Bible Supplements
We are a few weeks into the new year, and I’m wondering how the Bible reading is going for you? Please respond and let us know! From God Not Her is praying for you and your journey.
Now that Bible reading is becoming a habit, I’d love to share some ideas to supplement your journey. Please understand these supplements aren’t meant to take the place of opening your Bible every single day. The definition of a supplement is “something that completes or enhances something else when added to it.” Just like vitamins supplement our diet, these resources will supplement your spiritual diet!
I love journals. They are my favorite way to enhance Scripture. Neither my journals or my journaling is anything fancy. Often times I think “Bible journaling” in our head equates to perfect handwriting, colorful pictures, and artsy verses (thanks, social media). My favorite “journals” are the simple college-ruled Mead notebooks. I try to stock up on them when they hit the clearance shelves at Target after school starts! My “journaling” is more like note-taking. When I’m reading Scripture, I’ll write any verses that stand out to me. Sometimes I record thoughts or applications, but some of my earliest journals are full of nothing but Scripture.
This leads me to my second supplement suggestion: Scripture memorization! Thinking back to our model for battling temptations, we see Jesus speak Scripture in response to the devil’s temptations. It’s why I believe reading Scripture is SO important: We can’t speak back to the devil what we don’t know. To further enhance our skill of reading Scripture, we should begin to memorize it as well. Yes, you can memorize Scripture. It takes repetition and practice, though! Writing out Scripture helps, but you can go even further. There is a wonderful app called “The Bible Memory App.” You choose verses to memorize and this app uses the first letter of each word to prompt you toward full memorization. It’s great! Another way I’ve memorized Scripture is simply writing out verses on notecards and quizzing myself. One year for Lent, I attempted to memorize a verse a day. This will help us fight our battles, friends!
Commentaries or a study Bible are wonderful investments. My favorite and most-loved Bible is an ESV Study Bible. The notes help us to understand context and meaning of some hard Scripture. Commentaries by well-known Biblical scholars could also be helpful in understanding larger chunks of texts. The website www.biblehub.com has a host of commentaries attached to the Scripture searches. It’s free!
Devotionals are wonderful resources, but I would highly encourage you to use these ONLY as a supplement to your own Bible reading. Often these jump around and at times, Scripture can be used out of context. Devotionals also tend to try and relate Scripture to you, the reader. There’s nothing wrong with that, but remember that the Bible isn’t about YOU. It’s about God’s great love and redemption for His people through His Son Jesus. It’s wonderful to pull applications for daily living, but it’s not a me-centered book and so I would encourage you to steer clear of me-centered supplements . . . because of all these things, I believe devotionals are the ones we tend to use to replace Bible reading.
What other supplements do you use? We’d love to hear from you! Send us a message or hop over to our Facebook page and leave a comment! Sharing ideas of what works for you will inevitably help another friend — God is so good like that!
Blessings,
From God Not Her