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Bible Study is Looking for "Home" Work

God's Word is living and active, and that is evidence most by the way that I now do my Bible Studying. My Bibles are stored in electronic media and come alive when I open my Logos Bible Software. In minute portions of time that I cannot begin to comprehend, my chosen Bible opens to the passage or topic that I require. My favorite version is the ESV. The language it uses is simple and easy to understand, but it reveals all the meaning that God put there.

Prior to the Logos software, most of my Bible reading and study was done with a printed Bible. Of course, this is the way that the Bible had been studied for thousands of years. And I studied It just like millions of other people. If I wanted a meaning to a word, I had to look in another book. If I wanted to find a passage, I had to go to the concordance and hope that the word that I remembered was there and had the reference that I was seeking. Now, all my resources are available for my Bible study with one little "right click" of the mouse. My entire Logos library is suddenly open to me. And after setting off seeking clarification on a word or place while passing through dictionaries, commentaries and maps, I will always find the information that I am pursuing. But in the mean time, God will show me something that was totally unrelated to the information that I desired, but which had immediate application to my life.

My desire to do more Bible study has grown in the last several years. I had been attending a Bible believing and preaching church, but shortly after I got married, I changed churches due to the fact that my wife and step grandson were already plugged into that church, and had been since my now ten-year-old grandson was a todler. This church is also Bible centered. My wife had been attending a small home Bible study sponsored by my new church for many years. I also became a part of that group. Our main focus was to do book by book studies rather than topics. Each book was studied verse by verse, and of course, it took many weeks to cover a book. We would have continued in this manner for several more years, but Huricane Rita interposed herself on our group. Our study leader volunteered to go to Louisiana. His time there made him rethink his priorites, and he decided to step down as our fearless leader. His exit gave me the desire to lead a home Bible study, but my schedule has prohibited that to this point.

I had gotten involved with Logos in a convoluted fashion. I was looking for Bible software and came across Max Lucado's Life Works. When I loaded the program, I was staring at a "Libronix" icon. I ended up checking out the web site and liked what I saw. All this was shortly before our home Bible study leader quit. Because of my desire to become a Bible study leader, I decided to buy the Bible Study Library. It was a great resource and easy to use. In the meantime, Logos came out with Bible Software 3, and I decided to upgrade. Not being a pastor or a paid minister, I was not prepared to go to Logos top product, but I did upgrade to the Leader's Library. Since then, I have attended a Morris Proctor Seminar to learn how to use the program more effectively. And in the meantime, through my Bible study, God has called me to be a pastor.

In all the talk about the Logos software, one must remember that my main focuss is to study the Word of God. However, I have come to depend on Logos to center my attention on the Bible. Using the Bible reading portion of the program, I have already read through the Bible once in the New King James Version. Now, I have set up four different sets of readings in different versions. I do not do all of them every day. I do the poetic books on Tuesday and Wednesday in the NET Bible--the imbeded notes shed much light on Job, on Saturday and Sunday using the NIV I study the "Weekend Prophets" and on a seven day a week schedule, I have two readings going in both the Holman Christian Bible and the ESV. Both of those are for the entire Bible, but the ESV reading is to take less time. I also do word, topic and passage studies out of my daily readings. And in doing these studies, God has given me little nuggets. One of them would have to be in 1 Cor. 13 where what love is NOT is described. A modern equivelent could be inserted here where it could say something to the effect that "love does not click the 'save' icon."

As I do those studies and readings, I am not looking just to complete a program or get a verse list, but to get to know God the Father, Christ the Son and the person of the Holy Spirit better. By doing these Bible studies, my faith has grown, my understanding of God's character has increased and my calling to the ministry has come about. Therefore, I may be sitting in a chair looking at a computer monitor while I do my Bible study, but I am learning more and more how to stand on the Word of God.

Submitted by Gregory E. Sarwinski