7 Things to Look for When Studying Scripture

Jan 31, 2022

This blog post was originally a video on YouTube. Watch it here


When it comes to studying the Bible, often we know some of the things that we should do. And maybe we have a few things in our mind that we're looking for whenever we're studying Scripture, but it helps to have a list of things to look for so that we know exactly what to do whenever we are studying the Bible. 

In this post, I'm going to give you seven different things to look for when studying the Bible, and hang out till the end, because the last one is the most important one

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Alright, seven things to look for. Let's go. 

Number Seven:

Whenever you are studying the Bible, look for “If Then” statements at that would be like a statement where someone says if you do this, then I will do this. 

One of the most common “If Then” statements, is what God makes to his people, the Israelites, when he's giving them the law. 

He says, IF you will obey my law, THEN, I will be your God and give you many blessings. 

And so as we are looking at any scripture, it's important to look for those “If Then” statements.

 

Number Six:

Repetition, when something is repeating in the Bible, over and over, you want to pay attention to that. 

One of my favorites is in Psalm 136. It talks about God's faithful love, over and over. And so it says:

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, His faithful love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, His faithful love endures forever. 

And so throughout this entire passage, it's saying a statement, and then His faithful love endures forever. And so there's a reason for that repetition, so we want to be looking for different things that are repeating as we are going through Scripture. 

 

Number Five:

As we are going through our Bibles, we want to be looking for things that are Contrasted. 

So whenever you are seeing something that is compared to something else, and it is a stark difference between those two different things, you want to make sure that you are looking for things that are contrasted against each other. 

 

Number Four: 

You want to be looking for Locations. Location is so important in the Bible, and you may not understand the depth of all of those locations just yet, but get into the habit of looking for locations and looking where they're popping up in different parts of Scripture. 

Whenever I see a location in my Bible, I will put a little square around it with a brown pen, that helps me to know that that is a location, and it also will help me see when locations change as you are reading through Scripture. 

 

Number Three:

You want to look for conversations. There are so many conversations that happen in the Bible, and you see conversations between God and man, and there's even Conversations with God and Satan in the Bible. There are conversations between Jesus and the woman at the well or Jesus and Nicodemus. 

You want to see these different conversations and follow the lines of dialogue. Whenever there's having a conversation, make sure you're paying attention to who is in that conversation. 

Number Two:

You want to look for is lists. There are so many lists in the Bible, and so often we can associate these lists with genealogies or like the book of Numbers that has a zillion lists, and we can think that these are boring, but in all actuality, there's so much power behind these lists, and there are so many important details to catch. 

Now, I'm not saying that it's the most riveting part of Scripture, but you need to pay attention to them. - When the list pops up. Make sure you're paying attention to why that list is there. - 

Number One:

The last thing we want to look for as we are studying scripture is Who is God? 

We want to see what characteristics of God are showing up on these pages, now the way that I do this is I mark in purple, any characteristics of God that I see when I come across the pages of my Bible, this way, whenever I flip open my Bible, I can see right there very clearly that purple mark means it is something that is true about who God is. 


All right. There you go. Seven things to look for as you are studying scripture. Are there any others? Comment below if you can think of other things to look for as you are studying scripture?