Good observation takes practice

A week ago we began a new series with the same name as this blog, "Teaching Sheep to Fish." We're learning how to study God's word together using 3 basic steps: observation, interpretation, and application.

Review:
Before even opening God's word, we talked about the importance of approaching with humility and asking God to open our "spiritual eyes" to see the truth in his word.

Then as we begin to observe passages in Scripture we can use the 5 w's: who, what, where, when, and why. These 5 questions will help us greatly in gathering information which we will then use to interpret the meaning. That last question (why) is usually the toughest. Remember, just like the other questions, it is only used to gather information from the passage you are studying. The tendency for us is to try to bring other texts of the Bible into answering this question. It's actually much simpler than that. Let me give you an example.

Here's the passage we studied yesterday:
           
         "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Acts 1:8

If we ask, "Who?" we will find that Jesus is speaking to his apostles. Then if we ask, "What is happening in this passage?" we see two things: (1) the apostles will receive power, and (2) the apostles will become Jesus' witnesses. Then, we want to ask, "Why will they receive power and become Jesus' witnesses?" The answer within the passage is clear: the power (or ability) to become witnesses is because the Holy Spirit will come upon them.

This is very important. The power to be a witness for Jesus Christ is not something the apostles had within them that simply needed to be awakened by the Holy Spirit. No, the power to be a witness for Jesus came from outside them, as the Holy Spirit's power became theirs when he was given to them by the Father.

I know this seems like a lot of work, but my hope is that you will stick with it because once it starts to click you will begin to see so much of God's word that you never knew was there!

Many of you asked me to make the 5 w's form available to you for you to use when you are studying, you can find it by clicking here.

Feel free to use this form anytime to study a passage in the Bible. Remember, good observation takes practice. Take 15 minutes this week and try it out on Joshua 1:8.