I'm excited to start BSF Online workshops in our area. BSF has had a tradition of seminars offered for in person groups and include topics like Bible Navigation, Personal Quiet Time, Homiletics, Sharing the Gospel, Leading Small Groups, and Serving in Church. BSF Online will take these materials and make them more into a workshop where participant interaction will take higher priority over presentation. We use the Tell, Show, Let, Coach method of training where 50% of the time is letting people practice the concepts.
The big idea is to help people understand the Bible and apply it to regular life. In this process we magnify God and mature his people. Maturing as a Christians is the work of God in our lives (1 Corinthians 3:6-9). God gives us a wonderful and compelling spiritual hunger and thirst that Donald S. Whitney explains in his work Spiritual Disciplines:
"all who come to God trusting in the person and work of Jesus to make them right with God are given the Holy Spirit (see Ephesians 1:13-14). The presence of the Holy Spirit causes all those in whom He resides to have new holy hungers they didn’t have before. They hunger, for example, for the Holy Word of God—the Bible— that they used to find boring or irrelevant. They have new holy longings, such as the longing to live in a body without sin and to have a mind no longer tempted by sin. They yearn to live in a holy and perfect world with holy and perfect people, and to see at last the One the angels perpetually praise as “holy, holy, holy” (Revelation 4:8).
These are some of the holy heartbeats in all those in whom the Holy Spirit resides. Consequently, when the Holy Spirit indwells someone, that person begins to prize and pursue holiness. Thus, as we have seen in Hebrews 12:14, anyone who is not striving for holiness will not see the Lord. And the reason he or she will not see the Lord in eternity is because he or she does not know the Lord now, for those who know Him are given His Holy Spirit, and all those indwelled by the Holy Spirit are compelled to pursue holiness. And so, the urgent question every Christian should ask is, “How then shall I pursue holiness, the holiness without which I will not see the Lord? How can I become more like Jesus Christ?”
We find a clear answer in 1 Timothy 4:7: “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (nasb). In other words, if your purpose is godliness—and godliness is your purpose if you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, for He makes godliness your purpose—then how do you pursue that purpose? According to this verse, you “discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.”
Some of my favorite Bible study techniques are;
Personal Quiet Time:
- Lectio Divina: Prepare (Silencio), Read (Lectio), Mediate (Meditatio), Pray (Oratio), Contemplate (Contemplatio).
- Four Rs: Read, Reflect, Respond in Prayer, Rest in Silence.
Magnifying God and his will for me:
- Three Questions: 1) What does it say? 2) What does it mean? 3) How will I Respond?
- Homiletics: 1) Content, 2) Divisions, 3) Subject Sentence, 4) Aim, 5) Application
- Internalizing the passage
- One's own words
- Finding the big idea
- Evaluating with with key questions
- Spiritual benefits: Ps. 119:105, Eph. 6:17-18, 2 Tim. 2:15, Heb. 4:12, James 1:22-25
- Four Squares: 1) Read a passage. 2) Create a foursquare grid with squares labeled: Attribute of God, Human Need, Gospel Connection, and Personal Reflections.
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