“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.” (Deut 6:6-7, NIV)
Speaking the very words of God to other people has always been prevalent in the bible and believe it or not we are all commanded to do it in one way or another. Parents are to do it with their children (Prov 22:6). We are to do it with others in houses or in the public square (Acts 20:20). We are to speak the words of God in church (1 Tim 4:13) and with all those we come into contact with (Matt 28:19). We’re all in one way or another commanded and commissioned to speak about the very words of God with others and it is our absolute privilege to do so. But you might be a little bit like me when I first started out. I had a passion to share the words of God as written down in the Bible with others, but I didn’t know where to start, or even what to do. So I wanted to take this opportunity over the next few weeks to commend a couple of methods and a few ways that I have found really helpful over the years, to not just speak about the words of God, but to help people see what the very words of God are saying to us now.
C.O.M.A
The first method that I would like to commend to you is something called COMA. Now COMA is actually an acronym, which is really helpful to remember when approaching a text either by yourself or with someone else. How do you do it? Well first, choose a portion of scripture and then think through the passage’s CONTEXT. This might not always be so clear at first and so you might need to read back a couple of chapters to get the author’s backdrop. However some bibles have an “intro” section which can really help with that. Context is so important to get with any given passage because as the old saying goes, “a text without a context can quickly become a con”. Next…
OBSERVATION. Now I might say that this is the fun part. With observation, simply read through the text and ask questions like “what does this mean”, “where have I seen that before” and “why has he said it this way”. Mull over the text and read it carefully. If you don’t understand a word or phrase write it down and come back to it over and over. Next you want to look for the MEANING. This will usually need to be done by going back over what was said and thinking through the questions that you have raised from the text. Some bibles have cross references. Bible Gateway is also handy here. You might have a question about a theme that has come up so a simple word search will give you all the references to that theme so you can explore all that God has said on the matter. Last and certainly not least is APPLICATION. Now this is a given, but once you have mined the text and heard God from His Word, you want to think “where can I be thankful about this in my life, how can I change my thinking to be more in line with God’s and how might I ask God to help me do this”
Church, remember these are the very words of God that we are dealing with. So why not speak to the author in prayer first to help you understand what He is saying and end by asking Him to apply what you have seen in a real and tangible way. Mixing bible reading, prayer and christian fellowship is such a wonderful way to “commit ourselves wholeheartedly to those commands that The Lord has given to us”
The COMA method online.