Using a Bible Concordance to Develop Mastery of a Broad Theme
Grab a cup of coffee, your Bible concordance, your pen an paper, and, with a little work, prepare to enjoy some rich rewards of your Bible study.
Once you have mastered the skill of finding a number of verses on a word or theme, you are ready to graduate to beginning our most powerful skill on concordance use:
Developing a comprehensive understanding of what the Bible says on a given subject.
Imagine having a good grasp on what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit, or love, You may round out this understanding with other tools, but the meat on the bones is with this skill.
This article is by necessity a little longer and the work will be a little more, but you will be richly rewarded for your diligence with Bible concordance use.
You can do a great number of things with this kind of information. You can use it to develop your own bible study. You can teach others with the information you have assimilated. And of course you can enrich your own walk with God through understanding him and his ways better.
Let's suppose that you want to study what the Bible says more completely about the subject of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity.
1) Begin with either a full size notepad or a word processor broken up into two columns, one much smaller for the verse reference, with the remainder dedicated to "notes."
2) Look up your keyword, in this case, Spirit.
Once you have located the start of your entries...
Be prepared for three types of verses in your bible concordance as you begin looking at all the references.
a) very useful verses. You may want to asterisk these and take extra notes and check any cross references in your bible.
b) somewhat useful or marginally useful verses. These may address a minor theme in your study or not say much. But you still want to write them down.
c) junk verses. Not that any verses are really junk, they're just junk for your study. For example, a verse may be about a man's spirit "troubled within himself." This verse obviously is not about God's spirit and so it's not even worth looking into.
3) Once you've found the first verse in your Bible concordance (or online bible concordance) that mentions spirit, and you think it's worth looking into, open your Bible to that verse. Read the verses before and after as much as necessary to really understand how the author is using this word in this context.
In our example, we see that the very first reference for the word spirit is in the second verse of the Bible. In the creation account, before everything is created, the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the water.
4) So in my notes, after writing the reference, next to it I may put something like, "God's Spirit involved in creation." I may even add a part of the verse itself such as "Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters" Don't try too much, just make the most pertinent observations.
5) Continue on in like manner through the rest of the verses in your Bible concordance:
The next verse is Gen. 6:3, where God's patience ends and says that His spirit will not continue to strive with man forever. God judges the whole earth soon afterwards.
I would toss the next verse Gen 7:22, because it doesn't have to do with God's Spirit. Likewise with Gen 41:8.
Exodus 31:3 I would include because it talks about God's Spirit giving wisdom to craftsmen. You get the picture.
6) At some point, we realize that this could be a really broad study. In my Strong's Bible Concordance, There are 570 entries, and after weeding out the unecessary, we find there is still a lot of info. If we are going to do a true comprehensive study, we would want to look at everything we don't toss. If we deem that our purpose for the study is not needing to be as comprehensive, we will keep only the most important verses, or toss ones that seem repetitive.
7) Once you have developed your list, you'll want to read back through it a couple of times. What strikes you? Start asking questions that will yield some fruitful thoughts. Is there a theme or topic that keeps coming up?
Repetition would mean God thinks this is important to include many times, and that means we better pay attention.
Is there a change in the focus of the verses from the Old Testament to the New? Do certain verses connect with or shed light on each other? Would it be interesting to note that God sent his Spirit in the Old Testament to help workman accomplish a specific task and that He did in the New Testament as well by gifting men and women to accomplish tasks within the church?
You get the idea. It's work but the real fruit of the study will start to show here.
8) As you answer these questions write down your conclusions. How might you summarize what all these verses are saying? Do they point in a certain direction? Does a theme increase in intensity or decrease? Does a certain book of the Bible stand out as having a lot of information? Write a paragraph of eight or so sentences that summarize all your thinking.
9) Each of these steps, and especially the latter take time and thinking. Mull them over. Take days, even weeks if necessary. "Write yourself hot" as you distill your thoughts onto paper. Now you've got some real fruit and assimilation and understanding form your study.
Congratulations! You have begun to master what the Bible says on God's Spirit.
Does anyone completely master it?
Well, not really. But you will have developed material and understanding that has you light years ahead of where you were when you started. You will have a bulk of material to begin moving from the head to the heart in your walk with God. You will more readily fellowship with the Father in greater ways, having a greater understanding of His character and His work. You will have some great refined material for even writing your own study!
Theres a lot of Biblical landscape that is uncharted territory. Get out there and enjoy it with your well-used Bible concordance!
Use the online Bible concordance here at the guide
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