Sharing thoughts together

This past Sunday a great group gathered for DiscipleShape 2. During our time, we thought about why we should even bother reading the Bible. We discussed motives, both good and bad, that can surround Bible reading. Most of our conversation, however, was about how to study the Bible and some methods/approaches we can use.

One widely used Bible study method involves three steps and questions:

1. Observation - where you simply examine a particular passage and answer the question "what do I see?"

2. Interpretation - where you look back over your observations from the text and think about "what does it mean?"

3. Application - where, in light of what you have seen and what it means, you answer the question "what do I do?"

Let's, together, try step one - observation. It would be great to see what, from a particular passage, jumped out to you that I might have overlooked. Also, I think you might benefit from seeing what others noticed. For those who attended DiscipleShape 2, let's use this as a chance to further practice what we learned.

So, the Daily Walk reading for tomorrow, January 30th, is Exodus 32 - 34. For those interested, let's focus on Exodus 32 and post some observations on this blog. Think about what you see in this chapter - what is emphasized? is anything repeated? are there any cause and effect relationships? who is involved? what is motivating the characters' actions? what is the order of events? does the passage contain any item or phrase that appears random?

To help us get started, I will post a few observations tomorrow.