Search & Find: Hearing From God During Bible Study

Reading my Bible and talking to the Lord more are on my list of most-important-things-to-do in 2024. I look back on 2023 with gratitude, but I also am just kind of blown away at how things can change in just a year. I want to document that more.  I don’t know about you, but I feel the need to just pay attention. I feel this desire for sacred spaces and just real intentionality.

I thought I would share with you one of the peaceful practices that I use when it comes to my daily Bible studies, talking to God and remembering my true identity in Christ. I have a New Testament daily Bible reading plan that I’ve been using for the last five years now. I love it because, as a mom of many children, getting quiet time is just nearly impossible when it comes to sitting down and actually reading and taking it all in.

I love journaling and I love talking to God and getting into the word of God. What I really wanted to share with you today are five questions that I ask myself when I’m studying and journaling. These lead me into a deeper relationship with God. 

Before I tell you the five questions–one of my favorite Bible study tools– let me tell you about how this practice has helped me to turn on my reticular activator. Your reticular activator is the same part of your brain that allows you to look for something. So let’s say you’re looking for a red shirt and you’re standing over a mountain of laundry and your eyes are scanning through that pile. When you’re thinking to yourself, I’m looking for a red shirt. If you’re looking for a red shirt, you’re going to see it. Your reticular activator is really, really helpful when it comes to finding things, looking for things, or just kind of scanning through your environment to see the thing that it is you’re looking for.

What I love about these five questions is that it kind of acts like a reticular activator. It helps you to look for certain things in the text and look for certain passages or places in scripture that are helpful for you to get to know God. They help you get to know what he’s up to and to hear his voice more often. One of the things that I hear from many Christians today is how do I know i’m hearing from the Lord? How do I know if i’m hearing his voice? 

The voice of the Holy Spirit can be known because it lines up with scripture. It’s when we get into the scriptures that we can discern the voice of the Lord and to know the will of God. 

The Five Questions I Ask Myself

The first question is:

What verses stand out to me today? When you’re reading, what pops off? What leaps off the page for you? Write it down. Don’t ask questions. Just write it down, even if it’s something that doesn’t make sense. Later, you can talk to God about this in prayer.

Question number two is: 

What do these passages reveal about God?  What’s really cool about the Bible is that it’s not all about you. It’s all about God and what he’s doing. The Bible is an incredible book because it not only tells you what happened, but it tells you what always happens. The story of the Bible is timeless.

The third question you want to ask when you are reading your Bible is:

How does this passage change the way I live? There’s one thing you need to know about the Lord. He is constantly redirecting and realigning my life and your life so that we will look more like Christ. When we allow these scriptures to speak to us, it will change the way that we live.  

You know, I love my kids. I think that they’re wonderful, wonderful human beings. They also are immature in many, many ways. I love them. I have lots of patience for them. And there are times where I don’t have lots of patience for them.  But the one thing I do know is that I am on a mission to correct them and help them to upgrade their lives in such a way where there’s more and more freedom for them. The more righteous in heart and in thought they become, the more Christ-like they become, the more freedom and victory they have. And the good news about the Lord is that he’s constantly asking us to reorient, redirect, and realign with him so we can have more and more freedom. The text should call us out and it should also call us up.

The fourth question that I love is:

What am I thankful for? Gratitude is a magnet for miracles and I will tell you this: When you are thankful, it is hard to be entitled.  And I don’t know about you, but our world just seems to be getting more and more entitled. We think that we deserve all these things. I have to remember that I deserved hell. I did not deserve mercy. It was only when his love sought us out that we responded in return with love. All of us deserve judgment, and yet God came and said, 

Here is Jesus Christ instead.

There’s always something to be thankful for. Complaining is easy. But it takes practice and perseverance to sit down and write out things you’re thankful for. 

A key theme that I’ve noticed in the scriptures is how God loves thankfulness. He loves gratitude. He is not so great with grumbling and complaining. It still blows my mind how the Israelites were only 11 days away from traveling to the promised land and yet it took them 40 years. They were grumbling. They were complaining. They were lacking in gratitude. The last time I checked the scriptures, he is the same yesterday as he was today and he is tomorrow.  And that means grumbling and complaining are only going to hurt us. So when you sit down and you take a moment just to reflect on what you’re thankful for, God looks on this with favor.

The fifth question is:

What do I need to talk to God about? Jesus gave us a model for prayer when he said:  when you pray, pray like this…our father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sin. As we forgive those who sin against us, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one for thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.  And that’s really good,  and that’s a great basis for just reorienting our hearts again and realigning with the Lord. You are being invited today to talk to God more. 

One of the things I love about sitting down with the scriptures and asking these questions is that this gives me a great place for me to start having a conversation with God. So when you start praying, you do want to admit and confess that He is good and He is holy and we do not, we do not deserve to be in His presence. Yet he calls us his children and he wants you to talk to him. I have found that when I write down the things that I’m really thinking about and things I’m truly curious about, God–the Holy Spirit– meets me there.  And there are groanings that you have in your heart and in your spirit that really need to be talked about with your father.

Sometimes I find that my belief is low and I’m starting to question whether or not I was even heard in my prayers in the first place.  And I’ll tell you, the longer you go without study of the Bible, without listening to the scriptures, without sitting down and engaging with the Lord, the more that that increases.  

I encourage you to slow down and contemplate creating peace on purpose in your life. Bring your worries to the table. It’s possible that slowing down, reading the scriptures, asking a few questions every day could actually be the very best way to bring revival back into our own hearts and our own lives. It’s possible that God is actively working in your life, in your marriage, on your children, in your heart, in your family, in the situations that you’re worried and stressed about.  

When I mentioned your reticular activator earlier, when we were talking about finding the red sweater,  well…  It’s hard to find out what God is up to unless you are in the scriptures. And as believers, we are called to read the word and hide it in our heart.  Sometimes I think about how blessed we are as believers to be able to have God’s word in our home and in our hand.

When your worry is high, your anxiety is high and you’re uncertain about what God is up to, you may be having a hard time hearing his voice. Come back. Slow down. Contemplate the richness of his goodness. Write it down–it’s a great way to process God’s guidance in your life. You’re hungry to know that he is there and that he cares. Well, friend, he does. I encourage you to download my free Bible jar printable here.

Read a few scriptures. Ask yourself the five discussion questions. What stands out? What does it reveal about God’s plan for you? How does it change the way you live? What are you thankful for? And then talk to God. He’ll be so glad you did.  And I know he has lots to speak to you about this upcoming year in your faith journey.