Online Study Tools

The Bible

Revealing Jesus
We believe it is the will of God for every believer to know and experience Jesus through the Bible. We believe that the Bible is not simply a history or theology book, but the inspired and authoritative Word of God given for encountering Jesus Christ. We believe it is meant not only for the scholarly, but for the common everyday Christian as well. We believe, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, when anyone steps into its pages, the Bible becomes the setting where participation happens with the person of Jesus Himself.

Available to Everyone
It is a fact that many never find the Bible useful or helpful in their walk with Jesus. Having to rely on the interpretation of others, many own a Bible but do not know how to study it for themselves. We believe the Bible is best understood and interpreted within the body of Christ, being open to tradition, knowledge, reason, and experience, but we also believe it to be crucial in the revelation of Jesus to the individual believer.

Brings Transformation
Jeremiah Bolich Ministries believes that the only way to be really into Jesus, is to be in His Word (the Bible). It is the Word that brings true transformation to our lives. It is what cuts down though the issues and pierces the heart, confronting the believer with new truth and revealing Jesus. I know in my own life that transformation and change has taken place only through the exposition of the Word. People may meet together, but they have no power to bring about transformation apart from the Word.

A Priority
I have ministered to many spiritually wounded and beaten people over the years who live in defeat and sin. Almost without exception, in every case there has been an inverse relationship between the involvement in the Word and the involvement in sin. We have to be into the Word if we are going to be in Him, being transformed and living victorious lives. The Bible has to be the priority.

Power for Living
We believe and say without hesitation, the Bible is the primary source of revelation of truth in Jesus. All other avenues or means of grace are secondary to it, and really have no power in themselves apart from it.

Saturation Bible Study

How Do I Study the Bible?
The study of the Bible is not a peripheral aspect of Christianity, it is central. It is the Bible that we hold as authoritative, even above our experiences, feelings, and the traditions handed down to us by our elders. We believe all experience, reason, and tradition must come back and fall in line with the measuring stick we call the Bible. It is the starting point of all tradition. It is the accountability of all experience.

We would like to help you in your experience of reading the Bible by providing you with three easy steps to begin your study.

Approaching The Text
What Do I See?

The first step in Bible study is to become familiar with the passage you are studying. There are many tools available to assist you in this task, most of which can be found in your local Christian book store or online. These are always helpful and should be utilized to assist you in your studies. However, the best and most accessible resource available to every person is their own engagement with the text. We suggest that you just read the passage.

Commentators and original language experts are indispensable in understanding the Scriptures, but we must never forget that we have a mind and the ability to draw conclusions just as they do. At one time they too were beginners in Bible study and probably had all the intimidations and fears that we have had. However, they were presented with the opportunity to engage with the Bible and contribute thoughts and ideas about its contents, and they seized that opportunity. You should lay hold of it as well.

Once the student has read through any selected passage, they can then attempt to draw some conclusions about the text. It is important at this point to stress reading the passage several times. The simple fact is, the more the passage is read, the more familiar the details of that passage will be. When beginning any study, you will want to do much more than just understand the main thrust of what the author is communicating. Often tucked away in a passage, especially if it is a parable or the recounting of a story, there will be small bits of information that will color the entire message of the passage. These bits of information, whether they be particular words or certain cultural issues, will become more clear the more the passage is read. This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of the entire study, don’t miss this opportunity.

After saturating yourself in the passage, having reading it through several times, draw some initial conclusions from the text. These conclusions will be simply first observations and will probably need to be defined in greater detail later. The purpose of this first initial observation is not to define anything, but to simply list out what is seen. Therefore, you should jot down any words or phrases you don’t understand as well as anything else you feel may be significant to understanding the passage.

As a quick wrap up of this first section, let’s lay out what our objectives are in this portion of the study:

• Read the passage several times, becoming familiar with what is written
• List any words or phrases in the passage that seem particularly important
• Note any words or phrases that are confusing
• Try to locate the core message or concept the writer is presenting

You are now ready for the second step in the Saturation process!

Engaging The Text
What Does It Mean?

The next step in Bible Study is to take our first observations of a passage and ask what those observations mean. In studying a particular passage, we are not necessary concerned with what the passage means to us, rather we want to know what the author intended the passage to mean. If a passage means one thing to some, means another for others, and then means something else for still others, then the passage means nothing at all. As stated in the Approaching the Text section, we believe that the writers in our Bible wrote with a distinct purpose. It is our desire when studying any portion of the Bible, to come to grips with the intended meaning of what has been written.

Therefore, in this second step of study, we want to take what we have seen in the Approaching the Text section and try to come to a conclusion as to what it means. It should be understood, that this process can be very difficult. When discovering the meaning of any portion of Scripture, the student will have to search into a time when the world was a very different place. The individual who is writing, not to mention the intended recipients, are living in a world where the culture, technologies, health concerns, and many other aspects of life are vastly different than ours. These realities have to be taken into consideration when seeking an interpretation of any particular portion of Scripture.

Local Christian book stores, pastors, professors at Christian Universities, and the Internet are always extremely helpful at this point of the study, but the easiest and most beneficial is to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. Concordances, Bible dictionaries, and different translations are all helpful tools in discovering the meaning of a passage.

Word studies are very helpful. Included at the end of this write-up is a list of web sites that give helps in doing word studies.

Throughout this aspect of the study, you should guard against the temptation to read into or proof text the passage. Every student of the Bible must guard against such dangers, for giving into these impulses break down the integrity of true expositional Bible study. To proof text or to read into means to make a passage say something in which the author did not intend for it to say. This, of course, is not the aim of Bible study. In Bible study, you want to expose what the author intended the passage say. You want to do exposition on the text. It is in expositional Bible study that the intended meaning of the passage is found.

To insure that we do not forget all that we have covered, let’s lay out some objectives for Engaging the Text:

• Define the words listed in the What Do I See section of this study.
• Include any significant information regarding culture that may enrich the meaning of the study.
• Explain any words or phrases that were confusing.
• State the core message or concept of the passage.

Applying The Text
What Does It Change?

The final step in Bible study is the application of Truth to your life. Upon arrival at this point, you have asked some very important questions of the text. The first question was What Do I See? In asking this questions, you have tried to located and note any words or phrases in a passage that seem significant, or those that you did not fully understand. You then made some initial observations as to the core concept or message that the author is giving in the selected passage. In this first step of study, you have become familiar with the text and asked critical questions that laid the foundation for the rest of the study.

The second question asked was What Does It Mean? In asking this question, you took the initial observations of the passage and began to deal specifically with defining and piecing together its meaning. This was also a crucial step in the process of Bible study. It was in this step that the intended message of the author was discovered. Word studies were done and meaning was discovered. In this step Truth was revealed.

The last portion of Bible study is both the simplest and the most difficult. It is the simplest in that all the study of the passage is complete. What has been discovered up to this point is what is going to have to be dealt with. This, in fact, is the most difficult aspect of the study. It is in this portion of the study that all efforts come together and serve its purpose. What you have discovered is to now shape you life and be applied practically. The goal of Bible study is to get to this step. Knowledge is not the goal, nor theological or philosophical insights. The goal of Bible study is to be molded into the likeness of the passage studied.

The intent in saturating has been to be transformed and molded by the Truth revealed. When you ask the question What Does It Change?, you are asking Jesus to reveal to your mind what needs to change in your life as a result of the passage. Trusting that the Holy Spirit has been revealing and guiding the entire process, the message revealed will indeed be a piercing Truth that will change your life!

To give a quick wrap up of this section, let’s lay out the final objectives of Applying the Text:

• The study objective is for life change
• The message of the passage is to be applied to your life
• The motivation in the study is not to apply the Truth to other’s lives
• Thy Holy Spirit is involved in this process