Bible Study - The Practical Disciple - Page 8

Posts in Category: bible study

Bible Study and Worship Tips: What to Look for in a Sermon or Passage

I have encouraged readers in recent posts to take notes when listening to a sermon and to set goals for responding. I thought it may be helpful though if I offered some suggestions as to what to look or listen for. When I am either doing bible study or listening to a sermon I listen for what I call three basic callings. They are principles, tasks and changes.

  • Principles or life lessons are instructions for how we should live as disciples. For example, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a general guiding principle that we should seek to be mature in all the time.
  • Tasks are measurable commitments that you believe God is calling you to accomplish. For example, you might

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3 More Tips to Give You An Exceptional Experience of Sunday Morning

If you went to worship yesterday, do you remember what was preached? How much of the sermon can you recall today? Last week I posted an article on 6 ways to bring a sermon home.  Those tips were things to do during worship to help you get more out of worship.  If you really want to take a sermon home, you don’t want to stop there.  Here are three tips to practice on Monday that are sure to literally make your experience exceptional, because the average person is failing to do them.
 

PRACTICE RECALL

Seriously, how much of the sermon can you recall?  I mentioned in my prior post taking a moment to recall the sermon during worship.  Do it again the next day.  If you

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6 Ways To Take a Sermon Home

This past Sunday I got to be in the pew for a change.   I see a lot of people being passive in worship.  Here are 6 strategies I use when I am priviledged to be in the pews to insure that I am responsive to what is preached.

  1. BYOB. Bring your own Bible. Follow the readings and when appropriate underline, mark or otherwise annotate the text. If you read the Bible with a pencil in hand you will pay more attention to the text.
  2. Take Note.  Bring a pad or scribble on your bulletin the thought flow of the sermon. This past Sunday when I was in worship I made a mind map of the sermon on the back of my bulletin. Mind mapping is a graphical method for taking notes.
  3. Rehearse your notes. 

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The Difficulty with Bible Reading

I was reading a post by Tim Challies on his blog, Challies.com, about personal bible reading. He shared an ugly truth that many Bible study leaders and gurus fail to share. Specifically, that the difficulty with Bible reading is that sometimes it is difficult. Chaillies put it this way…
 

Now I’d like to make a rather practical observation. A general desire to know and to study the Bible does not necessarily mean that we will always be overflowing with enthusiasm to do so. When we say that we desire to study the Bible we can mean two things. We can mean that we spring out of bed in the morning eager to rush to a comfortable chair and spend some time drinking in the Word of

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Applying Rules of Creativity to Your Bible Reading, Even If You Think You are Creatively Challenged

I was reading an article about Joey Reihman’s book, Thinking for a Living. Reihman describes being creative as having four stages.

  • Investigation–Detect, study, explore, gather
  • Incubation–The longest stage, quantity over quality, can involve blending, traveling, polarizing, walking, meditating, praying and sharing
  • Illumination–The editing of stage two, illuminate the big idea, the “Aha!” moment
  • Illustration–Portray and personify the big idea, design, create

 
I read this process and immediately thought, this sounds very much like the process I try to follow when writing a sermon.  It is a fitting general prescription for Bible reading as well.  I had never really thought about my general Bible reading as a creative process, but really it is. Each time we read we should strive to manifest the word as a living reality in our lives. That is

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Bible Reading Guide, the easiest one ever

My Bible Table of Contents with All Books Checked. Yeah!!! Click for a Closer Look.

Yesterday, I completed reading the Bible again using the simplest plan ever.  Please Note—This is the simplest plan not necessarily the best or most effective plan.  I simply made a check mark every day next to whatever chapters I read and resisted reading anything that was already checked.  That was it.  It’s nothing fancy or complex.  I just checked off chapters and when I completed a book I went and put a check next to it in the table of contents.  I new that eventually I would finish.  Eventually, was yesterday.

I

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