Seven Question Study Method
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:30-31
Studying the Bible is a lifelong practice. There are many approaches you can take to understanding context, meaning and tone.
This method provides a seven-question framework you can use when studying, based on the great commandment in Mark 12.
To love God, we need to know Him and discover His characteristics which are infinite.
To love people, we need to understand their struggles and become compassionate.
To love ourselves we need to see our reflection both made in the image of Christ and our neighbours who are too.
The first two questions are foundational-
1. WHO WROTE IT
2. WHEN WAS IT WRITTEN
This is easy to discover, and most Bibles have this information at the beginning of each book.
The Bible is not fully formatted in timeline order, so this practice allows you to see bodies of work by the same author and piece scripture together that does not sit side by side in text.
The third question is contextual-
3. WHY DID THE AUTHOR WRITE IT
Dig a little deeper and discover who the author was writing to. What was happening? Is it simply an account of events or a letter?
These first three questions will inform any further study you do or can be applied to any other framework you are using.
The next three are framed by The Greatest Commandment-
4. WHAT DOES THIS BOOK TEACH ME ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF GOD
5. WHAT DOES THIS BOOK TEACH ME ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF PEOPLE
6. WHAT DOES THIS BOOK TEACH ME ABOUT MYSELF
The seventh is practical.
7. HOW DO I APPLY THIS BOOK TO MY LIFE
This framework encourages you to take each book of the Bible as one reading before answering these questions. You may discover multiple answers to the questions as you are going through the chapters, so take notes along the way, reflect, and answer these questions once you have completed your reading.
To help, I have created a Bible Study Journal with pages for each book of the Bible with these seven questions ready for you to work through. You can download this and use it as a digital journal by clicking here.
If not, I encourage you to take note of these seven questions and give it a go. It’s amazing what you discover within scripture when you focus your study through a framework.
Cheering you on all the way as you discover more about God, yourself, and how to love others through this study method.
Written By - Marie Aitken