Beyond Today Daily

How to Have a Successful Bible Study: Part 6

Studying the Bible can be intimidating by the sheer size of the book. Where do you start? Here are some effective methods of breaking the Bible into digestible portions. 

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[Darris McNeely] Now, sometimes you might think that the Bible is just too large a book to be understood. This particular version, the New King James Bible that I have here is over 600 pages. It's fine print, and you can look at that and think, "Wow, I could never get through that book. It's just too big, too much information. I can't understand it." Well, you can. We're going through a series of studies here on how to have a successful Bible study on BT Dailies. And on this particular one, I want to help to encourage you to take the Bible and break it down into smaller sections. Do that, and you can begin to take it on one topic at a time, one section at a time, and you'll see, you'll be amazed at just how easy it is to understand in many ways, and it will make sense to you. 

But break it down, and concentrate sometimes on various topics, or on one subject. Take a particular doctrine, or even take a book of the Bible that you might want to read through and study, a book like Ruth, or Proverbs, or the book of Romans. Or take a topic like prayer, or faith, or the Kingdom of God, and do a word study through that using a concordance. Or, another very helpful Bible study aid that I highly recommend and have used all my life to study the Bible...it's called Nave's Topical Bible. It takes the Bible by topic, and it breaks it down, and you can look up most scriptures on just about any topic that is covered within the Bible: On prayer, on faith, on God, on Christ, on Jerusalem, whatever it might be. But break the Bible down by book, by topic, and you'll be amazed at how you can begin to understand and get a grasp of the tremendous value of this book of the ages to you, and it will allow you to understand what God is saying and telling you through this.

In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul says to a young minister, he says, "Be diligent to present yourself, approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the truth." Rightly dividing the truth. Divide the Bible up in terms of topics and small pieces of information. You'll be surprised at how it all begins to fall together

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.

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How to Understand the Bible

How to Understand the Bible

Millions of Bibles are sold or given away every year. It's the world's most popular book, but at the same time the most misunderstood! To many it's difficult to understand, yet the Bible itself gives us keys to understand it!

Darris McNeely

Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43 years. They have two sons, who are both married, and four grandchildren. Darris is the Associate Media Producer for the Church. He also is a resident faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center teaching Acts, Fundamentals of Belief and World News and Prophecy. He enjoys hunting, travel and reading and spending time with his grandchildren.