My Little Method of Bible Study

Now that you’ve just been given the secret to prevailing in the study of the scripture, what’s a good way to go about it? Well, I can only tell you what works for me and why I think it works for me.

My method of reading the scripture is simliar to my method of prayer. In my Bible I keep five bookmarks. Each bookmark marks off a set of books of the Bible that I will rotate through as I fnish each book and return back to the beginning of the set. Here is how I break it up:

Bookmark 1 Genesis to Esther. Straight pre-Christian history

(It includes more than just the history of the children of Israel)

Bookmark 2 Job to Song of Solomon - Straight Philosophy or “wisdom” as it was called then.

Bookmark 3 Isaiah to Malachi - the Prophets of Judah and Israel.

Bookmark 4 Matthew-Acts, with Revelation - Straight Christian and post-Christian history.

Bookmark 5 Romans to Jude - the letters of the apostles to the Christian assemblies.

The idea is that, as the Lord answers my prayers to have a passion to read His word, I will on any given day read a chapter from each bookmark, or a two chapters from three book marks, or several chapters from a given bookmark. And the next time I pray, I mark an A!!! on my prayer above and thank God for the answer to it, and pray again for it to be answered again.

The idea is to have a discipline about getting through the Bible in an orderly fashion, but also leaving freedom for the Holy Spirit of God to direct your attention to what He wants you to notice as you read. Many times I’ve experienced synchronicites where two or more bookmarked places will turn out to be about the same subject matter. It is clearly the voice of God speaking when that happens.