

Better Bible Study Tip #73: Never Base an Interpretation on a Presumed Truth

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

Far too often, people will presume their beliefs are true, and that they are taught in the Bible, instead of letting God’s word dictate what their beliefs should be.

For example, you’ve probably heard about the three wise men who came to visit at Jesus’s birth. This idea of three wise men is readily accepted by so many people. We see it displayed in nativity scenes, Christmas cards, Christmas specials, and even in Christmas carols (“We Three Kings of Orient Are…”).

But the idea of “three” wise men is nowhere in the Bible. Yes, the wise men brought three gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but the Bible never specifies how many wise men there were. We imagine that the Bible says there were three wise men, but our imagination about the text is based on what we presume the Bible teaches.

Using one’s imagination as a means of interpreting the Bible is not a good method of Bible study. It lacks the necessary limitations to prevent flawed interpretations. To illustrate further, consider this passage:

And he [King Jotham] did what was right in the eyes of the LORD according to all that his father Uzziah had done, except he did not enter the temple of the LORD.

2 Chronicles 27:2

Let’s suppose we want to teach a lesson on why church attendance is important. We stumble across this verse, and we think “King Jotham was a good king, except for one thing. He didn’t go to the temple!” This passage seems to support our idea, and so we use it in our lesson. Just because King Uzziah was a good king who went to the temple every week, that doesn’t mean his son would continue the practice. Tragically, our young people make this same mistake when they don’t go to church like their parents did. Good lesson, right?

Certainly there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to assemble with the church each week, but the interpretation of the above verse is totally wrong. Why? Because it is based on a presumed truth.

If we had taken a step back from our presumption about the meaning of the text, and studied the surrounding context (2 Chron. 26:16-23), we would learn that King Uzziah was a good king, except that he entered the temple to burn incense on the altar of incense. This is something only the priest was allowed to do. As a result of his disobedient worship, King Uzziah was struck with leprosy until the day he died.

When the passage says that King Jotham “did not enter the temple of the Lord”, it means that he did not repeat the mistake of his father by entering the temple to worship in a way that was contrary to God’s will. Because we assumed we knew what the text meant, we missed a very important lesson about the importance of worshiping God only in those ways which he has commanded.

Some mistakes, such as assuming there were three wise men, may be of very little consequence. But this habit of assuming we know what the Bible is trying to say can end up leading to some dangerous and divisive teachings.

When we base our interpretation of the Bible on presumed truths, we risk distorting the meaning of Scripture to fit our own personal cleverness. We run the risk of minimizing or ignoring passages that don’t fit what we think the Bible teaches. We struggle to understand those verses that don’t fit our preconceived beliefs. When our belief isn’t clearly communicated in a particular passage, it’s easier to just give up, and let trusted commentators or preachers explain those “difficult” passages to us in a way that affirms our beliefs.

We must remember that every passage in the Bible is there for a reason. If it seems confusing because it doesn’t sound like it teaches what we think it should teach, we first need to examine our own assumptions. If we really want to do better Bible study, we need to let God’s word be what it is, study it in context, and discover it’s true and intended meaning. We must submit our beliefs to the word of God rather than making the word of God submit to our beliefs.

Better Bible Study Tip #71: The Bible Had Editors, and That’s Okay

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

There was a time when the idea of someone “editing” the Bible really bothered me. I was taught that it was wrong to add to or take away from the Bible (cf. Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:18-19). After all, the Bible is God’s word, and God’s word is perfect (cf. Ps. 19:7). It doesn’t need editing, and it would be wrong to do so.

I still believe that. It is for that reason that I am convinced that it is important to take God’s word as it is, not as we wish it was (see Tip #66: Don’t Second Guess God’s Choice in Inspiration). With that in mind, consider what we read in the first four verses of Ezekiel.

In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the LORD was upon him there.

As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.

Ezekiel 1:1-4 (emphasis added)

The first verse uses the first person, “I was among” and “I saw.” This gives us the impression that Ezekiel is writing about himself. But then it switches to the third person. “The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel” and “the hand of the Lord was upon him there.” Then in verse four, it switches back to first person, “As I looked.”

I suppose it’s possible that Ezekiel just liked to talk about himself in the third person. But when the text switches to the third person, it certainly gives the impression that someone else other than Ezekiel is speaking, that is, an anonymous author who took Ezekiel’s first person account and wove it together into the book we now know as Ezekiel. That’s a not a theory that arises from doubting God’s inspiration, but from wresting with the impression given by the inspired words given in the Bible.

Even if the Bible had editors, that doesn’t make it any less inspired. God inspired many books with anonymous authorship (Tip # 69) and God could have easily inspired the words of the editors themselves. In fact, the book of Jeremiah gives us a glimpse of how editing was part of the process by which we ended up with the book as the final product we have today.

Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah 36:33 (emphasis added)

God had Jeremiah write out a second version of the prophetic words he had already written down once before. But when they were dictated the second time, similar words were added to them. This wasn’t the same thing as “adding to” God’s word. It was simply part of the process by which God used Jeremiah and Baruch to produce the book of Jeremiah just as He wanted it to be in it’s final completed version.

Recognizing the existence of inspired editors is important because it enables us to avoid unnecessary confusion, and even false teaching that arises from those who haven’t considered this point.

Imagine if John, upon completing his account of the gospel, sends out multiple copies to various churches. In the copy he sends to Peter, he asks for feedback. “Is it all accurate? Did I leave out anything important?” Now imagine Peter responds to John and says, “I really think your book looks great, but I think you should consider including an account of the woman caught in adultery.” John, after receiving Peter’s feedback decides, “Yes, that was an important event. I better add it in.” But in the meantime, multiple copies of an earlier draft, without the woman caught in adultery, were already in circulation. So what happens? We end up with manuscripts with different versions of the book of John (as can be seen in your Bible’s footnotes on John 7:53-8:11).

As skeptic might look at the fact that we have differences between manuscripts as an opportunity to attack the reliability of the Bible. But if we realize that inspired scripture likely went through multiple inspired revisions, resulting in the possibility of multiple inspired versions which could have circulated at the same time, the skeptic’s attack is exposed as powerless.

Likewise, just because the book of Deuteronomy records the death of Moses (Deut. 34 was clearly written by someone other than Moses), this is no reason dismiss the Mosaic authorship of the law. We can trust that Moses received God’s Law at Sanai (Ex. 19), and what he wrote down (Ex. 24:4) is the essentially the same law we can read today. The fact that in inspired editor collected Moses’s law into the final forms of Genesis-Deuteronomy is no reason to reject the books as inauthentic in their origin.

No, we should not add to, take away from, or otherwise edit God’s word today. What we have now is the completed product. But since we take the Bible as it is, and the Bible presents itself as an edited book, we can believe that God used inspired editors as part of the process of inspiration.

Better Bible Study Tip #69: Don’t Judge a Book’s Author by It’s Title

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

My “Better Bible Study Tip #68” was to try to determine the setting of the book. In short, it can be really helpful to try to determine who wrote the book, historical details about the situation in which it was written, and what the author’s purpose was for writing the book. But one particular challenge in doing this is that most of the books of the Bible are anonymous.

This is particularly true with much of the Old Testament. For instance, we don’t have a clue who wrote books like Judges, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles. Even several of the books that are named for a person are actually anonymous, such as Joshua, Ruth, and 1-2 Samuel. There’s even some uncertainty about some of the books that are attributed to someone. For example, several of the Psalms contain a superscription which reads “A Psalm of David.” The problem is, there’s a good bit of debate about whether these superscriptions were part of the original inspired text, or if they were added later. Even if they are original, the phrase “Of David” could possibly mean “by David” or “for David” or “about David.”

The New Testament is less anonymous. Most of the books include the name of the author. But even in the New Testament, there’s still a good deal of uncertainty. For example, we don’t know who wrote Hebrews. The gospel of John has a very old tradition linking it to the disciple John, but is technically anonymous. All we know from the text itself is that is was written by “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20, 24). Since there are multiple people named “James” and “John” who are named among Jesus’s followers, we’re not 100% certain who wrote the books that contain their names either.

Yes, it is important to try to determine the setting in which a book was written. But at the same time, we must remain humble, and admit what we don’t know. Be careful not to base your interpretation of a book based upon a presumption about the book’s authorship. Guessing at a book’s author, and then basing your interpretation based on that guess, is very shaky ground upon which to base your conclusions.

The good news is, we can still learn a good deal about a book’s setting, even when we’re not certain who wrote the book. If you pay close attention to the content of the book, you can often find several clues to help you understand it’s historical setting and the author’s objective, even without knowing who the author is. But be careful not to judge a book’s authorship based on the title alone.

Better Bible Study Tip #67: Think About Biblical Chronology

On By Tyler BoydIn Better Bible Study

The content of the Bible spans from creation to the end of time as we know it. The actual writing of the Bible spanned from the time of Moses in the 1400’s BC until John penned Revelation, possibly close to 100 AD. That’s a period of about 1500 years. How do we get those numbers? What was going on during that time period?

Although there are numerous resources out there, such as chronological Bibles and commentaries, that can help us to make sense of the biblical timeline, the actual text of the Bible doesn’t provide us with “real time” dating of events, at least not as frequently as we might wish, or in terms that make a lot of sense to the average modern person. It doesn’t tell us “this event happened 700 years before Christ” or “I Paul, am writing this letter 31 years after the resurrection.” Rather the Bible usually dates itself in relation to other events – what happened before or after what. The only way scholars can determine “real time” chronology, that is, actual, numerical dates, is by finding events in the Bible that correlate with records kept by other ancient cultures that kept time with detailed astrological records. When something in the Bible corelates with those records, scholars can fix those events with actual numerical dates.

Practically speaking, if an average person wants to know the real time numerical dates of biblical events, the easiest thing to do is consult a commentary (or even google). It’s even more important to become familiar with the big picture story of the Bible (Tip #13). Even if we don’t know the precise date of a biblical event, understanding a general timeline can be helpful.

Here’s a general chronological outline to be familiar with:

1500s BC and before: Genesis
1400s BC: Moses, The Exodus
1300s BC: Joshua, Conquest of Canaan, First of the Judges
1200s BC: Ruth, The Judges, Ehud, Deborah
1100s BC: The Judges, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson
1000s BC: Saul, David
900s BC: Solomon; Israel splits in two, Ephraim and Judah
800s BC: Elijah, Elisha
700s BC: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah; Assyria the superpower; the fall of Ephraim
600s BC: Jeremiah, King Josiah; Babylon the superpower
500s BC: Ezekiel; the fall of Judah; Daniel; Persia the superpower; Jews free to return home
400s BC: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
300s BC: Intertestamental period; Greece the superpower; Hellenistic culture spreads
200s BC: Intertestamental period; Syria and Egypt as dueling regional powers pulling Judah one way or another
100s BC: Intertestamental period; Judah’s rebellion against Syrian power and gain of partial independence
000s BC: Intertestamental period; Rome the superpower
000s AD: Jesus; the apostles; the early church; the writing of the New Testament

Understanding how the Bible fits together chronologically is helpful because correctly situating a biblical author in a particular time can help us to understand what the writers say and why. Time important for reading the Bible in context. That’s why it helps to think about biblical chronology.