How To Study the Bible

By Andrea Lucado

According to the American Bible Society, nine out of ten households in America own a Bible. However, according to recent findings by LifeWay Research, over half of Americans (53 percent) have read relatively little of the Bible. And ten percent of that 53 percent have read none at all.

So, a lot of people in this country own a Bible, but only a few of them read it. This makes sense, considering another one of LifeWay’s findings: Only 37 percent of Americans find the Bible to be helpful today.

Why would you read something you don’t think applies to your life?

If you haven’t ever studied the Bible, it’s hard to understand why a story about a flood and an ark and a man named Noah would apply to your life today. Or what you could get out of a letter written by a guy named Paul to a group of people in ancient Rome.

But if you know how to study the Bible, you will see that these words written so long ago absolutely apply to your everyday life. They apply to how you parent, how you work, and how you interact with others. The Bible applies to how you feel about yourself and how you grow as a person, in life and in faith.

You just have to know how to read it.

Here’s the good news: Reading the Bible is much easier than you think. You don’t have to be a Greek or Hebrew scholar to understand it. You don’t have to be a pastor or in any form of ministry. The Word of God can be read and understood by anyone.

Follow these three steps as you read, and we believe you’ll find that the Bible is much more relevant to your life than you thought it was.

Observe

The first step is simply reading the text and noticing what you see. Who is talking? Where are they? Are they repeating any phrases or words?

You may want to underline things that sound important, but sitting with a passage of scripture and reading it two or three times through is really all you have to do to observe the text.

Interpret

This is where you’ll want to interpret what the writer is trying to say. Consider the audience he is writing to at the time. What would they be thinking of these words?

Do you have any questions about what the author is saying? Read the passages around it to see if they help give you any context clues. Interpretation digs a little deeper into what you’re reading. Some stories in the Bible are confusing at first, but if you can look at the context, in the Bible and in history, this can help you understand the meaning of the passage.

Apply

This is where the Word really starts to come to life. Observation and interpretation will lead you to the message or purpose of a passage, and application is where you ask, “How does this truth apply to me right now?”

For example, in John 6:1-14, Jesus takes a few loaves of bread and a few fish and multiplies them into enough food to feed a crowd of 5,000 men, plus women and children.

Without application, you may read that story and think, “Cool, Jesus performed a miracle.” But if you spent some time with the story (observation) and read some of the next verses (interpretation), like John 6:35, where Jesus explains, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,” you will see how applicable this passage is to your life today.

If Jesus is the bread of life, he was not only proving that he could meet the crowd’s physical needs; he was saying that he would meet their spiritual needs as well. The crowd did not go hungry that day, and we also, in Christ, do not have to go hungry. Whatever we need—love, grace, acceptance—he can provide.

This is the type of truth you uncover when you read the Bible. This is what makes it come alive. Go ahead. Open it up. See what you find.

John is a great place to start reading the Bible using the observation-interpretation-application method, and we have a study to help guide you along: The Gospel of John. All of our studies provide observation and interpretation questions with room for notes at the end of each section to write your own application.