Pondering II

 This post is a follow up to a previous post, titled Ponder, in which was discussed the importance of meditative reading. You may recall the quote, "We should spend 50% of our time reading the Bible in meditative reading. Stop, listen, consider, and pray." The purpose of this successive post is to present one (of many) ways to study the Bible. 

II Tim. 2:15 instructs the Christian to "study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Pondering the Word of God includes studying. This is a skill which matures throughout the life of a Christian. Outlined next is a resource many Believers have found extremely helpful for systematically studying Scripture. 

Observation, Interpretation, Application (OIA) is an excellent, yet simple method for studying the Bible. Quickly summarized, observation is pulling obvious facts out of the text, interpretation is discovering what the text means, and application is finding how to personally apply the text. (Dust off all those handy Bible resource books you got for confirmation and put them to use!) Here is a great resource to better explain the OIA method.

Diving deep into the Word of God yields rich rewards. Regardless of how you study God's written Word, I pray you won't be satisfied with simply reading the text. After you commit to digging deeper, I pray you will:
1) Ask the Holy Spirit to "guide you into all truth", opening your heart to His hidden treasures.
2) Dig deep. Use resources to help you better understand the historical, geographical, cultural, lingual, etc, setting.
3) Ask the Lord for grace to apply and live out His truths.