Deep Bible Study

Even if you don’t have to be a scholar to study the Bible, how can you study the Bible deeply?

Pray: It’s impossible to overstate the importance of prayer as bookends to (and bookmarks throughout) your Bible study time. Ellen G. White tells us that when we come to read the Bible, we are not alone. By inviting the Holy Spirit to be our guide, we reject all other distractions, and the enemy flees. “The Bible should never be studied without prayer. The Holy Spirit alone can cause us to feel the importance of those things easy to be understood, or prevent us from wrestling truths difficult of comprehension.”—The Great Controversy, pp. 599, 600.

Read and Write: It could be said that a main difference between merely reading the Bible and studying it comes down to one key act: writing. Writing helps us slow down our thoughts, reflect on God’s Word, and work through it at a pace where observation, interpretation, application, and commitment can occur. It also helps our initial scattered ideas to work themselves out—from our head, to our pen, and then into our hearts for the day. We are also more likely to remember something that we’ve written down (Ps. 119:15, 16). If you’re unable to write your thoughts down, try reading the Bible aloud (or listening to it), followed by your thoughts as a prayer to God.

Share: Tell someone what you’ve learned. This will solidify it in your mind and encourage someone else.

Select a short book of the Bible to begin with (such as Jonah, Mark, Philippians, or 1 John), and slowly work your way through it. Here is a simple approach you can apply to one verse (the verse-by-verse method), a passage, or an entire chapter:

1. Pray that the Holy Spirit will guide your mind and soften your heart as you read.

2. Choose a Bible verse or passage.

3. Write the passage in a journal or portions of the passage that stand out as you read.

4. Prayerfully read the passage again and underline the key ideas.

5. Write down what the underlined ideas tell you.

6. Pray over these ideas and how they impact your relationship with God.

7. Consider whom you might share this with today.

“Whenever the people of God are growing in grace, they will be constantly obtaining a clearer understanding of His word. They will discern new light and beauty in its sacred truths. This has been true in the history of the church in all ages, and thus it will continue to the end.”—Ellen G. White, Counsels to Writers and Editors, pp. 38, 39.

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Additional Reading: Selected Quotes from Ellen G. White

For the mind and the soul, as well as for the body, it is God’s law that strength is acquired by effort. It is exercise that develops. In harmony with this law, God has provided in His Word the means for mental and spiritual development.
The Bible contains all the principles that men need to understand in order to be fitted either for this life or the life to come. And these principles may be understood by all. No one with a spirit to appreciate its teaching can read a single passage from the Bible without gaining from it some helpful thought. But the most valuable teaching of the Bible is not to be gained by occasional or disconnected study. Its great system of truth is not so presented as to be discerned by the hasty or careless ­reader. . . . The truths that go to make up the great whole must be searched out and gathered up, “here a little, and there a little” (Isaiah 28:10).
When thus searched and brought together, they will be found to be perfectly fitted to one another. Each Gospel is a supplement to the others, every prophecy an explanation of another, every truth a development of some other truth. The types of the Jewish economy are made plain by the gospel. Every principle in the Word of God has its place, every fact its bearing. And the complete structure, in design and execution, bears testimony to its Author. Such a structure no mind but that of the Infinite could conceive or fashion.
In searching out the various parts and studying their relationship, the highest faculties of the human mind are called into intense activity. No one can engage in such study without developing mental power.
And not alone in searching out truth and bringing it together does the mental value of Bible study consist. It consists also in the effort required to grasp the themes presented. The mind occupied with commonplace matters only, becomes dwarfed and enfeebled. If never tasked to comprehend grand and far-reaching truths, it after a time loses the power of growth. As a safeguard against this degeneracy, and a stimulus to development, nothing else can equal the study of God’s Word.
As a means of intellectual training, the Bible is more effective than any other book, or all other books combined. . . . No other study can impart such mental power as does the effort to grasp the stupendous truths of revelation. The mind thus brought in contact with the thoughts of the Infinite cannot but expand and strengthen.—Reflecting Christ, pp. 161, 162.