john1 Posted March 16, 2018 Group: Senior Member Followers: 4 Topic Count: 41 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 686 Content Per Day: 0.30 Reputation: 221 Days Won: 0 Joined: 12/16/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted March 16, 2018 On 2/18/2018 at 8:02 AM, Annette said: It may be nice to get some new ideas. When I get up in the morning I listen to my MP3 player until I've done about 2 to 4 hours of listening, if something hits me I look it up on the computer, and put it in my drafts on my email, so I don't loose it and it becomes dated to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoob57 Posted March 16, 2018 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 35 Topic Count: 100 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 41,156 Content Per Day: 7.98 Reputation: 21,444 Days Won: 76 Joined: 03/13/2010 Status: Offline Birthday: 07/27/1957 Share Posted March 16, 2018 32 minutes ago, Annette said: Thanks so much for taking the time to share this Steven. As I read what you shared, I loved the fact, that for you knowing God's Word is important enough for you, that you have made it an investment in your life. Most definitely, I agree, we need to have God's Word in our lives. God bless It is the only resource that we can rest upon in complete trust as the way, truth and life that will take us to Jesus in personal relationship and guidance... this I have read from your own heart and have added it to my own as us belonging to Him ... if I could have left self out of it I would but that is what The Lord has designed for us to be witnesses to others of His Self within us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annette Posted March 16, 2018 Group: Royal Member Followers: 65 Topic Count: 105 Topics Per Day: 0.04 Content Count: 3,568 Content Per Day: 1.39 Reputation: 4,029 Days Won: 7 Joined: 04/12/2017 Status: Offline Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 1 minute ago, enoob57 said: It is the only resource that we can rest upon in complete trust as the way, truth and life that will take us to Jesus in personal relationship and guidance... this I have read from your own heart and have added it to my own as us belonging to Him ... if I could have left self out of it I would but that is what The Lord has designed for us to be witnesses to others of His Self within us It is amazing in life, how we learn some lessons over and over again. There are so many times I remind myself that no matter what I am going through, that I have to trust Him. Another topic that I keep coming back to, and probably will continue to come back to, is to guard my heart. The verse that kept coming back to me. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10. Thank you for being a blessing here Steven. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagain2011 Posted March 16, 2018 Group: Senior Member Followers: 6 Topic Count: 82 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 602 Content Per Day: 0.14 Reputation: 233 Days Won: 0 Joined: 04/15/2012 Status: Offline Share Posted March 16, 2018 I have a few ways I read during the day, first i like to read the bible all the way through (not in 1 day!), so I do that daily reading in the morning and throughout the day and before bed. The next way I read is when I am craving the words of Jesus and want to sit at His feet, I will read from the new testament. This is usually when Im struggling with a reoccurring sin. The third way I read is by studying prophecy. I like to listen to JD Farag and Amir (I can't spell his last name but he created the ministry Behold Israel), and then I will go to the scriptures and study what is happening in there compared to how it is coming to pass right now. Reading the bible has been a struggle for me, I would get very distracted and have to re read passages 4 times, and then give up and go do dishes or something. Or i would start to fall asleep. So now I pray for God to help me focus, and I try to imagine the things in the bible playing out in real life like a movie. I am thinking there might be some attacking from the enemy when I try and read. I became born again in 2011 and have only read through the bible once, now Im in 2nd kings today. Ive gone like 2 months without reading it before. Things go south fast for me when I dont read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GandalfTheWise Posted March 16, 2018 Group: Royal Member Followers: 24 Topic Count: 40 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 1,459 Content Per Day: 0.60 Reputation: 2,377 Days Won: 2 Joined: 08/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted March 16, 2018 On 2/18/2018 at 7:02 AM, Annette said: EDITED FOR SPACE For some time now, I have been wondering how different people read and learn God's Word. [...] I was wondering what some of you do? It may be nice to get some new ideas. Over the years, I'd categorize what I've done into three rough groupings. The first is extensive reading. The purpose is to read the entire Bible to see it in its entirety. I leave questions aside and keep reading. At different times in my life, I've read the Bible through in a month, a few months, or several months. I've found it helpful to read several versions. In the past decade, I've also read the Bible in different languages. I found it helpful to see the text through the eyes of several different teams of translators. The second is intensive study of individual books. I'll read a particular book a number of times over a period of time (perhaps a few weeks or a few months). I'll also grab many reference books (bible dictionaries, atlases, history books, etc.) to learn what I can about the history, politics, culture, geography, climate, economics, agriculture, etc. during the time a particular book was written. Decades ago, I leaned heavily on commentaries. I then figured out that the best commentators did a lot of research and study so I just started trying to do much of that research for myself. There was a period of perhaps 10 to 15 years in my life that I spent a lot of time poring over many reference materials. The third is devotional reading. This is simply the day to day reading I do as part of meditation and prayer. The point of this reading is just to see what God causes to jump out at me. At times, this is the result of having done in-depth study. Other times, it is simply God using a verse or passage to get my attention about something which has little to do with the original context. This is more for day to day growth and guidance than study and learning. At different times in my life, the balance of time I spent in these different types of reading and study varied. It's mostly about what is helping me to grow the most at a particular time in my life. Right now, I've got two tracks of Bible reading going. I'm doing my devotional reading using the Spanish NVI (roughly equivalent to the NIV) for perhaps 30 to 45 minutes before I go to bed at night. In the morning and at times during the day, I'm using the WCF Bible in a year group schedule for my extensive reading. I do the OT readings in the Greek Septuagint roughly per the schedule. I then take whatever the NT readings are for a week and re-read them as many times as time allows in the week to master more details of Greek. A fourth grouping (that frankly never did much for me) is explicit memorization. When I was a younger Christian, I memorized II Thessalonians (KJV), Titus (ASV), Galatians (ASV), and started Ephesians. I found that I was spending way too much time reviewing and kicking myself over forgetting words here and there. Ultimately, it became more a burden than a blessing to me. As I learned over time, I'm very much a global and systematic thinker. I remember things much better in context and through regular use than in isolated groupings. For me, much extensive reading helped me become familiar enough with what was in the Bible that what I needed to remember usually came to mind whenever I needed it. I probably wouldn't get the quotation or the reference letter perfect but I'd know approximately where it was at and could usually give an accurate paraphrase of it. Over the years, I've found that having a good familiarity of the entire Bible was more helpful for me than being able to quote a set of verses along with the correct references. Over the decades, one of the biggest things that changed for me is that I stopped worrying about arguing about individual words in individual verses. I don't know how many countless hours I spent arguing about particular words in particular proof texts many years ago. Over time, I found that I started falling in love with the Bible in its entirety in a much more profound way than when I spent my time trying to find hidden meanings in every word and verse and passage. For me, a large part of this was reading different versions and languages. I started to assimilate the message, thoughts, and entirety of it much more than I had earlier. I started to find that the most important things were repeated many ways in many different places. I found that I started to naturally think more in terms of the patterns I was seeing throughout the Bible than in worrying about isolated passages. It became more about learning about God and how He interacted with people throughout the millennia than it did about knowing all the answers or winning arguments. For me, it also became more about seeking wisdom, insight, and maturity than in seeking correctness and details. I started off focused on knowledge and learning right from wrong and learning proper truth. Over time, I found that I fell in love with wisdom, mercy, grace, and God's power and anointing to have an impact on people's lives. I think the key is adopting a reading and study style based on where one's walk with God has them at this season in their life. Too often, Christians adopt a style because of what someone told them they should. For many Christians, some combination of devotional reading and memorization is fruitful for them; for others, it is in-depth study; and for others, it is extensive reading. At different times in our lives, different combinations of these styles is what we need to grow spiritually. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neighbor Posted March 17, 2018 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 18 Topic Count: 951 Topics Per Day: 0.35 Content Count: 13,565 Content Per Day: 5.03 Reputation: 9,045 Days Won: 6 Joined: 12/04/2016 Status: Offline Birthday: 03/03/1885 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Hi, my own near habit is to attend a local body of Christ Jesus where there are several elders of some very serious scholarship that share in expository manner the word of God. They do so verse by verse passage by passage, and not by topical study seeking words to match a thought. Thought gets driven by the word instead. I also try to find the application for my own use today of what was shared so long ago in some very different cultures. I use many commentaries for those contain both analysis of passages and entire books at a time and they do give me many additional vantage points of understanding. When I get really interested I seek out the Spurgeon archives and read through the record of his sermons and daily morning and evening devotionals. If still feeling led I then go back to the archives of my own pastor's sermons ( we spent six years going word by word through Matthew alone) There are some 35 years of expository sermons available, and I understand his method of presentation. Then I do make effort to just read the word. I don't much worry about going straight through as organized though, and sometimes I use a chronological Bible in order to get a better sense of time and other happenings. Chronology helps me. But I guess most of all I find I need to enter my time in the word of God with prayer, thinking, and reading with the idea in mind that, "prayer without study is presumption, and study without prayer is atheism." Importantly, I must find application in and for my life,- which leads to much humbling and correction of me. I absolutely dislike the quoting of just a portion of a passage ( A verse) as authority to justify an action! For it is a parroting that seems to lead to a kind of arrogance more than enlightenment, if it is left isolated to stand alone without fuller passage(s) and books to correlate and corroborate the short verse. Without the greater passage and cross referencing of near passages and other books of the Bible, there turns out to be capacity in mankind ( at least in this one) to manage to twist the "word" to suit the flesh's desire of the moment. Whereas, when I do a chain Bible chase, and read the fuller context of each portion, each link of the chain, I find the Holy Spirit then leads me to what seems for me a better use of God's precepts and instruction. Praise God for His mercy and grace. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorningGlory Posted March 17, 2018 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 1,022 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 39,193 Content Per Day: 6.11 Reputation: 9,977 Days Won: 78 Joined: 10/01/2006 Status: Offline Share Posted March 17, 2018 On 2/18/2018 at 7:02 AM, Annette said: Hi guys, For some time now, I have been wondering how different people read and learn God's Word. Psalms 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart, that i might not sin against you. Psalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. When growing up, we used to learn a different verse every week. I love that my girls learn the same verse at church for the month. By the end of the month, they have said it for four or five weeks and know it well. I like to sometimes listen to it, in the car on just as I am going about my day. And other times, I like to journal and write notes or even prayer as I read. I was wondering what some of you do? It may be nice to get some new ideas. God bless:) I have the entire Bible on my IPad; makes reading much easier and it always opens to where I left off. I can also read it ANYWHERE. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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