As we continue through our Journey through John, I wanted to share with you two approaches I use when I study the Bible that I have found opens up revelation. These are not steps or the only strategies. But, I find them to be foundational in interpreting the Bible with its original intent.

1️⃣Context is crucial to proper interpretation. This means we need to take the author, their audience, history, and more into account.

If you are new to this, do not panic. Start off slow. You can use the scriptures I shared the other day to practice. For example, take the book of Colossians. The author is Paul and he is writing a letter to the church (the Christians) in Colossae. He didn’t write a letter to you or to me. He wrote the letter to the people around the year AD60 in Colossae.

These simple facts are enough to get us going in the right direction. You can always search for more context – such as, what was going on with the people in Colossae at the time. Google can help. Always refer to a few commentaries to get a balanced idea of the situation. In this case, a simple fact is that there were some teachings being shared that undermined the new identity of a believer in Jesus.

There’s more to context, but this is a great start.

2️⃣Another approach to studying Scripture that changed my life was seeing God in it. Instead of looking through the Bible to find how-to’s and should-nots, I search for what it’s telling me about the nature of God. Who is God in this Scripture? What is the author saying about who God is?

So, there you go. Just two for today because it’s a great launching pad for those who want to learn to “study” Scripture in a way that leads to a 𝗺𝗼𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝗺𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝗼𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝗼𝐝.

Feel free to ask questions. There are no silly questions. I welcome hunger for more of HIM.

#bible #biblestudy #thejourney