What's in my Bible Study Tool Box?

Bible Study tools I like to use:

1.  A Bible.  Not the electronic kind, an actual book.  I find that the whole study process with a physical book in my hand just is so important.  It helps me to take notes with a pen or pencil, to turn pages, and to write on the extra pages in the front and back of my Bible.   Get a good translation for your go-to Bible you will do most of your studying in, not a paraphrase.  Also, make sure you have one with the Old and New Testaments in it.  Personally, I like my main Bible to have lots of space in the margins for note-taking, a good cross-referencing system,  a good concordance and maps in the back.

2.  A notebook, or binder, or folder, or a computer file.  For each book you study have a place to record what you see, what your questions are, what you learn, your thoughts on what you are studying.  Label it with the name of the book you are in, and then, when you come back to that place in the Bible, you can pull your notes back out and add to them.

3. A Concordance.  You need an Exhaustive Concordance that matches the translation of the Bible you are using. Online sites like BibleGateway and Bible Hub contain helpful concordance features.  The concordance is a power tool when it comes to Bible study.  It is a list of verses organized by the keywords found in them.  If you look up "love," you will find all the verses in the Bible that contain the word "love."  A concordance can inform, focus, or redirect your study in lots of ways. 

4. Living By the Book  by Howard Hendricks is a resource that has made all the difference in helping me to methodically study the Bible, first by Observing, then Interpreting and ultimately Applying God’s Word to my life.  I learned a great deal from this book!

Bible Hub.com by Biblos has a great Interlinear Bible and a lot of resources that are easy to access and use.  I am so glad I found this website!

5. I use www.Biblegateway.com or my YouVersion app to look up passages to compare different translations. I have also used them to print out entire books of the Bible on printer paper, so that I can stick them in a 3-ring binder or folder and really go to town, taking notes, circling, bracketing, whatever I need to do as I'm studying.  This is a great way to go.    

6. I just found an online word counter site, where I could paste in a large chunk of text (I pasted in Psalms 1-41) and find out what the most used words are in that section of scripture.  This will help me see what the keywords are. The site I used was www.wordcounter.com.  There are others, as well.