Our heart is to help those who are desperate for more of God grow closer to Him through His Word. One way we do that is by offering Absolute Beginner Bible Studies.

Studies in this category are designed to help people work and think through the Bible who are at the absolute beginning. You don’t need to…

• Be familiar with your Bible
• Be a good reader
• Be familiar with Christian theology
• Have a set of Bible study tools at your disposal
• Have studied anything in the Bible before

We remember being confused by the Bible, and we want to help lead people past the confusion so they can hear and understand God’s message through His Word.

Objectives

The goal is to get you to experience each book of the Bible (perhaps for the first time!).

That means you read the entire book and understand the big ideas within it.

Our philosophy is to always bring people’s attention back to the text. There is no substitute for spending time in God’s Word, so we will repeatedly encourage people’s eyes and hearts back to the text.

We hope that these posts inspire and encourage you to continue reading the Bible on your own.

Structure

Posts in the Absolute Beginner Bible Study series will be simple. Shorter books will work through a book of the Bible chapter-by-chapter. In these instances, we will follow the section headings of a particular English Bible — most likely the ESV, CSB, or NIV.

Larger books will not focus on every chapter. Instead, the biblical book will be broken into sections that cover a range of chapters. These sections will be structured around themes and plot developments within the narrative and/or flow of the book.

At this level, we want you to feel like you’ve gotten your head wrapped around the message of the biblical text — this is what we call Experiencing the text. In light of this, posts in this series will avoid deep theology, word studies (unless absolutely necessary for grasping the essence of the text), and rabbit trails.

Instead, we will focus on identifying the main / big idea of the section, and then we will explain how the surrounding passages support and/or relate to that big idea. Once this identification process is grasped, it is significantly easier to understand the message of any biblical book.

Remember

• God is already speaking to us when we read His Word
• God ministers to us when we engage His Word with humble hearts and a desire for the truth
• The Bible is a special book, but you aren’t the one who makes it special; neither can you force the “something-special-ness” to show itself; God moves towards humanity through His Word.
• Approach the text with humility, a desire for the truth, and ask God to help you see the truth and beauty behind His Word.

Terminology

Here are some of the terms and concepts we will use throughout our Absolute Beginner Bible Studies

• A Scene — a scene describes a self-contained passage within the Gospels. Most chapters in the Gospels have multiple scenes. For example, John 3 has two scenes: Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (3:1–21), and John the Baptist exalts Christ (3:22–36).
• Thesis Statement — a thesis statement represents what you believe to be true. It is the thing your are making your case about. It is the thing you want everyone else to embrace. It is the statement that you plan to support and defend with the rest of your content.