Bible Study

About 15 years ago, I started attending a Bible Study group in the small town that we were living in - it was a wonderful experience .... I was still relatively new to the Bible, so this fit the bill quite nicely.  The group of ladies were wonderful to spend time with and for the most part, it got me reading more of my Bible - not a whole lot, though .... we were actually reading a book that had snippets of Scripture in it and then we would all answer the questions at the end of the chapter.  I can't, for certain, say that these Bible Studies had any great impact on my life .... I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to tell you what they were about - but, they got me to open my Bible more and that was a good thing.  Still, it felt like something was missing.

Fast forward to, maybe 6 or 7 years ago ..... I was meeting with a different group of ladies (we had moved away from that small town where I first started attending Bible Study), and they were just as wonderful to spend time with as the first group was - they even did Bible Study in the same way ..... choose a book, have the group read it and answer the questions at the end of the chapters.  This group was a bit different in one way, they actually studied books about the Bible .... one that I do remember was a book about the book of Proverbs.  This seemed to make a bit more sense to me, but it still seemed like something was missing.

I'm really not sure when it dawned on me, but one day I had this question reverberating in my head "why isn't the Bible studied at Bible Study instead of books about the Bible?" - Aha!!!!!!  This is what has been missing ..... rather than reading snippets of Scripture and studying books about the Bible, why not study the Bible?  Now, I can hear some of you going "Well, yeah, Becky ..... can't believe it took you that long to figure it out", and I agree with you ... I can't believe it took me this long either, but it did and there isn't much use dwelling on it.

I would be thrilled beyond measure to find a group that met on a weekly basis (evenings would be wonderful), in our area, that actually studied the books of the Bible ... don't get me wrong, I think some of the study guides that they have out there are really interesting - but, you only end up reading the selected Scripture that the author added for a particular chapter (I know that some will read the whole chapter where the selected Scripture is, but not everyone does that ..... most just want to be spoon-fed what they should read, kwim).

So, in light of this desire to study the actual Bible, I turned to the Internet and found an article on eHow called "How to Get More Out of Bible Study" - here's a snippet from that site:

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Are you interested in studying the bible? These next steps will help you to do just that. Whether you are just starting or been studying for years.

Difficulty: Easy

Things You'll Need:

• An Open mind
• A Bible

You can read more by going to this site:  http://www.ehow.com/how_4541785_out-bible-study.html

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I love that it says one of the things you'll need is an open mind - that's pretty funny, but also kind of sad that they actually have to state that.

Also, I'd love to read some of your comments about Bible Study, how you do it, why you think it is mostly reading books about the Bible instead of the Bible, etc.  ˚Ü˚