So when you look into that passage, there are five things that I’m gonna encourage you to do.
Now, I call these the five p of Bible study.
Let me tell you that these little peas as I call them have revolutionized the way I spend time with the Lord.
When I incorporate these five P into my personal Bible study, I without fail, hear God speaking to me through the pages of scripture, no matter what scripture I’m reading from the Old Testament to the New Testament.
I begin to have a dialogue with God and I know God’s spirit is personalizing His word to me.
So I want to share these five pieces with you because I think they’ll encourage you.
The first thing you need to do is position yourself to hear from God.
When you position yourself to hear from God, all that means is that you kind of pull away to a place where you won’t be distracted, our lives are so busy, everything is moving at so many MPH that we can barely keep our thoughts straight.
So if you can find a place that is a place where you can just be alone and find some quiet.
That’d be very helpful in the book of Habakkuk.
The prophet says, as I waited for God’s word is in Habakkuk chapter two, he said, I’ll position myself high on the watch tower.
So on the watch tower, it just meant that he was alone and he was quiet, he could have his eyes peeled for the king’s response to him.
Find a place that’s quiet. Listen, it might even be your car.
If you spend two hours a day in traffic, that’s a perfect sanctuary.
You can position yourself to hear from God in the car.
Even the second thing you want to do after you position yourself to hear from God.
So you’ve got your passage that you’re gonna ponder and you are somewhere where you can really concentrate.
The second thing you’re gonna do in our five ps is that you’re gonna pour over the passage and then paraphrase the major points.
Now, when you pour over the passage, it means that you don’t just scan it quickly.
We’re not after quantity here. We’re after quality of time in God’s word.
So that means when you pour over it, you meditate on the scriptures.
If it’s a story, put yourself in the story, how would it feel to be that person um Consider if there is a command that God is asking you to follow, if there’s a promise that He’s asking you to heed, really pour over it and take time meditating on it.
When you do, we’ve given you room in your workbook to then paraphrase the major principles from each of those verses that you’re reading.
So if you’ve got three verses, maybe for that day or two or maybe five, if you’ve chosen a passage that has that many, then listen, just, just write numbers down verse 1234 and five and then write a simple paraphrase for each verse.
You’re not trying to be brilliant or come up with anything new.
You’re just putting down briefly what the verse says.
Feel free to even use verses that are right there in the Bible itself, just paraphrase the major points of the verse.
The third p in our piece of Bible study is that after you paraphrase, now you want to pull out the spiritual principles from those paraphrases.
So you simply now want to spiritualized the the points that you just wrote down on paper.
What is it that you think God might be trying to teach through those paraphrases through those scriptures?
Again, is there a command to follow? Is there a promise to heed?
Is there an attribute or a characteristic of God that he’s trying to reveal to you about himself?
Is there something that is to be learned from those um those verses of scripture, pull out the spiritual principles after you pull out the spiritual principles.
The fourth piece of Bible study is that you want to pose the question.
This means that you just look at your spiritual principles and turn them into the form of a personally directed question.
Ask yourself, am I heeding that command? Am I following that directive? Am I heeding that promise?
Do I believe that God is who he says? He is in this portion of scripture?
You’re just gonna ask yourself some questions. And for me, this is where the rubber meets the road.
When I start asking myself these questions, inevitably, a fine dialogue starts within me.
The Holy Spirit of God begins to challenge me and even bring up questions that I didn’t even think to ask myself.
There are more questions that come to me. I write those down and I begin to record the answers.
You’ll be surprised how quickly and easily you can begin to hear God’s spirit speaking to you through scripture.
And when he speaks, you need to know that he doesn’t just speak to be heard.
He always speaks to be obeyed.
And so the fifth p of Bible study is that we need to plan obedience and pin down a date to obey if you’ve been challenged or convicted or encouraged by God’s spirit through His word.
As you go through this Bible study to do something specific or to stop doing something or to begin a process in something, then plan strategize how you can obey.
Listen, we’re on a battlefield. The enemy is out to keep us from living in God’s will to keep us from being obedient.
So you and I have got to be equally strategic about planning how it is that we’re going to do what it is that God is calling us to do.