How I STUDY the BIBLE (My Note-Taking Method + QUIET TIME Tips)

hey everyone and welcome back to my youtube channel so when I first started this back to the beginning of the year I sent out a request here on youtube and also on Instagram asking for ideas the video topics you might want to see for me and the one request I got more than any other was to do sort of a Bible journaling how I study my Bible type video so that is the video I'm finally making today we'll just jump right into it so to be honest I was a little bit nervous / intimidated to make this video just because when it comes to reading our Bibles it's a super important topic and I worried that I might show how I do it and it might not be the right way but then I realized that that's the exact opposite of what I'm hoping to convey with this video this idea that there's a way that it's supposed to look because I think that sometimes that very idea that reading our Bible is supposed to look a certain way or it's supposed to feel a certain way ends up creating this pressure that ultimately prevents us from reading it at all and I just want to remind you that that pressure that reading our Bible is supposed to look a certain way or we're supposed to feel a certain way when we do it that pressure is not from God that pressure is from the one who will do anything to keep us from God because he knows the power that Sam when we do spend time in God's words so I'm gonna be sharing what it looks like for me to study my Bible but keep in mind that this might look different for different people and that's totally okay the important thing is is that your Bible reading looks a certain way the important thing is that you're reading it at all and so as I share what it looks like for me my hope is that it might spark ideas but that as you really dig into it you'll find sort of a method and a rhythm that works for you so before I get started I want to share two analogies and one acronym that I find super helpful and super encouraging when it comes to thinking about reading our Bibles the first of those is a food analogy and basically the analogy is to say that reading your Bible is sort of like eating food there's going to be some meals that are super memorable that you really enjoy that you think about and that you can't wait to have again for me when I think about that what comes to mind is Benihana's every year for my birthday dinner my family and I go out to Benihana and I get steak and lobster and it's so good and I always remember it and I get excited for the next time that we get to go but plenty of other times my meal just might be a PB&J for lunch or something that's not super memorable that two weeks from now I'm not even gonna remember what it was I had for lunch today but that's the thing not every meal is going to be this hugely memorable experience but I'll surely notice the effects if I don't eat anything at all and it's the same thing with reading our Bibles I think that sometimes we're seeking after this grand emotional experience where we hit this spiritual high and we just had these crazy insights and that ends up actually just waiting us from reading our Bible at all because maybe we read it and we don't feel anything or we don't come away with any crazy spiritual insight and so we feel like we're doing something wrong and we decide that we're just not gonna do it at all but I just want to say that it's okay to read your Bible and to not feel anything and in fact I think that's how many of your meals are gonna go but we shouldn't stop eating just because not every meal is that steak and lobster amazing meal I think that keeping at those PB&J sandwiches on a daily basis is a discipline and when we're disciplined in doing that day in and day out our birthday dinner moments are going to come to you just remember that not every time you read your Bible is going to be this grand emotional memorable experience but your art will surely notice the impact if you don't have any handle this type of analogy is water on a stone I love this one so I grew up going to Hume Lake every year it's a Christian camp I went there for a summer camp with my church and I now go as a counselor with the same youth group but when I was a camper one of the things that my friends and I used to love to do is we would go to this spa on the lake called The Cove The Cove was basically this little inlet of rocks that you could climb up to the top of and then slide down like a waterslide because they were super smooth and super slippery but if you think about it how do those stones become smooth those stones didn't become smooth because one drop of water hit them one time no those stones became smooth because water was continually rushing over them smoothing out the rugged edges and making them into a smooth stone though we could slide down like a water slide and the same is true with reading our Bibles I think that sometimes we read our Bible one time or two times and we feel like nothing has changed or it didn't make it friends or we don't feel any different and so again we get discouraged from even trying it all but the same thing that's true with this stone is truth reading our Bible the change happens in that consistency when we continually show up day by day on the days we feel it and on the days we don't feel anything at all but we continually show up over time as we're immersing ourselves in God's Word and reading it daily it's transforming us into people who know God more who love him more and who are being changed more into his likeness lastly is an acronym that I heard in a message recently that describes the Bible and I think it's just so important to think about it in this context and the acronym is scanned so the first letter and that is X and it stands for sufficient meaning that God's Word isn't that the second letter of that acronym is C clear that God's Word is clear it is not ambiguous the third letter is a and that stands for authoritative that God's Word is the final word and the final authority in our lives and the final word is n which stands for necessary that if we want to know God that God's Word is necessary in that pursuit because God's Word is God's revelation of himself to us reading God's Word is how we come to know God more deeply and we also can't truly know ourselves apart from God's Word being the Bible changes everything and so as much as I hope this video might have some good tips or advice for you really at the end of the day what I want and hope for more than anything else is that this video would simply encourage you to get into God's Word to just show up to it daily to cultivate a love for His Word because that's going to change everything in a way that nothing else can so let me show you what that looks like for me first off I want to show you the different resources I would typically use as a part of a quiet time first and foremost obviously is the Bible I use a single column ESV journaling Bible from The Daily Grace Co and I will link it below so you can see where to get this one but it's got a leather cover a cool little wraparound strap thing and ESV refers to the translation so this is an English standard version and the single column means that there is one column of text as opposed to two and journaling Bible means that there's space for taking notes and for journaling here on the sides so next up is a journal I'll usually just grab one at Barnes & Noble whenever I finish my old one and it's always to pick out a new journal and this is just blink lines for you to process through things a label sometimes take sermon notes in here are just different things I have also been loving this scribe Bible journal you might have seen me post about this on Instagram but I think this is just an awesome tool in terms of studying God's Word getting into the Bible every day it has you write down the scripture you're reading for the day it has a space for observation and interpretation as well as application I also really love that it has you write down a smart action so something that you're gonna resolve to do as a result of what you read that day and that's really helpful just in terms of moving something from being something that might encourage you or impact you in the moment but just something that can play out and and impact you through the rest of your day also space to write down a prayer memory verse and something you're thankful for so that subscribe Bible journal I also use these gel highlighters again from the Daily Grace Co all link them below and I love these because again they're gel highlighter so they're specifically made for the thin pages of the Bible so that they won't bleed through also just have pens this one is also from the Daily Grace Co but again anything that's just not super heavy that's gonna bleed through your pages when you write on it in just a quick little example of how I'll use my highlighters some people have color codes or different colors mean different things I don't really do that I kind of just use whatever color I happen to have on me but what I will use the colors for is to connect notes to different verses especially if I have a bunch of different notes ii say okay this note was about this verse because they're both in yellow this was about this one cuz they're both in blue I also think it's super important to have a plan when I don't have a plan I kind of find myself just poking around and not really staying consistent with reading my Bible but when I have a plan and I wake up and I know what the plan is as far as what I'm going to read that day that really helps with consistency the one I've been using right now is the grace to you app it has a little space for daily Bible and so it's basically a Bible in a year reading plan and just for an example today it has me reading through a portion of first kings it has me reading through a psalm of Proverbs and then also a portion of the Gospel of John and what I really love about this is that again it gives you the plan but it also gives you a commentary so for each of the different passages you're that day it has a commentary right there built into the app which is super helpful another plan I've used in the past that I really like is the Bible project and so they actually do a Bible in a year plan as well and then they also do YouTube videos for each book of the Bible sort of breaking it down giving you context helping you understand it now for what I do during a quiet time so I'll just start by saying that I like to do my quiet times in the morning I don't think this is the time that you have to do it or you're supposed to do it but for me I've just found that that's when it works best because if I can have God's Word be the first thing sort of influencing my mind in the morning then it's gonna be God's Word that's telling my thoughts where to go I just found that if I do it later in the day or do something else first then what's gonna happen is something else is gonna tell my thoughts were to go my to-do list is going to tell me to be rushed and stressed out if I start my day with social media and the highlight reels of other people's lives that's gonna tell me to try to prove and measure up and to try to be more or little inconveniences that arise throughout the day will end up telling me to be irritable and unkind and frustrated but if I start my day in God's Word I'm orienting my heart toward who he is who I am in light of that and just remembering what my ultimate purpose is as I go about my day sometimes if I have a lot on my mind I'll start by just praying and sort of processing through it and that's where my journal comes in handy because I found for me the best way to pray without getting distracted is to write out my prayers so there's a lot of my mind all sometimes start and just praying through that regardless so I'll always pray before reading my Bible just a simple prayer asking God to speak to me to reveal himself to me and I'll also respond in prayer throughout just as I read different things and also when I'm done so once I've done that I basically just start in with reading through my plan for the day and the biggest piece of advice I could give you in doing that is to just notice the different thoughts that might arise you might wonder hmmm I wonder why that word is used so many times or I wonder what that word means or why they use that particular story I know for me in the past when those thoughts would come to mind I used to sort of just brush them off I might think I wonder about that but then I would just keep going because I was trying to get through my reading for the day but I just want to remind you that the point isn't just to get through God's Word the point is to get God's Word through you point of reading the Bible is to know God more deeply and I think oftentimes it's those little questions or those little thoughts that come to mind that when we ask them can ultimately bring us to a place of deeper understanding of who God is or what he's trying to communicate through a certain passage I think that oftentimes the Holy Spirit is at work in those little thoughts that come to mind wanting to guide us to something that he's trying to speak to us and so when those come to mind stop look up the definition of the word search out a commentary as to why that story is being shared and I think that it'll lead you to something new that you'll discover about God so I want to give you some examples of what it looks like for me to engage the text in that way and that brings us to the Bible journaling portion the first thing I might notice as I'm reading through the Bible is a word that's repeated a lot and so if you watched my first youtube video you probably know the example I'm going to talk about from mark 1 but I was reading through this a couple months back and I started to notice that the word immediately was being used a lot and so I started to racket it off whenever I saw the word and I counted and it was actually used nine times in one chapter and it got to the point where it's repeated use was just so obvious that I stopped while I was reading to Google why is immediately used so much in mark and that's when I ended up finding out that one of marks goals in writing this gospel was to highlight the fact that Jesus was here and not just of his own accord but on mission to do the work of the Father and that there was an urgency to his mission that there was no time to waste and there was so much I gleaned from that again my whole first youtube video is basically about that and that was all from noticing the fact that the word immediately is used a bunch I could have just been reading through noticed that and brushed it off not thought anything of it and I would have missed so much of what's happening in this gospel another thing I might notice and journal about here in the columns of my Bible is the definition of a word so a while back I was listening to a sermon by John MacArthur and he was talking about how sometimes God uses difficult situations in our lives to Humble us and then the very next day I was reading through Deuteronomy chapter 8 and it's talking about how one of the purposes of the Israelites wilderness journey where they're waiting to enter the Promised Land is that God was using that to humble that so this concept of being humbled kept coming up and I felt like God was trying to show me that he was using a certain situation in my life to Humble me but I didn't see how I was being prideful in that situation and so I'm reading through this and I decided to look up the word humble and its definition was pretty much what I thought it was gonna be but then I was like okay what is the opposite of humility as pride and so I looked up the definition of the word pride and as soon as I looked up the definition I saw exactly how I was being prideful in this situation and I was able to thank God for exposing that in me and also thank him because I knew that the fact that he was exposing that in me was also evidence of the fact that he was already working to root that out in me so I was able to write that down acknowledge that and just pray that God would continue to work that out in me so that's another thing I would do is to write down definitions of words and I would actually say that this is especially important for words that we think we know the meaning of because I think sometimes with words that we hear all the time that we're familiar with we sort of just assume we know what they mean but if we actually look up the definition of them we might find something new that might show us something about God or something about ourselves like it did for me in this situation another thing I'll often jot down in my Bible is a prayer and I find myself doing this especially a lot in the Psalms so for example if I come across the song that's talking about David saying that he pants for the word of God like a deer pants for water I might circle that and underline it and just say God give me that same thirst for your word and and maybe date it there or I'll come across a promise in scripture like commit your way to the Lord trust in him and he will act and put a date there again so the next time I come across this passage I can see how God has fulfilled that promise or if he hasn't yet to continue to pray for the fulfillment of it or just see how God has answered that prayer to give me a deeper thirst for his word and so that's another thing I'll do a lot is write short little prayers or just dates next to different scriptures also sometimes write sections of notes from the commentary I read from that grace to you app that help me understand what's happening in the text a little bit better so in this passage Absalom is conspiracy it's talking about something he did that wasn't good and I didn't really understand the first time I was reading it why it wasn't great but then in the commentary it's kind of breaking down that the texts of that culture and just understanding why what he did was wrong and how it was seeking an opportunity in like a selfish way and so I wrote just those notes from the commentary down so that the next time I come by I kind of already have that basis of understanding and so I'll write down things from the commentary a lot whether it's big things or just little notes I'll also take notes to draw connections from one place in the Bible to another and this is something you might not know right off the top of your head when you first start reading the Bible but as you begin to get more familiar with it you might come across a verse and realize oh it says something similar in this other passage so an example of that is in John 10 one of my favorite passages it's talking about Jesus being the Good Shepherd how the sheep know his voice and that he lays his life down for them and this passage is actually a fulfillment of a prophecy made in Ezekiel 34 which shout out to dr. Williams Gospel of John class at Biola loved that class learned so much from it but in Ezekiel 34 if I can ever find it it's talking about how the religious leaders of Israel or not shepherding God's people the way he wanted them to they were kind of fending for themselves they weren't seeking after the lost healing up the injured and this angers God and hurts his heart because he knows how he wants his people to be cared for in Shepherds shepherded and so when Jesus says I am The Good Shepherd in John 10 it's a fulfillment of this passage in Ezekiel 34 another example of that is here in mark chapter 8 and 9 so this verse is Jesus rebuking Peter saying get behind me Satan for you are not setting your mind on things of God and I know that in Romans 8 it says for to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the spirit is life in peace and so I kind of just made a note there because it's very similar language so those are some of the ways I might engage with the text or take notes and kind of just study and learn more about the Bible and really in all of these examples what I'm doing is to just build on what I'm learning by recording it right there next to the text that way I'm learning what I'm learning now but I'm also creating a foundation to build off of the next time I come through and read this passage so that my understanding will only continue to be deepened and I only continue to know God more there's little taste for you of what my quiet times look like sort of an overview of how I study the Bible I hope that was helpful if you did enjoy this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up also hit subscribe also again everything I talked about is linked below so if you want to check out any of those resources just visit the description box also if you have any questions or thoughts be sure to leave them in the comments and I would love to interact with you thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you next time thank

Channel: Kaci Nicole

Views: 77,895

Rating: 4.9414697 out of 5

Keywords: How I Study the Bible, Best Note Taking + Highlighting Method for In-Depth Bible Journaling, Bible Study, Bible Journaling, Journaling Bible, How To Study Your Bible, Quiet Time, Jordan Lee Dooley, Brighten Your Bible Study, The Daily Grace Co, Sadie Robertson, Jaclyn Brooke, Haley Pham

Id: vDKq8_U0hXo

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 30 2018