Developing a Study Plan

Introduction

This is Work

I labored even more (1 Cor. 15:10).

There are no natural talents when it comes to Bible study.

There are those who work hard at it and those who do not.

Do you want virtue or are you just looking for a hobby (2 Pet. 1:5)?

This a word that was used in athletic competition and the concept is still there today (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

The Hebrew writer chastises his audience for not being capable of understanding the connection between Melchizedek and Christ (Heb. 5:12-6:2).

But this is like school…YES, the kind that lasts the rest of your life.

This is going to take a lot of time! YES, if you are really good at anything, it takes time and devotion.

What are you willing to give in order to really know God’s word.

Read 150 year old literature and see what was considered common knowledge among the reading public. The most obscure references to Bible characters just sprinkled all along with every confidence that the audience would understand the reference.

Building Blocks

You need to start with some basic structure of the whole Bible.

Connective studies are very helpful.

Things that help you see the Bible as one connected piece of literature.

Things that help you break that literature up into manageable portions but also keep it locked together.

I recommend Bob and Sandra Waldron’s 17 time period approach.

It is like creating a filing cabinet.

This is a good concrete way to start.

Brother Waldron wrote two little booklets to help with this approach. One called the The 3 Cycle Approach and another called The Unfolding of God’s Plan.

This pairs well with the books Bob and Sandra wrote giving simple overviews of the whole Bible.

When you have that down, I strongly recommend memorizing chapter content.

1189 chapters in the Bible, just figure out what is in each one of those.

You will be tempted to skip steps like these so that you can hurry up and get to the “good stuff”.

But you need to be grounded and rooted in the basic knowledge of what is going on before you tread into the more complex territory of seeing and making grand connections.

If you are asked the question of how Melchizedek is connected to Christ and your answer is who is Melchizedek, then you will see the need to at least have the basic information in place.

The best time to put these in place is when we are children (Deut. 6:7-9).

But most of us are only get an extremely abbreviated portion of the Bible in our children’s classes.

Or worse, we are getting a humanistic moralized watered down version of the Bible.

So if you are grown up and don’t have the basic structure of the Bible in place, that is where you need to start.

Study with the Kind of Student You Want to Be