How to Study the Bible by Yourself (Easy Method for Beginners) To help me understand and process what I read in the scriptures, I found it useful to use Bible study templates, such as those in The Quiet Time Toolkit. Ask God for wisdom and grace to know what areas of your life need to be cut out in order to have time for Bible study. While you certainly don't need sophisticated supplies or anything extraordinary to study the Bible, you might want to see how these study materials can improve your daily quiet time. When I started studying the scriptures, I would stumble out of bed, open my Bible to a random verse and call it one day.
Also, every time I try to figure out how to understand the Bible on a particular topic, I always leave this step to the end, because I want my beliefs to be shaped first by the scriptures, not by the way other people interpret them. After you have started studying the Bible in chapters, paragraphs or verses, you are ready to study the Bible by book. I even spent a lot of time reading the scriptures, reading Christian books, and attending Bible studies for beginners. Another exercise that can be incredibly useful while learning to study the Bible for beginners is to read several biblical commentaries on the key verses you are reading.
The “old” LIVING BIBLE (made by Kenneth Taylor) was a paraphrase, but the NLT (New Living Translation) is a real translation, on the same thought-by-thought level as the NIV, and was translated by a large contingent of biblical scholars. I tend to study how to better understand the Bible when I have a specific question about something I'm reading or if I have a question about the right decision to make in a given circumstance not every day. I wrote it more for a beginning audience (article on the SOAP Bible Study Method), but I plan to write a follow-up once those readers have a chance to try the method themselves. A study Bible can help you shed light on what is happening in the book, the culture of the time, and understand how one verse or passage fits into the rest of the book or the entire Bible.
Whether you're just starting out or looking for new ways to approach your Bible study, let's take a look at some study methods to consider.
