Once you stand up from your study, your goal is not to leave those truths in the Bible, but to carry them away inside of your heart for a life time. One of the best ways to solidify truth in your heart is to meditate on it throughout the day. Biblical study is also not simply a devotional and spiritual exercise. Bible study also requires that we love God with all of our minds, which means we also need mental and cognitive tools to be able to extract Biblical data from the text as well.

One of the saddest truths in the American church is that we have so many resources to study and learn the Bible and yet there is so much Biblical illiteracy. This article is my humble attempt to equip Christ’s church to study the Word. I want everyone who reads this post to feel encouraged and equipped to study the Bible with an easy “step by step” guide that will aid and enrich their time in Scripture. May the Lord be praised as we study His Word!
What is Bible Study?
Bible study is a lot like paleontology. The first step is to go out into the field with all of your tools and begin collecting the raw material. You carefully dig through the sand, sediment, rock, and earth to collect bones, fragments of bones, and fossils that you will one day examine, assemble, and put on display for the world to see. In the same way, Bible study begins with specific tools that are designed to help you collect the raw Biblical data (This is called the Observation Phase). Once you have that data, you will examine it and attempt to assemble it into meaningful and coherent thoughts (This is called the Interpretation Phase). And then, once you have some concrete thoughts on what the passage means, you will begin displaying that truth so that you and also others can benefit from what you learned (This is called the Application Phase).
With that example in mind, let us consider the three phases of Bible study, beginning with the Observation Phase.
Step 1: The Observation Phase
As we said above, there are specific tools that are going to help you extract the Biblical data from the text. Remember, this is not just an academic exercise but also a spiritual exercise. So, let us begin by sharing some tools that will help you engage with the Bible spiritually.
The Spiritual Tools for Observation
Spiritual Tool 1: Read the Passage 10 Times
This may sound like an arbitrary number, but reading the passage multiple times will peel back various layers and help you get to the heart of the text. My recommendation is to use various faithful translations of the Bible (like the ESV, NASB, KJV, etc.) and then read the passage in each of these different translations. As you do that, like a good paleontologist, jot down notes in your journal. Take note of differences and word changes between the translations. Note questions you have about the text. Jot down any new insights that you gain or see. And then move on to the next step.
Spiritual Tool 2: Pray Through the Passage
What you want to do is read a few words and then turn those words into a prayer to God. For example, in Psalm 23 it says: “The Lord is my Shepherd”. Take those words and pray them back to God like this: “Lord, thank you for being the one who leads me, protects me, is guiding me, and looking after me like a good and faithful shepherd. I am like that poor sheep that keeps falling off cliffs and getting stuck in large cracks, but you are always faithful to find me and keep me safe”.
Once you have spent some time in prayer, move on to the next tool which is confession
Spiritual Tool 3: Confess Through the Passage
The goal of Bible study is not dead knowledge, but a thriving relationship with the living God. And in that relationship we need repentance. It is the lifeblood of serious devotion and no serious relationship can survive without it. By repentance we mean acknowledging our sin to God, asking God to help us kill that sin, and then turning away from it in courage to a life without that sin. Here are some pointers for you as you do that.

As you read the passage, list any sins that your Bible passage exposes. Sometimes those sins will be spelled out explicitly in the text and sometimes the Holy Spirit will use implicit truths to reveal your sin to you. However this happens, take an account of what the Spirit is revealing to you.

Take a moment and confess that sin(s) to the Lord in prayer.

Remember that Jesus has triumphed over this specific sin on the cross.

Remember that the Spirit has raised you to new life and has given you the power to
make war with this specific sin.

THEREFORE, repent and turn away from this sin, lay it down, and ask the Lord to help
you stay away from it moving forward.

Spiritual Tool 4: Worship Through the Passage
Remember that you have been forgiven. When you lay your sin down and repent from it, resist the temptation to remain in sullen shame, but instead celebrate the forgiveness you have in Jesus! Praise Him. Sing a song of victory. Let your heart be stirred that your sins have not been counted against you because they were poured out on Christ. And as you see that, let your love and affections be multiplied for your savior who loved you so much to be treated as you have deserved.
Spiritual Tool 5: Journal Through the Passage
A journal is one of the most important tools you will have. Not only should you record any questions you have, or the list of sins you will be repenting of, but you should also write down some initial thoughts about the passage. What do you think it means? What are the implications for your life concerning this passage? And even be thinking about ways you could communicate this truth to others.
Spiritual Tool 6: Meditate Through the Passage
Once you stand up from your study, your goal is not to leave those truths in the Bible, but to carry them away inside of your heart for a life time. One of the best ways to solidify truth in your heart is to meditate on it throughout the day. Here are some tips for you as you practice this discipline.

Revisit the thoughts on lunch break.

Set an alarm to read through your journal or pray through the thoughts you discovered.

Calendar a reminder to think through the questions you still have.

Try seeing situations in your day where you can implement the truths you discovered that morning.

Try avoiding things in your day which will tempt you back into old patterns of sin

Pray for a real opportunity to share these truths with someone else.

The above 6 items are very helpful tools that will get you thinking spiritually about the text. BUT, Biblical study is also not simply a devotional and spiritual exercise. Bible study also requires that we love God with all of our minds, which means we also need mental and cognitive tools to be able to extract Biblical data from the text as well. So, below I list out some tools that will help you study the Bible academically.
NOTE: Not every tool is the right tool for every text. Some may be helpful in one scripture but not very helpful in another. With time you will learn how to intuitively employ each of these tools, but for the time I want to list them out so you will have them and can begin using them.
The Study Tools for Observation
Study Tool 1: Identify Key Terms
With this first tool, you will seek to identify key words, phrases, parts of speech (like nouns, adjectives, and verbs) and any word that sticks out to you in the text. For instance, in John 6:44 it says:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them”.

With this verse, you could grab a journal and list the following key terms with a few words of explanation as to why these particular terms stood out to you.

“No one” (Noun) – All humans have a fundamental inability caused by sin.

“Can come” (Verb) – That renders our actions incapable of getting us to God on our own.

“To me” (Preposition) – The only hope of salvation is through coming to Christ and we are incapable of this on our own.

“Unless” (Conjunction) – God provides a condition that could allow us to come to Jesus.

“Father” (Proper Noun) – That condition is that God can use His perfect ability to choose us in our inability.

“Draws” (Verb) – The way God chooses us and gets us to Jesus is by dragging us to Christ… Since, we were so unwilling and stuck in our sin, praise God He grabbed and dragged us to Christ!

Study Tool 2: Identify Authorial Emphasis
With your journal, jot down a few notes on why you think the author is writing this and what the author is trying to emphasize to us. What is the underlying theme of this passage? And why is that important?
Study Tool 3: Identify Repeated Words
Sometimes, an author reveals his intended emphasis by repeating a word and using it multiple times in a passage. For instance, in John 8, Jesus and the Pharisees are engaged in a detailed argument. And as you read it, it would be easy to get lost in the mix of the details and miss the overarching point of what is going on. To avoid that trap, we look for repeated words and see that the word “father” and other familial words like that are used 8-10 times in this chapter. As we look more closely at the word Father and how John is using it in John 8, we see that both the Pharisees and Jesus are claiming God as their Father and both are appealing to various evidences to prove it. This lets us know that the passage is about who has a true relationship with God? Is it the one claiming to be the Son of God? Or is it the religious leaders who claim to speak for God? Once we know that this is the authors emphasis, we can see how Christ is the only solution!
Study Tool 4: Identify Cause and Effect Relationships
Whenever one event causes a particular response you have a cause and effect relationship. And these can be incredibly important whenever you see them and you should get into the habit of noticing them and noting them in your journal. For instance, look at Romans 8:28, which says:

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

In this passage God is promising to call men and women according to His purpose and bless them with His good. The point is very simple, if we have been called by God unto salvation (The cause) then everything must and will work out for our good (God’s desired effect). Knowing this will encourage us as we look at situations in our life that do not feel good, but in some way, are good and are working good according to the Father. Knowing this will allow us to lay down our definition and expectation of good and accept His.
Study Tool 5: Identify If / Then Relationships
This is a specific kind of cause and effect relationship called an “if / then” relationship, which is much simpler to identify. Essentially it looks like this: “If____ happens, then ____ will be the result.
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There has definitely been an acceleration in the trend towards individualised discipleship.  Some people simply feel like they don’t need others, they are flock-less sheep, and there is a danger that as churches and church leaders we’ve fed this as we have taught God’s word unawares through the lens of individualism, through individualistic application of corporate passages, through underplaying the role of the church and discipleship that is corporate not privatised. But that has profound consequences for how we live and how we relate to the bible. 

Over the last century or so a force has arisen that has been so significant that it now holds us all in its grip and we’re largely unaware of it.  It is so hardwired into our brains that it’s the natural way we think and view everything, it even impacts how we read the bible, teach and apply the Bible.  That force is radical individualism and its legacies are legion.  But I just want to focus on the way this is playing out in the way we approach lost sheep – those who drift from church having professed faith but who would still maintain they are Christians. That spiritually they are fine because they read their bible and pray without being part of a church.
In Matthew 18v12-14 Jesus tells the well-known story of a shepherd who has 100 sheep but realises there are only 99 in the flock; one is missing.  This is where illustrators and storytellers and pastors have not helped us with what Jesus is teaching.   How do you picture the lost sheep?  He’s tangled in thorn bushes, wandering unawares towards a cliff, or oblivious to the wolves with glowering hungry yellow eyes and slathering jaws gathering in the woods in the background isn’t he?  But none of that is in the story – the sheep is just lost.  And that’s the point Jesus is making; it’s being lost that is the greatest peril.   The greatest danger is our lostness. 
Unlike in Luke where the focus of a similar story in a different context is used evangelistically to show God’s joy in the lost found, here in Matthew it’s used in the context of the church Christ inaugurates.  It is separation from the flock and the safety of the shepherd’s care that is the danger.  For believers there is danger in being separate from the flock, there doesn’t need to be any additional dangers, bring isolated from the church is enough of a danger that it ought to be sounding alarms.
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The question of whether an indictment should be brought for an offense committed in the distant past, is, and should be, a matter of judgment and discretion for the original court — regardless of whether the offense was personal or general, private or public (BCO 29).   Granted, the court might decide that commencing process for an alleged offense in the distant past would be unfair to the accused (for various reasons) or even too challenging for effective prosecution.

This article provides seven brief reasons why the 48th General Assembly’s recommendation is wise, and why Presbyteries should vote to approve the proposed revision to BCO 32-20.
At the July 2021 PCA GA in St. Louis, the Overtures Committee voted 95-22 to recommend the GA approve a revision to BCO 32-20 (below).  The Assembly, which may have been divided on many other votes, overwhelmingly approved this recommendation on a simple, hands-raised vote.
Proposed New BCO 32-20.  The accused or a member of the court may object to the consideration of a charge, for example, if he thinks the passage of time since the alleged offense makes fair adjudication unachievable.  The court should consider factors such as the gravity of the alleged offense as well as what degradations of evidence and memory may have occurred in the intervening period.
Before giving reasons why the proposed revision should be adopted, we note a September 7 article in The Aquila Report misquoted the above text of the GA’s proposed revision.  It quoted the original Overture instead of the amended text adopted by the GA.  The misquote included a different and additional first sentence, which was deleted by the GA.
Below are a some of the many reasons to approve the revision, a few of which were included in the original Overture.

Expeditious judicial process is important, especially in a case of public scandal. Nothing in the proposed revision would hinder or delay process.  In fact, it could expedite it.
The current version of BCO 32-20 prohibits judicial process against a scandalous offender if process doesn’t commence within a year of the alleged offence. While that might encourage expeditious process, it has a huge downside.  If the cause of Christ is jeopardized by the Church’s neglect of timely discipline, how would disallowing prosecution on day 366 repair the matter?  The scandal would continue, unabated. And one might even argue, from our current BCO 32-20, that a higher court could not institute process in a case of scandal after a year has passed if the original, lower court declined to do so within that year.
The current wording of BCO 32-20 might even be used to shield a child abuser. For example, if a person alleges a church officer abused them two years ago, the accused might claim BCO 32-20 shields him from prosecution, contending that because the alleged offense occurred two years ago, and was not publicly known (not a case of scandal), and has not “recently become flagrant,” the current BCO 32-20 disallows prosecution in the PCA.
The two SJC Decisions cited in the September 7 article did not involve cases of scandal. Each involved ministers seeking to get convictions dismissed, partly on the grounds that the alleged offenses occurred more than one year in the past. In other words, they essentially argued for a hard one-year statute of limitations for all offenses.  Surely that’s not the biblical view, and if that’s the way BCO 32-20 is being interpreted, then it warrants revision.  It was probably an overstatement for the September 7 article to contend: “The Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) found the present wording in BCO 32-20 useful in deciding a number of recent cases.”  Sometimes, the SJC is compelled to rule a certain way based on a poorly written BCO paragraph.  Neither of the cited SJC Decisions should automatically be interpreted as the SJC regarding BCO 32-20 as being well-written or “useful.”
Three items from the September 7 article warrant brief comment. First, it implied the 2021 Assembly approved the revision hastily, late into the night.  But Overture 22 was filed and published online in March 2019, so St. Louis GA Commissioners had over two years to consider and discuss it.  In fact, the overturing Presbytery revised it after such discussions in 2019 and 2020.  Second, the article contends the GA’s recommended revision, “leaves the question of what constitutes a timely matter to uncertain whims of individual church courts resulting in differing actions based on undefined variables.”  Such a statement mistakenly suggests that the bodies assigned by our Lord to the enormous task of judging guilt or innocence are somehow incapable of just judgment in such a lesser consideration. Finally, the September 7 article contends presbyteries should “vote down the proposed amendment and seek an amendment that better addresses the valid concerns raised in the original overture.”  But the current, 140-year-old antiquated language in BCO 32-20 is so liable to misuse that it should be revised as soon as possible. If further refinements are needed, there’s ample opportunity to perfect the language with future overtures.
The question of whether an indictment should be brought for an offense committed in the distant past, is, and should be, a matter of judgment and discretion for the original court — regardless of whether the offense was personal or general, private or public (BCO 29). Granted, the court might decide that commencing process for an alleged offense in the distant past would be unfair to the accused (for various reasons) or even too challenging for effective prosecution. And the accused could raise that objection.
Finally, the St. Louis Overtures Committee had many ministers and elders experienced in matters related to BCO 32-20, including 10 members of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission (i.e., 40% of the entire SJC, including all four of its Officers). If there had been procedural concerns with this revision, the SJC members certainly would have brought it to the attention of the OC, which they did not.  The Overtures Committee approved the revision by an 81% majority.

It would be wise and prudent for Presbyteries to vote in favor of this proposed revision of BCO 32-20.
Howie Donahoe is a Ruling Elder in Boise Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho.