“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16-17, NLT)
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wanted to give some great methods that I have found to be really helpful in figuring out how to make my bible reading, not only beneficial, but applicable to my every day life. I first commended the technique COMA, which is actually a smart little acronym that stands for Context, Observation, Meaning, Application. This week I want to commend to you something called the Swedish method, which may sound a little strange but is named so as it is rumoured to have come from the evangelical churches in Sweden. It is a method that I have found to be incredibly beneficial with studying the Bible for yourself, or even in a group setting. So what does it involve? Well, first, pick a passage and follow these, four easy steps
1) Light bulbs
The first thing you want to do is read a passage and then look for the things that shine or stand out to you. Trust me if you pick any passage in the Bible, there will be something that will either be confusing, tantalising, or encouraging. Whatever it might be, identify something that stands out to you and then highlight that part of the passage.
2) Question marks
No matter what passage you go to in the Bible, it is always going to raise questions. So after you have read through the passage and highlighted something that stands out to you, re-read through the passage again and put question marks around anything that you may find confusing or hard to understand. I like to write these questions down on a separate piece of paper and then explore either a commentary or a trusted Christian website that might start to point me in the right direction. Also, we have been concentrating on discipleship in our church as of late, so it is always a great idea to speak about any of these questions that you have with a trusted person either in your connect group, your prayer group or with someone that you are doing the Christian life with. It’s always great to be speaking about scripture with people and you may surprise yourself just how much you actually know as you were speaking to others about it.
3) Heart
Once you’ve identified shining parts and answered some questions, try and figure out the heart of the passage. Every author in the Bible is wanting to reveal something to you about either God or his creation, which includes us and the spiritual realm. So try your best not to just speed read through a passage but ask yourself the question, “what is the author wanting me to see here? What am I meant to walk away knowing?” It’s always fun to try and sum it up in your own sentence as well or even try and draw a picture of it.
4) Arrows
Much like the application part of COMA, arrows are used to indicate the application points that the author is making. After you feel like you have a grasp on the point of the passage think about ways as to how it applies directly to your life and draw an arrow over what you want to pray about. As we are human we will always fall short of God’s standard, so any part of Bible study should end in asking God to help you apply what you have learnt to your life, thanking him for showing you his truth, and then asking him to help line your life up with what has been revealed. Prayer and Bible reading is the diet for any disciple who wants to grow in their Christian walk.
To read more on this, visit Tim Challies’ breakdown.
Michael