How To Study the Bible: 2PROAPT is a good place to start as you delve into Scripture.
Pray | Preview | Read | Observe | Apply | Pray | Tell
2PROAPT Pray: Make a habit of always beginning your time in God’s Word by talking with it’s Author. Ask God to calm you down, help you bring your problems to him and clearly understand and hear his voice as you read the text. This is not the time for long petitions, but rather to turn yourself over to God and say “I’m here. Let’s spend some time together. What do you want to say to me?”
2PROAPT Preview: Preview the entire passage (or a bit more) by quickly reading all of it from beginning to end. Don’t worry right now about the details, just get an overall “road map” for what the passage looks like and where it sits in relationship to the verses before and after it.
2PROAPT Read: Now go back through the passage reading in much more slowly. Try to capture the exact essence of each thought and write it down as clearly as you can. The key question here is: What does the text say?
2PROAPT Observe: Looking over your “Read” section and the text, highlight those 1 or 2 sections that really catch you at the moment. It may be helpful to try and outline parts of the passage, or focus on particular challenges or questions, or note words or phrases that don’t seem to make sense so that you can look at a commentary. Where do you sense God nudging, drawing your attention, or comforting you? The key question here is: What does the text mean?
2PROAPT Apply: Now that(Bible Study Tool, developed by Chuck Miller) you have spent some time digging in the text, plant your feet in the application section for a while—do not rush. One of Satan’s greatest ploys is to convince us that we are too busy or have something more important to do than sitting at the table with God. Focus on how God wants you to respond to this passage in very specific ways.
As a result of God’s word to you in this passage:
what are you going to do now?
how are you going to change the way relate to God?
what aspects of your life need God's guidance and/or healing?
Now, this is VERY important: as a result of hearing God speak to you, respond concretely, specifically:
How will this affect my schedule over the next 2 days?
How will this affect my relationships over the next 2 days?
2PROAPT Pray: Once you have heard from God and you have a sense of how he would like to shape your schedule and relationships over the next 2 days, you need to pray and ask him for the power to carry out his wishes. Simply knowing what we should be doing and actually doing it are not the same. Far too often we know what God wants or expects from us, but we are unable to do it. Ask him for courage, wisdom, strength, humility… anything you think you will need to be able to follow him a little more closely over the next few days.
2PROAPT Tell: Now that you have carefully placed yourself in a place where God can speak, listened intently for his voice through his Word, discussed what it is he wants you to do/think/say as a result of your time with him and asked him to help you carry this out, it is vital that you tell someone else about this. The purpose of doing this is so that they can encourage you, pray for you and help you see how things are going. Most often we fail to realize that true community, biblical community, requires this sort of vulnerable, intentional, entanglement in each other’s lives. It is a purely secular point of view that says that my relationship with God is a private affair with no connection to other believers. God always relates to us in the context of a community.
(Bible Study Tool, developed by Chuck Miller)
Pastor Israel's top recommended resources for Bible Study:
1. Have a good modern translation and study bible that you're excited about.
*The NRSV and NIV are very good to compare. For jump-off-the-page daily, devotional reading, I strongly urge you to get The Message by Eugene Peterson. Wow!
2. Get a Bible dictionary, a concordance, and an atlas. (A good study Bible will have maps, notes, and words to look up.)
These will help you locate and aquaint yourself with the people, places, culture and settings in Scripture.
3. Get a good book on how to read, study, and obey the God's Word. Take a hard look at these:
