Ten Questions to Ask Every Time You Read the Bible

 

 This is an interesting book by Andrew Jones.  I picked up the ebook version from Concordia Publishing House:  https://www.cph.org/ten-questions-to-ask-every-time-you-read-the-bible-ebook-edition.  Scroll down to the "Other Formats" tab if you want to buy a physical book. 

In my previous post, I mentioned that I loved the way our Pastor asked a lot of questions about the verses we were reading.  I had this in mind when I started the book.  Note that I was sitting in a waiting room, while my neighbor was at physical therapy.  This was probably a "good thing."

First, I jumped to the Table of Contents to see what the questions were, as each was addressed in its own chapter.  The first few questions are pretty straight-forward.  Some of the others are not as obvious.  Some of the questions I was looking for did not appear to be in the list... but they were!  Had I not been sitting in a waiting room, I might have shut down my e-reader and gone on to something else.  I am so glad I did not, because he really does have a great set of questions that build on each other to give you a fuller picture.

Rev. Jones starts every chapter with "Why is this question important?"  In the first couple of questions, you already know the answers in general.  He goes on to explain these answers and how they may be determined from the text.

The next section in each chapter gives some Bible examples and applies the question to each verse.  Finally, there is a "Putting it into Practice" section that summarizes the answer to the question and gives a few more verses that you can practice on yourself.

I won't share each of the questions here, but I will say they seem to fall into a few categories.

The first four questions seem to be an analysis of the verse(s), looking at both specifics and different points of view to help us learn more about God.  Each chapter not only introduces the next question, but also builds on the previous one.  The first four chapters come together in a chart that enables you to look at the verse in different ways.

The next three questions are all about context.  These three threw me, because I was looking for "context" in the question instead of the text of the chapter.  To me, this is really important.  The one that surprised me was, "Where Are We?"  Rev. Jones gives an amazing explanation of how the example verse has much greater meaning when you consider the geography behind the story.

The final three questions are all about connections.  Connecting the reading with your own experiences and reactions as well as connecting to other verses, hymns, and references.

Beyond the chart used to combine the first 4 questions, there are not any template pages for journaling.  That is not an issue for me as I am compiling my journal template from multiple sources.  However, I highly recommend that you read this book, because I feel the Author has really come up with a good set of questions to dig deeper into scripture.

Next Tuesday, I will share with you the template that I have put together.  I have already started using it and made a few adjustments.  I am having some technical difficulties that I'm still working on, so this is all a continued work in progress.  I will share all the fun next week.

Until next time,

Stormy