SWYC 2009: Watch and Pray

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Southwest

SWYC 2009 Breakout Sessions

Adam Ramdin

How to Preach: Preparation and Delivery of the Message

How to Study the Bible, Part 1

Nelson Ernst

Seventh-day Activism

How to Study the Bible, Part 2

Father in heaven, Lord, we once again pause and invite your Holy Spirit to be our teacher and our guide at this time.

In the Bible we are promised that your Holy Spirit will guide and teach us into all things.

I'm gonna share about 5 or 6 steps, The basic steps that we can use as we approach a passage of Scripture, as you're studying it, as you're trying to find out what the passage of Scripture is saying, be it a chapter, be it a section of verses, A few steps that you can use to try as you go through a passage of Scripture to see what the meaning in the Bible is and what God is trying to say through the Scriptures to you.

As you approach the Scriptures, you want to try to be in a spiritual mindset.

The mind uncluttered from, you know, I don't know, What maybe you were studying in school the day before, but have your mind uncluttered by how much your boss is going to pay you for the next 2 weeks of work.

Your mind uncluttered by whether the LA Lakers just won the whatever it is, the playoffs or whatever?

Confess your sins Before you open the Bible, before you study.

And a key thing is to be humble, teachable, and ready to obey.

If you're approaching the Scriptures in a proud way, let me see what I can make the Bible do for me.

You're not gonna get much out of your Bible study.

As opposed to let me see what God is going to say and speak to me as I open the Bible.

It can be good to have several translations.

Maybe not every time you study the Bible, but it can be good to have them as reference when maybe you need them.

Can be a handy Bible to have alongside your King James.

NASB, New American Standard Bible, another good translation, help you in your study.

YLT, that's the 1 I put there because I like it.

It kind of sometimes gives interesting phrases and how it's done.

Maybe if you're reading about a tribe or something in the Old Testament, you're not quite sure maybe the name of the place.

The Bible dictionary is, like it says, a Bible dictionary.

It will name the place and then give you a brief description of where that is, what happened there, et cetera, et cetera.

There's a couple of, I think Eastern has a Bible dictionary, there's another 1 called Unger's Bible Dictionary.

You can pick these up in most bookshops today.

You go to Barnes & Noble or Borders, or these are the bookshops, you can pick them up, they only cost you about $15 or so, but it's an excellent resource as you're studying the Bible to give you definition on certain terms, places, people, tribes, and things in the Bible that you may not understand.

And give you some of that background knowledge.

A dictionary can be good to have as well.

So you can just, you know, sometimes words you don't understand, Look in a dictionary, see what they mean.

It can be good to have an older dictionary if you can get an older, older, older dictionary.

I think 1 of the oldest dictionaries you can really get is the Webster's 1828 dictionary, which kind of some of the words today which have changed meaning, it gives you some of the older meanings to the words in the English language, which can help because words change their meanings over time, as you well know.

As good as you study your Bible, you sit down and resort, another resource good to want to have is a concordance.

Strong, as I find, is the best concordance.

The concordance, if you're not sure what a concordance is, it takes every word in the Bible and shows you where that word is repeated, I mean where that word comes in every single verse in the Bible.

You go to your concordance, you look for faith, and have every single verse in the Bible where the word faith is mentioned.

Then you could go and turn to every single verse and see What faith means here, what faith means there, what faith means in this verse, what faith means in that verse.

Or as you're studying a verse, you cross-reference.

A commentary set can be a good resource to have as well.

You have the SDA Bible commentary, which is a good resource to have.

It's fairly expensive, but if you can get a cheap 1, then pick it up.

I find sometimes I like to go to used bookstores myself in places where there's an Adventist ghetto, like Loma Linda.

And you sometimes find that some of these older folks that maybe have, I don't know, just don't want their books anymore, maybe they passed away, they give their books to the shop and you can go and get them really cheap.

But yeah, you can find, I mean, I bought an essay, a commentary set for like $10.

It was a little bit faded, but it saved me about 300 bucks.

That's also the best place, I believe, to find good Bibles as well.

But all of that, another good thing, I haven't actually got it on the screen is, and you can get this in the next 1, you have a notebook, take your notes, then computer program.

I mean, Your computer program can nullify all the above, in a sense of having a literal book.

I still think it's good to have the books as well, but your computer program can have all of that in a computer program.

You have the logo software, which you can have the SLA Bible commentary on there.

Accordance, If you're a Mac user, God bless you.

It's probably the best Bible program I believe.

It's designed specifically for the Macintosh computer.

You can buy the basic package and then buy your add-ons with all the different books as well.

And it has a lot of these things on there.

PC Study Biologist, put it through the online, I think there's another 1 called online something.

But there's a whole lot of different Bible programs out there.

If you have a computer or a laptop and you have access to the internet, you should not be without a Bible study computer program.

Because you can just go to esword.com.net or wherever it is and download 1 for free if you don't want to spend money on buying a more expensive 1.

So there's no excuse why any of you, as of tomorrow when you get home, shouldn't have a Bible program on your computer.

If you have a computer and you have the internet, just go and download it.

And then in the computer program, another resource, you can buy the hard book, Another good resource to have is called the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, which takes a verse in the Bible, and then it will cross-reference the different, sometimes, words in that verse, or maybe a phrase in that verse, to different verses in the Bible.

It's similar to a concordance, but it's a little bit more intelligent than a concordance in some ways.

And you can cross-reference a lot quicker with a treasury of scripture knowledge.

If you have a computer program, you can have all these windows open at once and just like, you can have your King James here, your New King James here, your Strong's Concordance here, your commentary down here, and your Bible dictionary up here.

And you can have it all there on 1 screen, just do-do-do-do-do-do.

If you learn how to use these programs, you know, well, it saves you a whole lot of time and a whole lot of energy and also a whole lot of money.

Series

SWYC 2009 Breakout Sessions

How to Study the Bible, Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Power of Prayer

01 The Power of Prayer: Making a Difference in the Gap

41m

Children of the Kingdom

29m

Plenary Meetings

Crucified with Christ

42m

Missions in America

Missions in America- Internet

36m

Jesus: The Unknown God

1h

ASI 2012 Youth Meetings

ASI 2012 Youth Meeting

1h 17m

Finding Peace in the Time of Chaos

06 Salvation or Seduction

45m

Spirit of Prophecy or Spiritual Exercises?

43m

Plenary

For My King

39m

Delicious Grape Juice

36m

Christianity 24-7

2. The Long and Winding Road

1h 9m

Plenary

The Ancient Etiquette of Foot Washing

1h 38m

Sound Doctrine