A sermon is not like a Bible study in the sense that your Bible study or your personal time with the Lord is not going to look like what a sermon looks like. And therefore, your Bible notes or your Bible journaling should not look like what sermon notes look like. like.
Today we're gonna talk about how to Bible journal, how to take powerful Bible notes that take you deeper into a Bible study, that make you continually learn from those notes, and not just notes that profit you just today but for years to come. Let's begin. You want powerful Bible notes. You want your notes in your journaling Bible to be something that spurs you on to learn more for months and months and years to come. You don't want to just write something down in your Bible permanently that's not going to add value every single time you open up and read that page, right?
So today we're going to talk about how to make sure your notes are valuable for years to come. As a seminary student and a pastor's wife, I've really spent a lot of time thinking about this. I now have gotten so comfortable in this topic of... writing in my Bible and taking Bible notes that I will sit there in seminary class and just write my notes directly into my Bible sometimes or in Sunday worship like when I'm listening to the sermon I will take my notes right directly in my Bible when it's appropriate and when it applies and so I think it's almost like a spiritual habit that you like learn but if you guys have been here for a while you know that I am all about taking Bible notes that aren't just pretty that aren't just for today but for forever and I don't always do this perfectly but I really just want my notes that I write in God's Word to provide value Y'all see today I'm wearing my Cowboys sweatshirt. How about them boys?
You know, we had a win yesterday So I gotta enjoy the wins when I do because the last couple seasons haven't been great as a southerner raised in Dallas I grew up loving the Cowboys. In fact, this is my grandpa sweater and I'm wearing it still to this day since he passed It's just something of his that I treasure But something that I take pride in is I'm not just a fair weather fan And when I say that I mean like I'm not only gonna root for the Cowboys whenever they win or have a good season but I've rooted for the Cowboys for forever. My husband's a big Panthers fan.
And to be honest, he doesn't always love the Panthers if they're having a rough season. While I'm not a fair weather fan for the Cowboys, I am a fair weather fan for Bible journaling. I love Bible journaling or taking Bible notes whenever they add some kind of value, whenever they enrich your understanding of the text for years to come. But I'm not a fan of Bible journaling when it just is there to make things pretty.
I'm just not. But sometimes- Something that I hear all the time from you guys is how do I know if it's going to add value in the future? One thing I think it was my patrons and I this week in our live stream that we were talking about. Sorry, let me fix you guys.
Okay. We talked about not just writing down what other people say about the scriptures, but writing down what the scriptures say about the scriptures. Y'all have heard me a lot of times here talking about covenant theology and looking at themes throughout the Bible. At the end of this video, I'll have a playlist if you want to kind of watch videos on that. But I think the biggest falling point for believers when we start start out taking notes in our Bible or just reading the Bible.
Oftentimes we're like, Ooh, that's so powerful. Or Ooh, that hit hard. And we just like underline it or we just circle it or we highlight it and that's fine.
But when you come back a month later, that's not going to add any value, but we've all been there. We know how it is. You were sitting in a sermon and the pastor said something and it really made that make sense.
And so you underlined it or you highlighted it in the moment and then you went back to listening and it makes sense. But what I want you to think about whenever you ever write down in your Bible is will this end? enhance my reading of the scriptures or will this confuse my reading of the scriptures? But what I really want you to focus on is whenever you're taking notes like in the sermon and your pastor says something that all of a sudden makes that verse make sense, don't just underline it.
Maybe write what it is exactly that he said that made that little verse make sense. So over here on my bookshelves we have a bunch of Christian living books and by that I mean they're books that you can read to help you in the way that you live your life. For example, this one we just shared with the pianist.
at our church. It's called Crazy Busy. It's by Kevin DeYoung.
If you struggle with being busy all the time, this would be a good read for you. And I was looking back through my notes. I read it in college and all I did was underline things. And this was a lot like the approach I took in my Bible notes. I would underline things, maybe circle things.
Right here, I just circled Jesus amazes me. Oh my notes. Here I put a star and wrote faith.
Like I'm yelling at myself. But you see none of these notes really make sense to me now unless I stopped and wrote something of value. Here I wrote reference Miller's Ten Commandments commentary on the Sabbath.
So here I was reading this chapter and I just happened to read Miller's commentary on the Ten Commandments which was a really good commentary and I said wow that really goes along really well with what I've been reading from Kevin DeYoung. Let me write that in here so the next time I'm reading this book, I might, if I have a chance, go check out that and it will benefit my reading even more. That thoughtfulness. That extra step of making those connections adds so much value. Here I wrote, I want this.
Well, yeah, I'm going to want that every day of my life for the rest of my life, Kevin. That was a really deep, awesome sentence. What I could.
have written was a cross-reference to scripture because he doesn't have a scripture reference. Let's see what else I have. Grace Unknown by Sproul.
Okay, I read this also in college before I really knew how to take good notes. So like don't get me wrong, underlines can bring your eyes when you're flipping back through to like cool statements, but what really helps is when you stop and summarize. This is actually a note that somebody else made and I bought this book used. It just says atonement.
She had read this paragraph and wanted to summarize it. Hey, if I'm ever looking for a good definition of atonement, come read back this again. I could have even put a tab on the edge of this page. Like, hey, if you want a good definition of atonement, right here, you know? And that's kind of what I want us to think about in our Bibles.
But what's really truly going to improve your Bible study for the coming years and months to go deeper and deeper and deeper every single time would be adding notes, adding cross references. So that's references to other places in the Bible, other verses. adding themes.
We've talked a lot about Bible mapping and Bible book mapping. I will have that playlist linked at the end of this video, but it's simply adding more. Come look inside my Bible. We'll do a quick flip through.
This is completely unplanned and completely random, but I just want to show you what more can look like. All right. So here on this page, here I have a Greek word, ekbalo.
It is a word that was some of the basic vocab when I studied Greek. So I already kind of knew it. But when I write down Greek words that I don't know so well, I will often write down on the Strong's Concordance number. And that will already skip a step.
So next time I'm back on this page, I already have the number written right there. I don't have to do quite as much work to look up and do a word study. Now here, instead of just underlining the word ruler, I drew an arrow and talked about, okay, the other gospels don't just say ruler, they give him a name and they talk about he's ruler of the synagogue. Do you see how that adds so much more value than just circling or underlying ruler?
But then here, I just highlighted the word. word faith because that was a big theme in this chapter and passage just like the word behold is a theme in this passage so I boxed them all in and did the exact same color so that I can study that kind of theme here in this story so here is an example of where I only highlighted a first I thought this first sounded really cool it really made me feel encouraged in my faith but it doesn't add anything more than that Wow these right here do. I say notice the Romans treated him better than Jesus and when I'm just flipping through this bible page I would not see that underline and think that you know. I noticed that because I was digging deep in chapter 23 and I wrote it down and I may not notice that the next time I'm reading through chapter 23 so that adds value.
So here I had to dig a little bit deeper and understand what this verse was. Once I understood I underlined it and defined it. Essentially they're asking to move locations blah blah blah and I define like what's going on. On this page I did whole tab on who this Felix character is. I broke down irony on the chapter.
Okay here I remember highlighting that and being like okay I may not remember this next time so I want to write down these are dirty Gentile cities. I want to remember that it's not just oh foreign places like we say foreign. They are thinking of dirty Gentile cities and sometimes it's just as simple as that. You know if you have a little bit more insight on what they're thinking a little bit more emphasis to add in your own words just kind of paraphrasing it.
Here is a flower But it did on Agrippa the second so I was you know teaching on Acts 26 and had learned all of this about this dude I was definitely gonna forget it So I wrote it down and now I have all these notes Captured in time to understand this chapter better and then I also have a map printed here I looked up the map it added value. So I put it in here so that next time I will understand exactly what they're discussing here There's two different Caesareas, there's one in Philippi and then one by the sea and so there's two different rulers and both of them are talking in this chapter Remember, it's not about what other people like your pastor or Bible study book that you're working through has necessarily said about the Bible or about that passage. It's more what the Bible has said about the Bible.
So it's connecting specific verses or ideas or information from other parts of the Bible to the passage you're specifically looking at. It's following themes. It's adding that cultural background information. And it's not necessarily just when your pastor says, this is really important for today because the election next month. or whatever.
It's the timeless truths that add value. Now, if you guys want to learn more about Bible book mapping and verse mapping and following those themes throughout the Bible, check out this series here or this series here. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, check out this link here and I will see you guys in these videos.
Thanks guys.