Some Personal Bible Study Ideas

The Bible provides a reason for our existence, a guide for true happiness in physical life, the way to eternal spiritual life and countless other practical truths. With so much to learn, personal Bible study must be a part of our daily lives. But how?

After finally reading the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation, I put it down and asked myself, “Well, now what?” I wasn’t exactly a biblical scholar, if you know what I mean.

Paul said in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” After reading through it, I had so many questions and so many things left to understand, there had to be more to the truth than what could be gained from just having read it once.

There was. The minute someone says, “I’ve learned and studied all I can from this old book,” the Bible becomes dead literature to him instead of the living Word of God.

Many times it is difficult to determine how or what to study in the Bible. The worst thing to do is to continually put off personal Bible study in order to someday “figure out what to study.”

Hopefully some of these ideas will get you motivated to study regularly in order to make personal Bible study a priority in your daily life. I hope they will also help you develop your overall personal relationship with God. We are to “grow in the grace and knowledge” of God (2 Peter 3:18; Colossians 1:10).

How do I start?

First, there are some housekeeping tips to consider in order to make Bible study a regular part of your life. If your personal Bible study happens “whenever I can find a second or two in my hectic schedule that is full of this physical life’s problems,” then regular Bible study is not going to happen. It will continue not to happen until that attitude changes to more of “my personal Bible study happens when I schedule a time in the day, allowing for flexibility, and tell myself that it is time to study God’s Word.”

Also, get a notebook or create a study file on your computer. Then you can monitor if you are studying every day and what you are covering.

You can write the date down next to whatever notes you took or whatever section of Scripture you read that day. For example, write: “10/30/11: Matthew 24-25” next to your notes from reading that section. Making Bible study a regular, positive routine in daily life can be challenging, but it is possible.

How do I study?

Now that the commitment and monitoring of progress are in place, it’s time to think about ways to study the Bible.

One way is to read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation while looking for specific kinds of scriptures. Perhaps:

• Scriptures that will improve my everyday life.
• Scriptures referring to end-time prophecy.
• Scriptures referring to God’s commandments, etc.

This is a linear way to always have something ready for the next study and always be reading the Bible.

Many Bible students create a color code and mark their Bibles with specific colors to represent specific subjects. Ask someone in your congregation who has a colorful Bible what he or she does.

You may say, “That sounds like a lot!” Well, it is. Yet it also keeps you reading and introduces you to other stories or concepts you may have forgotten about or never noticed before.

Another possibility is to consider trials or difficulties you are having in your life and look up the words in the Bible that closely correspond using a concordance or a topical Bible. For example:

• Anger.
• Fear.
• Friends (friend, friendly, friendship).
• Money (labor, work, borrower, wealth).
• Parents (father, mother).
• Worry (anxiety, cares).

Making a list of scriptures with encouragement and overall instruction for such issues will not only be a continual Bible study project for you, but it will also let you know that a book that is thousands of years old has answers and encouragement for problems you are facing today.

You can also use topical Bibles and concordances (or the search function of a computer or online Bible) to study traits you want to work on, like the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

One thing to remember about personal Bible study is that it is personal. This means that you get to be creative and delve into your interests concerning the Bible, as long as you don’t neglect studying the “weightier matters” of the Bible to favor more trivial, usually speculative or contentious matters (Titus 3:9 and 1 Timothy 1:4).

There are countless historical figures in the Bible that provide wondrously good examples for us to follow and glaringly bad examples for us to avoid. There are connections between the Old Testament and the New Testament that greatly deepen our understanding of God’s plan and way of life.

Why should I study every day?

Finally, after the routine is set and the notebooks are getting filled, the reason to do all this surfaces. Through personal Bible study, you are building a manageable way for you to understand God and His vast word of truth. You are creating a wealth of resources for yourself in inexpensive notebooks or on a computer.

Most importantly, though, you are letting God know that His living Word is a regular part of your everyday life. You are listening to what He has to say—and acting on it.

Eddie Foster, a school speech-language pathologist, and his wife are members of the Cincinnati/Dayton, Ohio, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association.

See more links about Bible study:

• What’s the Best Way to Study the Bible?
• Healthy Bible Study Meals
• Not by Bread Alone