Bible Question:
Hello fellow brother's and sister's! This is my first post, and my question is this; How important is it to know scripture, ie., book, chapter and verse. I can recall what what is being said in scripture, but not one to remember ch. and verse. I consider myself a good student of the Word, but as I said, not good at remembering verses. Just thought I ask, before interacting with others and get bombarded with, SHOW ME WHERE. Well I wait expecting! God's Grace to All. inmyheart |
Bible Answer: inmyheart: I see that Tim Moran and others have made some excellent suggestions. My first suggestion is that you heed Tim's suggestions and give them a try. I have a couple of suggestions of my own, based on my own experience. First, learn to use a concordance to find the verse you're looking for. Inexpensive paperback concordances are available at your local Christian bookstore. Online concordances are also available. One of the best and easiest to use online concordances is found at: http://bible.crosswalk.com/ You may also order a concordance online. An excellent concordance for locating verses (in the KJV) is the Cruden's Complete Concordance available in hardcover for 9.99 at www.christianbook.com (This is not an ad and I am not selling anything. Just trying to share some useful information with you.) The way you use a concordance to locate a verse is to look up a keyword that appears in that verse. Of course, before you can look up keywords of verses, you will need to be somewhat familiar with the wording of the verse you want to find. The more familiar you are with the wording of verses, the better. Aside from memorization, the only way I know of to become familiar with the wording of verses, is to read the Bible and read it repeatedly. There are all kinds of daily Bible reading plans you can use. You will find many on the Net. Regardless of which plan you use, to read for this kind of familiarization, I suggest you continually read and re-read in the same translation, whichever one you choose. Also, the wording in some other translations is close enough to the KJV wording, that you can use a KJV concordance to locate passages in these other versions. They include, among others, the NASB, RSV, NKJV, ESV, etc. Also, if you read and re-read the Bible in the same edition, in time you will have an idea whether the verse you're looking for is on a right-hand or left-hand page, in a right or left column on the page. Memorization of specific verses is highly recommended. If you learned one verse a week, in two years you would know 104 verses by heart. The next best thing to deliberate memorization is to read the Bible over and over and over again, especially, but not limited to, key passages. If you combine this with systematic Bible study, in time you will be amazed at how many verses you can quote, even though you never sat down to memorize them. These are merely basic suggestions to help you get started. I hope they help. Grace to you, kalos |