Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)
One of the most important questions we as Christians ought to ask one another in conversation is, “What has God been teaching you?” There are so many benefits to asking this question! When I share with someone what I’m learning as I study the Bible, it reinforces what I’m learning and helps me remember it for myself. And of course, it edifies and builds up the other person who is listening to me. Any opportunity for God-honoring conversation can have an amazing impact in mutually strengthening the faith of Christians in fellowship!
The problem, however, is that people oftentimes don’t know how to answer the question. If I asked you the question, “What is God teaching you?”, would you be ready with an answer? Assuming that you’ve been reading your Bible in the first place, would you be ready to teach me what you yourself have been learning?
If your answer is “no”, then I want to encourage you that you absolutely can do it! It just takes a little bit of intentionality in terms of how you study the Bible. You can do it with just about any passage of Scripture, and you don’t need to follow any specific reading plan. What matters most is that you approach your Bible study time with the question, “How can I teach this?”
What I’d like to do now is give you a strategy that has been tremendously helpful for me in:
1. Condensing what I’m learning from the Bible.
2. Sharing with others how I am applying it in my personal life.
Let me begin by saying that you will need to have a pen and paper handy, or some device by which you can take notes. I personally like to use the notes app on my phone or Google Docs on my tablet computer. Having notes is essential, not only for organizing your thoughts, but also so you won’t need to teach from pure memory. Whenever there’s an opportunity to share what you’re learning, you can have notes that you can pull up ready to go!
With that being said, there’s a three-step process to utilize as you’re reading and taking notes.
Observe
Apply
Personalize
Let’s say you’re reading a psalm and one verse sticks out to you:
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)
The first step you’ll want to do is observe what the text is saying and write it down. Here, you get to be Captain Obvious, and that’s the point.
For Psalm 23:1, the observation I come to is:
David sees God as someone that cares and provides for him, just like a shepherd cares and provides for his sheep.
Sometimes, the observation won't always be that obvious. If that's the case, make sure you take the extra time to study and understand what a verse or section of Scripture means. Read the text in its original context to derive the meaning. Using a good Bible commentary in helping you study is also not a bad idea!
Once you’ve made your observation, now you can think about how someone today can apply the passage of Scripture to their life. The key is to derive your application from the observation.
For Psalm 23:1, an application I can write down is:
I can be confident and secure, knowing that God cares and provides for me, just like a shepherd cares and provides for his sheep.
Now it may be tempting to stop right there. After all that application is a pretty solid one that can encourage just about anybody. However, I want to urge you to go deeper! Personalize the application by thinking of your own real-life situations in which you can put the lesson into practice. Once again, make sure you write this in your notes.
To personalize Psalm 23:1:
I have a difficult decision coming up. Do I go to school and earn my master’s degree, or do I focus on starting a new career now and making extra money?
If the Lord is my shepherd, I can be at peace. Shepherds guide their flock exactly to where they need to go, so I can trust God my Shepherd to guide me exactly where I need to go.
What I’ve done in this example is take a biblical concept and make it relevant to a personal situation in my life. So if you ask me what God is teaching me, now I have something to offer you that is biblical, personal, and relatable.
So you see, it’s not so difficult! You can use this three-step process of Observe, Apply, and Personalize with all kinds of different passages in Scripture. What this does is give you a structure for organizing your study into notes. From these organized notes, you can have a very simple lesson to share with someone that can strengthen them in their faith.
I’ll give you one other example:
“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
Observation:
Jesus openly and freely expressed emotions of sadness.
Application:
If the Son of God wept, then it is okay and appropriate at times for me to cry and express my grief in times of pain.
Personalization:
I have been struggling with feelings of loneliness and rejection from other people. I don’t have to shove these feelings down and suppress them. It is okay for me to go before the Lord in tears and allow God’s Holy Spirit to comfort me.
A word of caution. As you study through the Scriptures and think about how you can apply and teach them, be careful of two things:
Don’t focus solely on teaching isolated Bible verses to the point where you neglect the larger story that the verses are a part of. “Jesus wept” is a powerful Bible verse all on its own. However, it is part of a larger story in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. The main idea and theme of that larger story ought not be neglected in your Bible study.
Be careful not to draw an application that lacks wisdom or would contradict other doctrines in the Bible. For example, we know that in the Old Testament, David danced naked before the Lord. But our application of that ought not be that it is appropriate to dance naked in public as a means of worship. Instead, we want to make the application appropriate to our context: David worshiped the Lord freely and confidently, so we too can worship God freely and confidently -- with our clothes on!
With all that being said, I think we can have a lot of fun studying the Scriptures when we consider how to teach it! Remember to take notes as you read your Bible. Remember to observe, apply, and personalize what you’re reading. And of course, remember to share what you are learning! I pray that your biblical studies are enriched and that your conversations with other believers are also enriched!
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)
