Inductive Bible Study Week 1: Intro to Galatians

Okay, I am getting all excited to invite you over to my living room to discuss our observations of Galatians over milk and cookies!

Oh, but wait!

What observations?

Oh, that’s right.

We don’t have any yet.

Well, if you thought I was going to do all the work here, you have another think coming! 🙂

There are a few tools we still need to gather before we start this study:

Bible

Pen or Pencil

Note paper

Colored pencils, highlighters, and/or crayons

Concordance (optional)

Greek Lexicon (optional)

There are also a few ground rules we need to follow.  If you plan to participate in this study you will need to refrain from using *any* outside sources that offer interpretations of the text such as commentaries, religious websites or magazines, or Bible studies on the book of Galatians. If you use a study Bible this means refraining from peeking at the notes as much as possible. You can use a concordance for cross referencing and a lexicon for word studies in the original language. If you don’t want to mark your Bible all up with highlighted words and phrases you might consider making a photocopy of the section.

We will all be on equal playing field here.  I’m sure we have varying degrees of familiarity with Galatians from studying it in the past, but we will try to suspend our prior ideas in order to study the book with as unbiased an attitude as possible.  I am also an equal player here because, even though I have done inductive studies in the past, I have never done one on the book of Galatians. I am so excited for what I am going to learn!

Study Assignment for this week:  Galatians 1

Our goal for this week is to dig into the text for ourselves and come up with what we think are the key themes and ideas in chapter 1 of Galatians. If you can make the time, it will help your study if you are able to read the whole book through at least once in one sitting. It’s a short book – just six chapters – and shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes, depending on how fast you read.  The purpose of the read is to get the big picture of the book, rather than to meditate on specific commands or promises that stand out to you personally.  This will help you focus on your goal and allow you to read it more quickly.  Your study of chapter 1 will be much easier if you are able to read the whole book first.

We will come back here in about a week prepared to discuss our observations of chapter 1.

No one is going to have a bad observation!  All observations are welcome and encouraged and every observation, no matter how minor, is important when you are in the early stages of an inductive study.

Remember some of the key questions you want to be asking at this stage in the study:

1.  Who is writing this? (original author)

2.  Who are the intended recipients? (original audience)

3.  Why did the author write this? (purpose of the book as a whole and the individual sections)

4.  What is the author seeking to communicate to the original audience? (look for repeated words/ideas or the author’s logical sequence of thought)

5.  How does this section relate to the larger context of the book and/or the rest of the Bible?

Be sure to take some time to pray before you start your study.  Ask God to reveal Himself to you through His inspired Word and then expect Him to do just that!

There will be a new post for the discussion of the observations of chapter 1 (along with the milk and cookies).   There may or may not be additional posts in between this Bible study series.  That is not entirely up to me as this is a group blog after all. 🙂  And sometimes I get random urges to post random thoughts.

____________

Photo by Claudia1967

Advertisement