It's February... maybe you could use a little color in your life!!

In this conversation, Stephanie and author Betsy Corning discuss the transformative power of color coding Scripture for deeper understanding and engagement. They explore the development of Get the Word Out's 14-color system that highlights various themes and attributes in the Bible, emphasizing the importance of consistency in color choices. The discussion also delves into how this method reveals patterns and connections within Scripture, making it easier for individuals to personalize their study and gain insights into biblical teachings.

Find out more about this system, purchase color chart bookmarks, or download the free printable guide here: https://www.entrustedministries.com/studies#gtwo

00:00 Introduction to Color-Coding Scripture

03:08 The Development of the Color-Coding System

05:58 Understanding the Color Meanings

08:58 Practical Application of Color-Coding

11:58 The Impact of Color-Coding on Understanding Scripture

14:55 Timelessness of Scripture and Conclusion

Trying to be consistent in God's Word? Have you listened to our Dwelling Place podcast yet? Find it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dwelling-place-bible-plan-for-busy-moms/id1863449227

Here are the colors we recommend, but you can make slight adjustments for what is available to you! Just try to stick as close to these as possible!

Grass Green PC 909

Copenhagen Blue PC 906

Permanent Red PC 122

Process Red 994

Orange PC 918

Jasmine PC 1012

Violet PC 1008

Non-Photo Blue PC 919

Light Cerulean Blue PC 904

Spring Green PC 913

Chocolate PC 1082

Blush Pink PC 928

Orchid PC 1105

Warm Gray PC 1052

They're the joyful agains our children.

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Shout on the swings, the exhausting

agains of cooking and laundry and

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the difficult agains of discipline.

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So much of what we do

as mothers is on repeat.

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So what if we woke up with clarity,

knowing which agains we were called to.

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And went to bed believing we are

faithful in what matters most.

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We believe God's word is

the key to untangle from the

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confusion and overwhelm we feel.

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Let's look up together to embrace a

motherhood full of freedom and joy.

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This is the again podcast.

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I'm Stephanie Hickox, and in this

episode, I'm joined by Betsy Corning,

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the author of Entrusted With the

Child's Heart, and the founder and

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director of Entrusted Ministries.

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Did You know that over the course of

about four decades, she and her husband

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David have developed a Bible study

curriculum entitled, get the Word Out,

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developing a Devotional Lifestyle.

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It is highly unique.

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You can tailor it for

whatever season you're at.

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As one of my friends says, get the

word out, teaches you to have the aha

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moments for yourself in scripture.

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And once you learn to do that, you won't

wanna have anyone else do it for you.

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Betsy, who is my aunt,

and I love color so much.

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And as it is February, I felt like it

was wise to just skip ahead to this tool.

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Maybe you've been listening to the

dwelling place and thinking oh,

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I would really love to be marking

my favorite verses in my Bible.

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You could utilize this tool, or

you are reading through scripture.

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Or maybe you don't have a plan this

year and you'll consider checking.

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Get the word out for yourself.

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We're gonna talk about this

tool of color coding, which has

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transformed the way I read my Bible,

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So often people say when

they're reading the word.

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They look back and think,

what did I just read?

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I'm telling you, i've never had a

moment like that since beginning.

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This color coding system,

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And I'm really hopeful

that you'll give it a try.

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We have these color chart bookmarks for

sale on our website for only 50 cents.

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So you can grab it for yourself,

for your small group, for

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anyone you know, even your kids.

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Steph: All right.

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Woo hoo.

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You made it, or perhaps, you heard

color coding and you skipped right

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to this one, and we are your people.

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We love this tool.

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It.

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It's transformed the way that I read

scripture and I absolutely love it.

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And we have these fun bookmarks

that are available on our website.

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We also have a PDF that explains

the system very clearly.

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But if you are listening and

you're thinking, I can't wait

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to dive into that tool, you can

order these helpful bookmarks

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for you and for your Bible study.

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You might have seen some color

coding systems before, but they're

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probably different, and they're

probably a little bit more basic.

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We think that all 14 of these colors are

really important and pivotal for your

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study, and at least they have been for us.

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Aunt Betsy, talk about how you

developed this system and if it's

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important to stick to these colors.

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Betsy: After doing this a long time and

doing this with a pilot group, about

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20 years ago, I had one person say.

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Can I just pick my own colors and do them?

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And she was upset with me forever

after that because she said, no,

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I needed to do the colors that you

were doing because we were talking

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together through certain themes.

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And hers didn't match ours.

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She wanted to do hers and I let her, and

then she wished she never had done that.

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The other thing is my husband

for years just did six 'cause

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he's kind of a basic guy.

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And I said, no.

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There's 12, and actually now there's 14,

but he said no, there's really just six.

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But he's now using all 14 too, because

you can be going through and you can

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start out, some people say, well,

can I just choose one or two colors?

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Well, you can, that's fine, but you

wanna know that you have all these 14.

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So if you're gonna use one or two, pick

the one or two that you're going to use.

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These on the top are the

more regularly used ones.

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And if you use those then that's fine.

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But when you get down to one of

these and you're like, oh, I really

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wanna mark that, you're not at a

loss as what color should I use?

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And the reason is you can see that there's

a couple different purples on here and

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it's hard to find two different purples.

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There's so much I could talk about

this, but this happens to be currently

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what I have for my, colored pencils,

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I even have one that I, I took this to say

the Hobby lobby, and I'll take my color

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and I will mark a pencil next to this one.

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So what I like to use, this

happens to be a Prisma color.

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Prisma Color, PC 9 0 9.

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And I figured, well,

that matches pretty well.

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They don't have to match exactly,

but you are gonna want them to

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match enough so that this green

will be distinct from this green.

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This purple will be distinct from

this purple, and these three blues

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will be distinct from each other.

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So that's the point.

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There's a light pink and

a dark pink, which is also

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difficult to find in any cer.

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Certain sets I've used sets for years,

but you'll have to get a larger set

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in order to be able to get double

pinks, double purples, and so forth.

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So I have found the easiest thing

for me to do is just by the pencils

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individually, these soft lead.

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This dark green here represents

God, his attributes and his word.

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So when I'm reading, I'm gonna mark in

my Bible, I'm just gonna underline in

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this screen, do I have to underline every

single thing in my Bible in green that

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has to do with God and his attributes?

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Absolutely not just the ones that I

want to, and, nobody's gonna check your

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Bible and say, you missed this one.

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Nobody's gonna check your one and say, oh,

that should have been a different color.

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Sometimes I'm reading along and

I see something could be three

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different colors, honestly.

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I just pick the one I want.

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Sometimes I mark it with two colors.

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Sometimes I mark it with three colors.

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It's your own study.

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Okay.

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And so this dark green is for

the word of God, his attributes.

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Another thing that I do is i'll take

a Sharpie and I'll write on here,

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God, his attributes and his word.

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And then I've got, you know, when

I'm starting out, I can know I can

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have this to look at all green.

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Is this when I'm starting out?

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But I know these, uh, so well now I, I

just automatically know what this one is.

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But, uh, I'll pull each one of

these out here so you can see.

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Here's my dark blue, the Holy Spirit,

spiritual gifts and attributes.

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And sometimes, these two will go

together and it'll be hard to distinguish

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and I don't know that you, you know,

necessarily have to worry about that.

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Uh, the third one is Jesus, right here.

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This one I write on because it looks so

much like one of my other colors that I

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have to write on it to distinguish it.

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So this is Jesus the gospel.

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Salvation, anything about

salvation is this red color.

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The next one is this bright pink color,

this is righteous Choices blessings of

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obedience, faith, and the fear of God.

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It's says dark pink.

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Doesn't look dark pink

there, but it's bright pink.

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The next one is orange.

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This is man, the fear of man consequences,

disobedience, warnings, and I think

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you can see if you look real closely,

it's kind of muddled out there, but.

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I wrote that on there with my Sharpie,

yellow is family, marriage and parenting.

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I would like to get

these pencils imprinted.

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That would be great.

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Memorial verses.

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So that's my dark purple,

blue, the dark blue.

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The church witnessing evangelism,

ministry and fellowship.

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Light blue prayers, praise and worship.

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This one is so light.

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Sometimes I use this one, but see

it looks an awful lot like this one,

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but not when I write them with them.

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They look very different

when I write with them.

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So you're gonna wanna have

to figure out, little system.

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Uh, a medium green for

stewardship, giving and money.

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It is brown for persecution, spiritual

warfare, demons, and the occult,

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which is different than the orange.

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Remember, it's man sin

and then pink or angels.

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Angels aren't very often in the Bible.

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You might think, oh, angels would

be in every book of the Bible, but

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there's very specific times and reasons

that angels aren't in the Bible.

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Angels are God's messengers, and when they

appear in the Bible, they are delivering

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some very important message from the Lord.

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So it's fun to have that

pink show up in your Bible.

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Then prophecy and eschatology.

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Eschatology meaning

the study of end times.

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Is another one of these purple colors,

and it's this one which looks very

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similar to that other one I showed you,

but it looks lot different on paper.

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And then this gray one,

which is historical facts.

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Steph: You'll be thankful for that.

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there are times where you're

thinking, wait, what would this be?

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And then it, you're like realizing it's a

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Betsy: It's A catchall.

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And you know what?

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There are so many historical facts

that are really important and helpful.

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The one that pops to my mind right now

is Luke's writing his detailed writing.

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And when he says, Carius was governor

of Syria, or something like that, that

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is helping us provide an exact date.

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And why would people give so much detail?

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That's a historical fact that is helping

us date the time of Jesus's birth.

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We are thankful for those things.

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Steph: Yeah I was so grateful that I was

able to find, it was a back to school

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sale or something at Walmart, and I found.

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A pack for only $10 of my prisma colors.

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And then I just had to add

three colors to it, I think.

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And as you talked about, the dark pink

and the orange and the green, I just use

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so much that it's helpful to go to Hobby

Lobby and you can buy them individually.

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I have reached out to Prisma Color.

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Eventually I would love for them

to create a set just with us.

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But we'll link the

specific Prisma colors that.

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We find are helpful for matching to it,

but it's so neat to see the patterns that

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emerge in the word when you're doing this

that you might not realize , what happens?

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When there's persecution and then

what is the follow up to that?

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And if you weren't doing color

coding, you might not see the pattern.

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There have been times in scripture

I'm reading, and you're reading

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about a complex character like Baam.

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In the Old Testament, you're thinking,

well of course this is all orange.

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And then you're like reading a couple

chapters later and you're like,

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well this is complicated because it

says the Lord told him to do this.

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And sometimes I have to pause.

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I can't quite underline

here anything until I know.

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More about this character and, and

what happens and sometimes we don't

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know about internal motivation later,

or maybe I need to reference the New

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Testament to know how I felt about that.

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But it, it really has been so helpful.

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And I just, I think even as a busy mom.

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you're like, there's so many things

to do and you sit down to read

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and all of a sudden you notice

that there's like a cheerio on the

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floor on your cabinet or something.

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You just don't really have those moments

when you are color coding scripture

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because you're just thinking so

deeply about it and meditating on it.

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So when we balance that depth with.

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Kind of the overview of the

chapter summary statements.

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I mean, we're really training ourselves

to think big picture, but then also

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zoom in and it's neat all of these

tools, how they give us clarity about

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the word, but in different ways.

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Betsy: Yes.

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One of my favorite things in

the entire world is colors.

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I love colors.

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I love mixing colors and blending colors.

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And one time a friend, uh, I went to her

house, her studio with some other people

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for, I don't know, a couple of years.

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To take painting and I would just get

so mesmerized just by mixing my palette.

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And she was, she would say, when

you come here, you never talk,

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you never say anything because I'm

just like looking at these colors.

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I, I get so absorbed in it.

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And, um, but it's really, really

is one of my favorite thing.

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I enjoy colors so much, so it,

there had to be colors in this.

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But in be doing colors, I realized it's

not just a busy thing that we're doing.

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You know, something that takes time,

but underlining certain phrases

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and parts of scripture helped me

understand scripture so much more.

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And one of those examples was

what you sort of mentioned a

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little bit ago, Stephanie, so I

realized that when I was studying.

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Acts and I saw that the guys, you

know, the guys, the apostles were doing

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ministry and this would be our medium

blue color, and they were out there

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sharing the gospel and, evangelizing and

doing the hard work of ministry that what

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would happen would be this brown color.

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They would be so persecuted.

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So persecuted, but through it all they

would rejoice praise and worship God.

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And God showed up and

multiplied their numbers.

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And this, this pattern kept showing

up every time that I was so encouraged

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by that, because I know that when I.

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Speak for the Lord and I do ministry.

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I can expect to have some

backlash, some persecution, but

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I will keep my perspective right.

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I will continue to praise the Lord and he

will do, you know, he will stand with me.

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He multiplied their numbers.

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Brought them out of prisons.

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He did, he provided for their needs,

whatever it is, that the Lord is

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with you through all these things.

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And what a great thing for me to notice

that I don't think I would've ever picked

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out if I hadn't looked at these colors.

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Another one that's very obvious

to all of us, I think would be

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these two in the book of Proverbs.

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So much is the pink and orange.

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There's some other colors in

there, but predominantly the

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choices of the wise person and

the choices of the foolish person.

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And you know, I have my Bible open

to one of those pages right now.

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There's so much in Isaiah of the dark

green and the sovereignty of God.

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Same with job and the promises of God.

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And so many wonderful prophecies

of God that we get this dark

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purple and this dark green

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wonderful.

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Things yet to come.

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There's so much in the Old Testament

that still hasn't happened.

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People say the Bible's outdated.

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Well, even the New Testament

isn't outdated because

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revelations has not yet happened.

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And when it does, uh, it happens

exactly as it says it will, uh,

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then we can say it's outdated, but

that's not gonna be the case either.

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Heaven and Earth will pass away, but

the Lord's words will not pass away.

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And so much of the Old Testament.

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Prophecies have not yet happened.

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They will occur with Jesus's second

coming, which has not yet happened.

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So even the Old Testament is not outdated.

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And when we think of that, we can see

how timeless God is and how he works

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with man to bring man to repentance

through all these different cycles

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of culture, throughout history,

how he is so very patient with us.

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And so very merciful and so gracious

to draw him to us, to himself, and we

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can see a lot of that through these

colors and through these themes.

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Steph: Certainly.

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You can see this is high on our priority

list that you would utilize this

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tool, but again, it can be tailored.

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You don't have to underline every verse.

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You can pick out the ones

that meant the most to you,

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I hope we convince you to check this out.

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Remember, those links are in

the show notes and we'll be

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interspersing more of these.

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Get the word out episodes

throughout the coming months

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You can try them out and see how

they bring insight to your time with

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the Lord and reveal more about his

character and his goodness to you.

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Speaker 2: Before you go, I want to

pray this benediction over you from

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Second Thessalonians one 11 through 12.

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We're rooting for you to this end.

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We always pray for you that our God

may make you worthy of his calling

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and fulfill every resolve for good.

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And every work of faith by his power

so that the name of our Lord Jesus

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may be glorified in you and you

and Him according to the grace of

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our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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Until we meet again.