🕊️ The Notes I Leave: What is the Best Bible Study

Total Time: ~30 minutes

Format: ~1/2 public + ~1/2 members-only

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🕊️ INTRODUCTION

Shalom, and grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to The Notes I Leave podcast.

The Hebrew word “shalom” signifies more than mere peace; it signifies wholeness, completeness, well-being, harmony with God and others. All of which, I wish for you.

The purpose of this podcast is to share the diverse experiences I encounter as a professor, teacher, entrepreneur, student, father, son, brother, and follower of Christ Jesus. These notes are intended for you, now and in the future.

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📖 MAIN MESSAGE

📜 This week’s theme:

In this episode, I discuss how the Lord answers our prayers with His word.

📜 Anchor verse(s):

10 You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers; 11 just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, 12 so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. 13 For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.

1 Thessalonians 2:10-13, New American Standard Bible, 1995

📜 Application or takeaway:

The Lord has placed on my heart the need to be involved in a Bible-believing church and armoring ourselves with the Word of God daily.

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🙏 TRANSITION TO MEMBERS

That is the heart of what the Lord laid on me this week—but for those of you walking this journey further with me, there is a deeper side I want to share; in the members-only section, I’ll be opening up about how this career change challenged me as a father and a disciple.

But first, I would like to leave you with a quote and question.

📚 Quote:

“The Bible is God’s voice, not man’s; it lives, and speaks, and works with a power no other book possesses.”

—J.C. Ryle

☕️ Question:

Do you know what it feels like to be in God’s word daily; and if so, do you know what it is like to be absent from God’s word?

📞 Call to action:

If you are not yet a member and want to support this work while gaining full access to deeper reflections like these, head to https://www.biblicalanatomyacademy.com click on ‘Podcasts,’ and then click on ’Support the Podcast’ or simply access the direct link via https://podcast.biblicalanatomy.com/support

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🕯️ PRAYER AND BLESSING

Father, thank You for guiding us—even when the path is not clear to us. Teach us to walk in humility, trust, and obedience.

Until next time, may the peace of Christ dwell richly in you and may I express ‘maranatha,’ which is an Aramaic word translating to “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Dear Lord, Father God, thank you for this time that we get to spend together to talk about your word.

As these notes are left for he or she who is intended to hear them, I pray that they be a blessing

on their lives as they navigate the ungodliness of this world and learn how to surround themselves

in the godliness of church members.

But more specifically, your word that draws us near to you and answers our prayers.

Please help me get out of the way in today's message so that your word can come through.

Your word does come through as it always prevails, and it falls on the ears that hear it.

In your son, Jesus name, in the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Well, hello to you.

Welcome to this podcast, the Notes I Leave podcast.

In this episode where we detail the best Bible study as if there is a best Bible study.

I would keep this really short for you right in the beginning and say the best Bible study is

probably the Bible study that you will do.

If you are open to doing various types of Bible studies, then I would suggest a few for you

in the podcast that we have today.

But again, nothing is better than getting in God's word, getting in it daily, and having the

Spirit lead you to where you need to go.

That being said, there are some methodologies, some studies that are laid out that I'll discuss

in this episode that can be helpful.

And there's even, after you've accomplished that, ways that you can create your own Bible study.

And I'll detail that, as well as detail a Bible study that we have created that I would love to share with you.

The reason for this episode, like really any episode in the Notes I Leave podcast, is I didn't

know how to do a Bible study when I first became a Christian.

I didn't know if I was doing it right.

I was caught up in sort of the legalism of there's only one way to do it and I want to know

the correct way to do it.

And sometimes that, what's the old saying that we have, analysis by paralysis.

Sometimes that analysis of the right way leads to no progression at all.

And so again, I preface that just open God's word and read.

There's another great quote out there that says, if you haven't heard God speak in your life,

open his word and read aloud. It is his word.

We're gonna share a quote a little bit later that alludes to that and the power of the Bible,

the living, breathing nature of the Bible.

It's the only book like it.

And excited to get into that.

Now, last week we talked about

the composition of the Bible and how we can divide the Bible into sections and better understand the theme.

If you've ever opened God's Word and started in Genesis and ended in Revelation first, bravo, I commend you.

That's quite the task to get through 1,189 chapters over the course of 66 books and two testaments.

But you may have been expecting that it would read like a story and it would be in order.

And if you had that perspective, as I did, you were lost along the way because it's not in chronological order.

Now, speaking of Bible studies, there are Bible studies out there that are in chronological order.

One of the probably, I don't know if I'd say best, but probably the most accessible ways to

get your hands on a Bible study and get started is to simply download the Bible app.

Now, I remember the first time somebody told me to download the Bible app, I was like, there's just one?

Is there more than one Bible app? And there is.

But the YouVersion Bible app is generally what people are referring to when they say the Bible app.

And it's a very robust app.

It's got many different translations.

Much of what's on there is for free, and you can search different Bible studies.

Popular ones are 365-day plans, where you get the Bible read in one year.

That's a pretty ambitious plan, but certainly doable with consistency.

There are you can read the Bible in 90 days, there's even faster than that, or read the Bible in four years.

And of course, they're not all limited to how quickly you can get through the Bible.

There are Bible studies on specific things that Christians are going to battle, sin nature and

those sorts of things, living in the world.

The topics are almost endless if you get in that app and start searching for different Bible studies.

I would caution that if you find a Bible study on there that is more the author's word than

it it is God's word.

I would be very cautious of that.

But what it is handy is that when it's built into that platform, you can sort of just hit play

and it'll take you chapter by chapter for that specific day.

Maybe one chapter, maybe only part of a chapter, maybe multiple chapters, but it takes the the

way the author has designed that plan and sort of weaves it in seamlessly for you, the user.

So I would recommend it from that.

But even better yet, go old school pen and paper.

Next week we're going to talk about how to create your own Bible study and one that is effective

for you and your needs and your goals and those sorts of things.

And no better way to do that than to open a hard copy of God's word and pen and paper notes.

And you can keep yourself on track with either it all written down on pen and paper or an Excel

document or something like that.

In fact, if you email me, daniel@werbaa.com, I can send you the Excel document that we have

for a Bible study that we've created.

I I'm also in the works of getting that approved as a partner with YouVersion to be on their Bible app.

If that happens, I'll let you know.

You can go on the YouVersion app and you can find our Bible study and it can all be seamlessly integrated into that.

That app and others like it work really well for those of us that spend a lot of windshield

time in the car and we tend to be more audiobook people because of our busyness.

We pause right there and state that I'm not recommending you read the Bible through audiobook.

I believe reading it in the presence of a still environment, in a prayerful environment with

a hard copy of God's Word trumps about any other way that you can do it.

But I would also recommend an audio version of God's Word while you're driving or while you're

doing things that you'd normally do while listening to a podcast or something like that.

Even in place of this podcast, turn this thing off.

Open God's Word, listen to it audio, far more valuable than anything that I can personally give you in a podcast.

We are blessed and honored that you're here listening.

We hope you can pull value from this, but if it ever comes down to all you have is 30 minutes,

don't turn on this podcast for 30 minutes.

Turn on the Bible for 30 minutes.

And if you can't get to a desk, an area where you can be prayerful, mindful, quiet, still, and

read a hard copy of God's Word, then by all means listen to God's word.

Listening to God's word is better than not being in God's word.

I digress on a couple of those points.

To kind of reiterate from Scripture why this is all important, I'm going to take you to 1 Thessalonians

and we're going to talk about our verse today and we're going to integrate how the Lord continually

answers our prayer with His word.

So in the first book of Thessalonians, the second chapter, verses 10 through 13, it reads, you

are Witnesses, and so is God.

How devoutly and upright and blameless we behave towards you, believers, just as you know how

we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children,

so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God, which

you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word

of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.

I won't even try to state it better myself.

I think this is really well written. Of course it is.

It's the inspired word of God.

But I think this really gets down to so many points worth talking about as believers that it

is on us to show as an example, like we talked about last week, what it means to be a Christian.

And part of that is being in God's word, putting the armor of God on daily, showing other Christians

what that looks like, what that walk in life looks like.

And as affirmation for us and for them, I want to remind you how impactful it is when the same

sort of message comes up.

And maybe this message is coming up for you a second, third, 20th time, and I just happen to

be the person that's behind the microphone. But isn't it funny?

And it's more than funny. It's not coincidence. It's. It's design.

When we have something on our heart and perhaps we come across a Bible study or perhaps we go

to church for the first time and maybe years.

And the pastor is speaking a message that seems like it's directly towards us.

And God is answering our prayer through that person on the pulpit. Isn't it funny?

Coincidence design how you open God's word up and what's been on your heart is right there.

I can't tell you how many times where I've been praying over something and I feel like I'm not getting an answer.

And then all of a sudden it hits me, open God's word.

And I'll open God's word and either the answer will be right there or I will research God's

word and I will find out what specific verses detail what I'm going through.

And generally I find the answer there.

I've often even felt on my heart God say, what does my word say?

And if we look at what his word says, everything we need to know is in there.

And that is a valid response to any of our prayers.

It is a challenging response.

What does his word say?

Because it requires discipline from us to be submissive enough to say, yes, sir.

Yes, Lord, and go open his word.

I think in this society, I could go off on a tangent here and I won't, but in this society,

we want things right away, right now, and we want the answer.

We'd rather do a Google search to answer our problems or the scariness of AI will jump on AI

and type in our problem like they're our therapist and get an answer and then turn off our phone

and we've got what we wanted.

Like it's so much more difficult to open God's word, do a little bit of research and see what His inerrant word says. We know.

We know that's the far better way to go.

Do we often do it? I don't know.

It depends on the person.

I know that I have room for improvement in doing that.

I like all of you, have a phone near me far too many hours of the day.

And it is tempting to kind of slide down that hill and search for something online as opposed to search his word.

Now, that being said, the technological devices we have, laptops, desktops, phones, are very

powerful instruments these days, and I use them often for research.

But the goal is to find where I need to be in a hard copy of God's word.

I do have the Bible app.

I do have probably four, maybe five different Bible apps on my phone for research purposes mainly,

but I also have four or five copies of God's word that are hard copies that I open up and I

look for the answer there.

So I might use a computer as a tool to navigate to roughly where I need to be, but once I find

that I'm in first Thessalonians, then I open up a hard copy of God's word, and I look at first Thessalonians.

That doesn't mean I'm perfect, and I never look at the Bible app on my phone and read first

Thessalonians, for example, on my phone. I do.

But generally, I'm trying to open up a hard copy of God's word.

I don't know how many times I've said hard copy in this podcast, but as a high school teacher

and a college teacher at the high school that I teach at, it is a Christian high school, and

I request as our textbook that I'll provide you everything that you need online on our Chromebooks.

Everything that you need is there.

I will provide it to you free of charge.

But I do require that one hard copy textbook be brought.

And it seems some students are a little surprised that me as a science teacher, I ask for that

one textbook to be God's word.

And I still have students that struggle with it, and they try and open the Chromebook and access God's word there.

Luckily, I have a few extra copies of God's word there, so I ask them to shut their laptops.

And I hand them an extra copy.

I ask them, I encourage them to bring a hard copy. Some students never will.

I don't know exactly the reason, the Defiance for it, but they never will.

I email quite a few parents and ask them to encourage their child, like I am, to have a hard copy of God's word.

I've even bought a copy of God's word for a student before.

I believe it is that important that we actually have a physical copy of God's Word available.

I did sort of a 30-day challenge that turned into a 60-day challenge, which turned into a 90-day

challenge, which kind of became just a normal thing.

And I'm embarrassed to admit I've stopped doing it.

And I will take the 30-day challenge starting from this point forward and get back on with this

challenge because it was an incredible experience.

But a lot of people say, well, I have the Bible with me all the time. It's. It's on my phone. To me, that's not. It's not good enough.

I actually carried a Bible with me, a physical copy of God's word with me.

I'm not one that I could fit in my pocket that I actually had to carry with me.

Everything else would be attached to my belt or in my pocket, but a physical copy of God's word

I carried with me for 30 days, and it kind of bled into a 60-day into a 90-day and it was wonderful.

You wouldn't believe how many conversations it started.

In fact, it actually led to getting a job, more or less.

When I accepted the teaching position at the high school that I'm at, I brought my hard copy

of God's word with me to the interview.

About a month later, as we're getting ready for school to start, the superintendent of the school

is welcoming all the teachers back and introduced some of the new teachers.

I was one of about five or six new teachers, and I was honored.

Because in that moment in time, as he was introducing us, he told a story.

And the story was my interview.

And it says, I've only, he said, I've only had once in the, I think, 13 years that he'd been

a superintendent, and he was a principal before that, all his years of interviewing that he'd

ever had an applicant show up with a copy of God's word.

And he said internally to himself, unbeknownst to me, that I'm going to listen to this. Guy.

This guy's got a copy of God's word.

I'm going to listen to what he has to say.

And more so than anything I had to say, that presence of God's word, a physical copy of God's

word, I believe, got me the position.

And it was God inspired.

I felt encouraged to bring that with me to that job interview.

I also had been doing that probably for a year at that point.

Now I Before I got that job, I was driving from job to job, and so I always had a copy of God's Word with me.

Now, I kind of have three places that I work, either here at home, at the high school, or the college.

And so I've basically placed a Bible in each of those locations, minus the college, because

I don't really have an office there.

And I've relied far too much on getting to the location, and then there's a Bible ready for me.

And that's been nice for the most part, but because I don't have an office in the college, I

found myself showing up to work at the college without a Bible in hand.

And to me, that's a personal conviction that I have, and I don't feel okay with that.

I need to step up my game.

And I'm not trying to lay this personal conviction on you, but I do want to challenge you and

encourage you that this has been very fruitful for me, and I think it will be for you as well.

But back on topic with oftentimes we have prayers or we have needs and a pastor will almost

seem like they're preaching to us or a friend will convey in us and it's like, how did they

know this is exactly what I'm going through?

Well, the answer is obvious, God.

But I would encourage you to open God's word in those instances also.

You'd be surprised at how many times a Bible study will answer your prayer.

You might even be surprised on if if the same thing that happened to me happens to you, that

your prayers are answered with, what does my word say?

What does God's word say?

And I believe again, we're on a need to know basis and everything we need to know is in God's word.

So open it, read it and set the example for our brothers and sisters that maybe are struggling with that.

So all that to say an application or takeaway that the Lord has placed on my heart the need

to be involved in a Bible believing church and immerse ourselves in God's Word daily.

Now, I haven't really talked about a Bible believing church and the need for that, but I think

it goes without saying that for one as Christians, I do believe we need to be involved in a

church, specifically a Bible believing church.

Again, as I said last week, I don't believe that means that you can't be saved by not attending a church.

And I understand a lot of people have been hurt by churches.

Totally the fault of the church, nine times out of ten.

And you feel more comfortable studying at home and kind of having your own personal walk with the Lord.

But I do also believe that there is a Bible believing Church near you that you are supposed

to be at and that you are pouring into as much as expecting it to pour into you.

I do think that that will be fruitful on your life.

So I would encourage you in that as well.

I suppose there are two takeaways today, and that is to carry your Bible with you wherever you

go, your physical copy, and to be in a Bible believing church and attend regularly.

How does that get us on topic with a Bible study and what the best Bible study is?

Well, again, as I said in the beginning, the best Bible study is the Bible study that you will do.

If you are interested, I do have two Bible studies that I would recommend for you.

I will talk about them in the Members Only section.

We would be so encouraged if you would support us in that way.

If you go to biblicalanatomyacademy.com, click on Podcast and then click on a picture that says Support the Podcast.

All the instructions on how to sign up are there.

But as we continue to use this podcast as our ministry, it would surely help us tremendously

in continuing to do that.

If you would be a part of that.

And I paused there for just a moment.

Please only do so if you feel called.

I know that felt like a strong pitch there, but really, I only want people to sign up if they

feel like they're called to. I'm not advertising anywhere.

I might pitch every once in a while like I just did.

It might even feel like a strong pitch, which makes me feel really uncomfortable.

But I really only want you to sign up if you feel called.

And for that reason, you may think that I'm hiding those two Bible studies from you.

Well, spoiler alert, I'm gonna tell you what they are before we get to the members only segment.

And at that point in time, I will then dive in deeper to them. But here you go.

The two Bible studies that I would recommend that you look at.

One is called the McCheney, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Bible study that is four chapters a anybody can do four chapters a day.

And if you've got some time off, you're feeling a little bit more ambitious, there is a Horner

Bible study, which is 10 chapters a day.

Both are laid out, as I will detail in the members only section, in a way that really immerses

you in different areas of God's word on a daily basis. I've tried both. They're amazing.

I wouldn't recommend anything to you that I haven't tried. Please check them out.

If you need any information on those, you can certainly find it online.

But again, you can email me and I can send you the one that we've designed, along with kind

of a Excel template that is helpful to dissect God's word through categories or sections.

And I can send you information on either of those two Bible studies that I just recommended

as well, just in case the transcript doesn't pick it up accurately or you didn't hear what I

said when I said McCheney or I said Horner.

So my email is daniel@wearebaa.com I think I mentioned that earlier but just in case email me

anytime with any questions you have and I'm certainly happy to attach a Excel document or a

link to a website to you to help you out.

So Bible believing church, carry your Bible wherever you go. That's my recommendation too.

We'll end with a quote and a question.

The quote today is from JC Ryle.

It is the Bible is God's voice, not man's.

It lives and speaks and works with a power no other book possesses. Amen. Isn't that the truth?

Then our question today, do you know what it feels like to be in God's word daily?

And if so, do you know what it feels like to not be in God's word or to be absent from God's word?

I sure hope you do, not because I don't want you in God's word, but I hope we can feel that

yearning and almost that pain of not being in his word, along with the beauty and the protection

and the provision and the armor of being in his word daily.

Brother or sister, I love you.

I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

We're going to transition now to the members only segment.

I wish you nothing but the best. God bless.

Until next time, may the peace of Christ dwell richly in you, and may I also express Maranatha,

which is an Aramaic word translating to Come, Lord Jesus.