How to Study the Word of God, Part 3

Scripture:
Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29)

Conceding that we do not want to be in error by not knowing the Scriptures, I want to continue in this series of posts by sharing two ways which are helpful to me when studying the scriptures. They both have to do with ways in which I use a CD which I have recorded.

Again, years ago in Bible School, when the professor was teaching us how to study the scriptures, one of the techniques was to read a book of the Bible over and over and over again, and then do the same with each chapter. The illustration he used to explain why we need to do this was an example of an orange. When we read and read and read a book of the Bible, little by little, the book seems to divide itself into logical parts. Kind of like an orange is divided into sections. After you have a pretty good idea of how each section is divided through multiple readings you apply the same principle to each section. Now sometimes the major sections fall at the chapter divisions, sometimes they do not. As you read each section multiple times, each section divides into small pieces, again, kind of like a section of orange has little pockets of juice. As you read each section, over and over, the Scriptures almost divide themselves into small and more bite sized pieces.

At church we have recently started a study in the book of Ephesians. From this I made it my goal to listen to this book 100 times during the course of this study. Using my iPod, I figure I can listen to this book at least 10 times a week. It only takes about 20 minutes to do so. The trick is going to be understanding it in Spanish, since I go to a Latin speaking church, while I am listening to the Scriptures in English. For this reason, I will probably also begin listening to this book in Spanish. We will see how it goes. What I want to accomplish is saturating myself with this book while the Pastor teaches from it. He said this was his favorite book in the Bible and I figure that by the end of the study I will have a good appreciation as to why.

The second application of recording passages of scripture on a CD is to do a topic or word study. A couple of months ago I wanted to understand more about what the Scriptures say about divine healing. For this I did two courses online and created a CD that I have in my car called “Seven Purposes of Divine Healing”. By listening to the scriptures I recorded, over and over again, I have been learning many verses that I am beginning to be able to quote, And I am reinforcing what I learned in the online class and I am relearning what I thought I understood about this subject by saturating myself with these verses.

This same technique can also be used to do a word study in the Scriptures. Though I have not recorded a CD yet, I have begun to prepare a word study on the word “hypocrite”. (You may ask why the word hypocrite and that is because I do not want to be one, but you can use any word you want to study.) There are only about a dozen times this word appears in the Bible and most of them are in the book of Matthew (KJV), but after I do a little more study on this word both in English and greek, I plan to record these verses on a CD and then listen to them over and over and over, again saturating myself with these particular verses of Scriptures.

The goal of all this is to learn portions of Scripture, whether books, topics or words, by listening to them over and over and over. I have been known to even fall asleep with my iPod listening to Scripture making the Word of God the last thing that enters my mind before I go to sleep.

Request:
That we continue studying the Scriptures by saturating ourselves with God’s Word.

Prayer:
Thank Lord for giving us your Word and for all the technological tools that are available to use for studying the Scriptures. Fill us with your Word dear Lord so that it will overflow from our lives into the lives of others and be used to reach them for your Kingdom. Amen