Welcome back to the Personal Bible Study Challenge at BibleBaton! Today in our study of Ephesians 6, we’re going to practice asking the RIGHT questions for Bible study. Scroll down to discover the 5 questions you should ask every time you open the Word of God!
Do you question the Word of God?
You SHOULD!
Before you worry that I’m telling you to doubt the Scriptures, let me clarify:
Asking questions during Bible study will help you understand the Word of God.
I’m not saying you should distrust the Bible. 😉 On the contrary, I want to help you understand the Bible when you study it. And I hope you’ll not only understand it, but believe it and apply it!!
In the last 3 posts in this Personal Bible Study Challenge, you’ve learned:
- How to read the Bible repeatedly
- 3 things to look for in the Bible
- 3 symbols that will unlock the meaning of the Bible
Today, we’re going to learn the 5 questions that you should ask every time you study the Bible. You can use these with any passage of Scripture, but we’ll practice them using Ephesians 6:10-12.
Use these 5 questions for Bible study.
You may recognize the 5 questions I recommend for Bible study. In fact, they’re the same questions that good reporters use to get a story:
- Who?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
- How?
There’s a reason reporters ask these questions, though—if you want to get to the “juicy stuff,” these are extremely effective questions to use.
And when we study the Bible, we definitely want to get to the juicy stuff!! 😉
Question #1: Who?
Perhaps the most important “who” questions to ask during Bible study are: “Who wrote this passage?” and “Who was this passage written to?”
You can also ask, “Who is mentioned in this passage?”
Try it! Read through Ephesians 6:10-20. Write your “who” questions for Ephesians 6:10-20 in a list on another page.
Question #2: When?
This question can do two major things for you during Bible study:
- It helps you know the mindset of the author and the original audience—so you understand the original meaning of the passage.
- It helps you understand how the principles from the passage can be applied today.
Suppose, for example, that you thought Ephesians was written around the same time as the book of Joshua. You might assume that the armor of God was a spiritual metaphor for actual Israelite warriors, or something crazy like that. But if you know that Ephesians was written during the church age, then you realize that the armor of God is for Christians like you! 🙂
So read through Ephesians 6:10-20 again. Add any “when” questions that come to mind to your list.
Question #3: Where?
Where was the author when he wrote this passage? Where were the people he wrote the passage for? Where did the events mentioned in the passage happen?
You can ask a lot of “where” questions! Read through Ephesians 6:10-20 again and see how many “where” questions you can ask.
Question #4: Why?
Take plenty of time to ask “why” questions during Bible study!
Why? 😉
Because “why” questions can lead you to major insights!!
Why does Ephesians relate spiritual characteristics like truth or faith to pieces of armor? Why is truth specifically associated with a belt? Why is the belt of truth the first piece of armor listed, and not the second or the last? Why does the list of armor end with a comment about prayer?
And that’s just a few “why” questions to get you started!
Read through Ephesians 6:10-20 and challenge yourself—how many “why” questions can you can come up with? Write them on your list.
And then, because you can usually come up with lots of “why” questions—and because they are so insightful—read the passage again and write any more “why” questions that come to mind.
Ask LOTS of “why” questions during Bible study!
Question #5: How?
Perhaps the most important “how” question you can ask is, “How does this apply to me?”
But there are plenty of other “how” questions you can ask before you get to how a passage applies. For example:
- How well did the author know his audience?
- How did the author know the things he was writing about?
- How does this passage fit into the rest of the book?
- How does the book fit into the rest of the Bible?
- How are the parts of the passage linked together?
- How does the rest of Scripture support the principles in this passage?
- Etc.!
Read through Ephesians 6:10-20 and write down any “how” questions you can think of.
But what about the answers?
After you’ve written your list of the 5 types of questions for Ephesians 6:10-20, set it aside somewhere you won’t lose it. In the next post in this Personal Bible Study Challenge, we’ll look at how to answer your questions for Bible study.
And happy studying! 😀
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