As I have said before, after years of negligence The Lord decided to draw me back to a close relationship with him. The very first area that was highlighted change under the spotlight of the Holy Spirit was my lack of discipline in regards to Bible study.

I decided to approach my time in the Word using the John MacArthur Bible Study Method of reading the same section of scripture repetitiously each day for a month. His point seemed valid when he said, “I trust you’re going to read your Bible every day for the next two and a half years anyway, so you might as well come out on the other side knowing what’s in it.”

Being that my schedule, as is the case with most people, is stuffed full I quickly realized that I needed to start getting up at a significantly earlier hour in the day. There just was no getting around it. The day is overloaded, I have three kids so there’s not a moments peace in the house when I’m home, and by 8 o’clock when I sit down on the couch after putting kids to bed it’s a 50/50 chance that I’m going to pass out.

Also, I remember hearing preachers at difference Christian events talking about how God needs to be “first” in your life and your day and that the first stop in the morning after the bathroom needs to be to sit down and engross yourself in The Word. Seemed to make sense to me.

At the same time I was getting up earlier to do at least 30-40 minutes of yoga each day to stimulate the body give me some low-impact strength training. So I was getting up double-early.

I quickly learned that the “first thing in the morning” approach wasn’t going to work well. I was so groggy in the morning that the words on the page would fuzz in and out as I read. I would have to read entire chapters over more than once. A through reoccurred to me that somewhere I had heard that you should read the Holy Bible aloud during your time with God, so I even started doing that…but it didn’t work.

Further research unearthed the idea that you should be giving God your “best time” of the day, whatever that may be. Initially I thought that this was a cop-out for people that want to say that 8 pm was the best time of the day and then they never actually do their Bible reading because of distraction or fatigue but a quick review of my own situation showed that there might be some truth to the concept.

See, I would do my Bible study first and then my yoga second. However, when I thought about it, I was always much more alert, sharp, and awake immediately after my mini-yoga session. It stood out then that this time immediately after my yoga session was my “best” time of the day. So I switched up my early morning schedule to do the yoga first, take a quick shower, make some tea and then sit down awake and refreshed for my quite time with The Lord. It usually works our that I have about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes before my kids wake up, so I’m distraction free as well.

This worked wonders. Those first three days were tough with the schedule wrong, but now I thought everything would be smooth sailing from then on out.

WRONG!

About day 20 I ran into another “wall” when reading. The problem seemed to be that my mind was drifting CONSIDERABLY while I was reading God’s Word! Not necessarily to “evil” things, but just “stuff” that had nothing to do with whatever I was reading. My mind had somehow developed a wayward heart. I was getting to bed earlier, I was drinking a full 26 oz of water first while letting the dogs out, had taken my vitamin C, taken my vitamin D, was doing yoga and getting the blood flowing, took a quick shower so I was feeling clean and good…all this before I set down at the kitchen table. Oh, and I was praying before studying and I always was asking God to keep my mind sharp on His Word as I read it. All this to no avail.

The only thing I could determined would be the case for this unexplained breakdown of discipline in my Bible study time was that over 20 days I had become rather familiar with the passage to the point where I could “read” the words aloud while thinking of something completely different. Then an idea stuck me.

Super Bible Study

This worked like gang-busters!

I soon discovered that not only were all of John MacArthur’s sermons and messages available for free download on his website, but numerous others were as well. I started downloading these and loading them up on my iPod. On the way to school and work I would listen to these messages, while on my lunch break I would listen, while walking around during my day I would listen. Each day everything I read began to be far, FAR more interesting. It was like my Bible became richer and fuller overnight. Amazing.

I’m going to publish my Top 10 Super Bible Study tips over the next few days. You can find them here:

John MaCarthur Bible Study Method

Simply picking a passage and reading through it at a set time every day for a set number of minutes had brought me to the point where I had gone through 22 years of being a Christian, but only 5 years of spiritual growth. The other 17 years were pretty much the same year over and over again and translated into a complete stall in my life where my relationship with Christ was concerned. I determined that I needed to “get serious” about my Bible study, both the amount of time invested, and the method in which it was approached.

I found that there are a lot of methods out there, but I happened on a simple yet powerful Bible study guide by John MacArthur where he shared how he studied his own Bible. You can download the original seven part series for free here: How To Get The Most from God’s Word

He said that his approach to studying the New Testament was to take a section of 7 Chapters, and read them over again and again for a full 30 days. The benefits of this method is that the constant repetition enables the believer to become very, very familiar with the passage. At the end of 30 days, he’ll know what is contained in the text and will forever be able to reference it in the future. The believer will not have “memorized” the section, but he’ll always know the key verses, people, places and concepts taught in those chapters and will not forever be a slave to the concordance.

Deeper Bible Study

Following this pattern of study, it would take one about 2 and 1/2 years to study your way through the entire New Testament. If you are of the faith and you’re going to purpose to read the Bible every day anyway, it might be best that you can become intimately familiar with what is in it instead of simply being able to hold up the book and say “I’ve done it! Read it through cover to cover in a year!”. Bible study is not a race and there is no “higher” virtue in reading the Bible through in a year vs. other study methods.

He then advised that reading the Old Testament be more on the lines of reading it through from beginning to end in a more traditional manner. After extensive study of the New Testament, this grand tour of the first part of The Bible will be fuller and come across richly as the reader quickly is able to connect the concepts that are finished out in the New Testament have their foundation and beginning in the Old Testament.

I’ve decided to adopt this same model for Bible Study. Since beginning, I’ve added two elements to the program in an effort to tap into the wonderful riches and fullness of God’s mercy and His wisdom. I have a deep love for the Psalms as they have calming and refreshing words that I need to be built up with on a daily basis. Because of that I’m following the same pattern of repeat reading style of bible study, selecting a single Chapter from Psalms each month to dive deep into.

I also know, being surrounded by all kinds of humanistic philosophies, that I need to develop wisdom and discretion, so I am also selecting a new chapter from Proverbs to read each day in similar fashion. My plan is to continue on this path until I’ve read the entire new Testament through, and then go back and do it again by reading it all in Spanish.

I’m thinking that my own travels through God’s Word might be helpful to others, so here is how I’ll handle this online Bible Study guide. I’ll be creating a new entry on this section of the site for each 7-chapter slice of The Bible that I intend to study each month. I’ll kick off each post by providing a summary of the study section at the beginning of the entry. From there I’ll add comments to the entry relating to spiritual truths or questions that I’m working through as I study the text. If you have some additional insight, please feel free to add a comment to any of the entries, you can also feel free to answer the questions of others. The list of studies currently working on can be found by clicking on Bible Study in the navigation bar at the top of this page.