Do you want to know the easiest, fastest, and most reliable way to grow spiritually?
Do you wish there was an easy button of sorts for knowing what God would have you do in your current season of life or your current situation?
If you’ve been there before, welcome! This post is written with you in mind.
This post is all about how to study the Bible effectively.
Click here to access a free printable of the 6-Step Bible Study Method for Everyone. Print it out and tuck it into your Bible today!
Bible Study Made Simple: A 6-Step Method for Everyone
Let me just start by saying that this topic is really exciting to me.
I am privileged to be in a lot of conversations with different people who are at various stages of their faith journeys.
And without exception, there is a desire among Christians to grow spiritually.
Christians want to know how to follow God more faithfully. They want to know what they are supposed to do and how they can respond in a godly way to their current life circumstances.
The issue comes up in knowing how they can actually achieve that.
Most of them have some ideas on how they can achieve it, but they still get tripped up on making it happen.
Well, I’ve got the answer for you today. And not only do I have the answer, I also have a method you can use to make it happen in your life.
It’s simple and straightforward … and if you commit yourself to making this a habit, really good things are going to happen.
- You’ll find you have an excitement for spiritual things that you didn’t have before.
- You’ll find that you know a bit more clearly how you’re supposed to be acting, treating others, and responding to situations.
- You’ll begin to understand the commitment you made to follow Jesus and what that actually looks like, which is going to help you actually live out the commands of Jesus in your life.
The one practice that you need to prioritize is reading and studying your Bible.
You may have also heard this phrased as having a quiet time or doing a devotion.
Studying your Bible is like hitting the first domino in a line of dominos … if you can knock this first one down, the rest will follow.
Today I’m going to walk you through how you can knock over that first domino, because just saying you need to read and study your Bible isn’t all that helpful. You need to know how to do that.
I’ve got a method that works really well for me, and I hope that it will be helpful for you as well.
I’ve got a few side notes to get through here before I can get into the actual method I use.
First is that this is a method, not the method. The general idea of this method is to ask yourself the same set of questions every time you read the Bible, and there are other lists of repeatable questions you could use that would be just as effective. This is what I use and have found to be helpful.
Second, this method is for reading and studying the Bible on your own without the help of a guided Bible study book. Don’t feel pressure to add more onto what you’re already doing if what you’re doing is working well for you.
Third, this post is going to explain the practical steps of doing Bible study. If you need some help just getting started in general and want some tips on how to make time for Bible study in your day, go back to this post and give it a read. That post gives you three mindset shifts you really need to make in order to actually read your Bible regularly, and it walks you through a four-step process to making Bible study happen.
This post is going to walk you through what you can do inside that Bible time that you’ve made space for in your day.
What I like about this method is that it’s doable and it’s repeatable.
You can use this method if you have never read one bit of the Bible before, and you can continue using this method after you’ve studied the Bible for years.
You can also use this method in any book of the Bible, so you never have to reinvent the process. You can just keep using it over and over.
This method is a combination of what I’ve been taught over the years by small group leaders, pastors, and authors who write about how to study the Bible effectively, so you might have even heard portions of this method before from someone else.
Here’s what I would suggest you have on hand in order to get the most out of this, and also how I would recommend spacing this out during your week.
- In order to study your Bible, you really just need a Bible. And if that’s all you have, great! But I’ve found that having a study Bible available to you is helpful because there are notes for when you get confused. I also think having a journal and pen on hand is really helpful. For the journal, I just use a spiral notebook.
- This method could be used a few different ways in your week. If you’re doing this method alongside others, I would say that it’s best to pick a chapter of the Bible per week and aim to finish the questions over the course of the week.
If you’re doing this on your own, I would say start and just answer the questions in order in the time you have, and when your time for Bible study is over just stop and start back up the next day where you left off.
The 6-Step Bible Method for Anyone and Everyone
The method consists of six questions.
If you want a physical list of these questions to use, I’ve made a freebie that you can print out on a normal piece of paper, fold in half, and tuck into your Bible or Bible study journal that lists out the questions for you. Just click here to access your copy today.
To remind myself of the questions, I use the letters of the main topics I’m asking myself about. The letters at S-G-S-E-C-R. Those letters stand for summary, God, sin, example, command, and response.
To use this method, I start by praying and asking God to give me understanding. Then I read the chapter, and I go into answering the questions. I might not have an answer for all of them every time, but I always ask myself if I can answer each of them. If answering these questions goes over multiple days, then it’s helpful to re-read that chapter each day.
The first letter is S – I ask myself, “If I had to summarize this chapter, how would I do that?” So, you just write down what happened. If you’re in Genesis, you’re writing down a first, second, third type list of what happens in each chapter. But if you’re in one of Paul’s letters, maybe you’re writing a one-sentence summary of each section of a chapter. The idea here is to examine the chapter as a whole and create a basic summary of it or identify the main points.
The next letter is G – For this one, I ask myself what I think this chapter teaches about God. The Bible is first and foremost a book about God, so I want to see if I can identify any aspects of God’s character or any truths about God that I can find in the chapter I’m reading.
The next letter is S – For this one, I look for anything that the chapter I’m reading identifies as sinful. Maybe it’s a wrong way of believing, maybe it’s a wrong way of acting – whatever that chapter identifies as sin is something that I would want to know about because a chief aim of my life as a follower of Jesus is to be obedient to His instructions. A small note here though, I’m not looking for just sins that I struggle with. I’m also not looking for sins that other people struggle with that I don’t. I’m approaching Scripture with the intention of learning from it whatever it will teach me, whether I currently need the information or not.
The next letter is E – For this one, I’m looking for whether there is an example that Christians like me should be following. Or maybe an example I should not be following. Writing this out can bring clarity to how to walk out the instructions we read in the Bible, because we can usually identify who was acting righteously or unrighteously in a given story.
The next letter is C – For this one, I’m looking for any commands. If there is a direct command in Scripture to do something or not do something or believe a certain way, I want to identify it and pull that out as something I specifically spend time thinking about and measuring my own life against.
The next letter is R – For this one, I ask myself what my response to all of what I’ve written down should be. This is the part where I examine whether I need to do something with what I’ve learned right now, or if this is just knowledge for me to store up in my mind for future use.
You can use this method even if you only have 10 minutes a day to read your Bible. You can use this method whether you’re in Psalms or Habbakuk or Romans. And if you use this method, you WILL grow spiritually.
As far as where you should start in the Bible if you aren’t in the habit yet, there’s a few options you can consider:
- If you’ve never really done Bible study before, I would start in the New Testament. I just feel like there is less confusion about weird cultural practices. You’ll still run into issues where the original audience was dealing with something that is really foreign to you, but overall the New Testament is a good place to start.
- If you’ve done a lot of Bible study in your life and are looking to use this method to deepen what you already know about God, I would pick a chronological plan and use this method as you work your way through that entire plan.
- You could also choose to go one book of the Bible at a time straight through the Bible.
Whatever starting place you choose, this method will work.
Recap of the 6-Step Bible Method for Anyone and Everyone
The letters are S-G-S-E-C-R, and they stand for summary, God, sin, example, command, and response.
Again, I made a free printable of these questions for you that you can access by clicking the link in the show notes.
Take Action to Study the Bible to Grow Your Faith
Having a way to do Bible study that works every time is so valuable in the life of a Christian that today’s action step is to share this post with others who need it!
Quick Links
Connect with Faith Talks Daily
- NEW RELEASE: Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional: https://faithtalksdaily.com/attributes-of-god/
- For the free Quick Start Guide to Family Bible Time: www.faithtalksdaily.com
- www.instagram.com/faithtalksdaily
- www.facebook.com/faithtalksdaily
Do you need a resource to use to teach your kids the Bible? Download the NEW Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional!
