Approaching the Bible Like a Conversation With a Good Friend // The Heart-to-Heart Bible Study Method
I want you to think about a really good conversation you've had with a friend. Maybe it was recently, maybe it was one from a while ago that often lingers in your memory. What were the components of that conversation that made it really good? Consider, how did it start? What was it like in the middle when it was getting really good? How did it end?
Maybe the conversation looks something like this:
You give your friend the honor of sharing what they've been up to first.
You engage with what they're saying, show interest, and ask open-ended questions.
You lean in as they add details and depth to the story–maybe even adding your own relatable story in there too.
You reflect and respond to what they've said, showing that you are actively listening and paying attention.
You then ask how you can take action to support them. Do they want advice, or help? Just to vent? What do they need?
The same could be applied to how you approach an in-depth study of the Bible. Just like we can go deep in our conversations with trusted friends, we can have a heart-to-heart with God through His Word. He speaks. Each of these conversational elements spells out the word “heart”. Hence, the name: “Heart-to-Heart method”. So, there's honor, engage, add-depth, reflect and take action.
HONOR
We first honor the Holy Spirit before beginning any Bible study. This looks like humbling ourselves in prayer, seeking His presence, asking for guidance and understanding, and submitting to His authority.
Here’s a sample prayer: Holy Spirit you are welcome here. Thank you for your Word. Thank you that I get to know you more because of it. Thank you that more than just giving me knowledge, your Word has the power to transform me. To make me more like you. Help me be present and attentive in seeking you. Amen.
ENGAGE
This is when we start reading the passage and stay curious as we do. It's lightly reading, noticing what we notice, making any initial underlines, or circles, asking questions and writing them down, or putting a question mark and extending a line from scripture to any notes. Let’s take a look at the example below. You’ll see Isaiah 12 on the left, which is unannotated. On the right, I'm starting to ask a couple of questions like: “on what day?” where it says “on that day” in verse one, and then it says: “yo.” Well, who’s the “you”? I’m also noticing that there's some repetition. “My, my, my”, and “salvation salvation salvation”. Also, some strong action words like: “give, make, declare, sing, cry out”. So, in the engage phase, this is the time to notice whatever you notice.
ADD-DEPTH
Next is add-depth. This is when we dig deeper, it's getting good and we want all the deeds. We're asking ourselves “Who wrote this, who's the intended audience? In what genre was this written? What's the historical background?” And we want to get these context clues from the Bible first. We can do so by looking at the passage heading, looking to see if our Bibles have a book overview, and even skimming around the passage before and after to see if there's any mention of the who what where when.
Reading other translations can help as well. Because we also want to look at words that maybe we don't know the definition of. So we can use a dictionary here too. Cross references are also a great tool to use to be able to understand the context and what's happening in the story. Cross references are just simply looking at other parts of the Bible to see where similar things are mentioned. Then after we've really tried to do the work on our own, I suggest using a commentary to catch any details that you may have missed. This is when I find things I never would have thought to add to my notes. And this will complete your black-and-white robust notes.
Your page will be filled with all kinds of notes in just your black pen and your white page. So that ends up looking like this (see below). On the left are notes using my Bible only and starting to look at different cross references. Skimming Chapter 11 told me what “on that day” meant. Just looking at the chapter before Isaiah 12 and using Open Bible’s cross reference tool confirmed that what I found was right because it cited Zechariah among many other books. The book overview in my Bible told me who the author is, the genre, and who the audience is. And then I use the Enduring Word, which is my favorite for commentaries to flush out my notes even more. As you can see I box everything out to separate the notes so that I know which note goes with which verse.
REFLECT
Now I move on to the R in the Heart-to-Heart method, which stands for: reflect. This is when you're going to revisit and highlight your notes, sum it up, and show that you were paying attention. You're going to pick two to four colors and highlight the text. Don't put matching colors right next to one another because you want to use this to visually break up the notes so it's easy to revisit and understand which note goes with what highlights. And as you're doing this, it's a great time to just revisit everything you've learned. Lastly, sum up the passage in a sentence or two so that when you return back to this when you're flipping through your Bible, you can just see right on top, it says exactly what's happening but in a quick, succinct way. This is my favorite part of the method. And it looks like this. Highlights only on the left and then I added a sticky note summary on top on the right.
TAKE ACTION
Lastly is the T in the heart acronym which stands for take action. This is when you're going to apply the passage and consider the next steps. I like to think about this in three simple ways but there are also some bonus things that you can do. But just the three basic simple layers are to ask yourself, 1. What does this reveal about God's character? 2. Ask the Holy Spirit, what does this reveal about me? And then 3. Pray, what should I do about it? Now the bonus is that you can use the SOAP method to kind of figure this stuff out. You can also share scripture with a friend because as you're teaching it to somebody else, you are cementing it in your memory. Another option is to memorize scripture. But the goal here is to make it stick. You don't want to lose all the time that you invested to study this passage in-depth. You want to actually be able to apply it and remember it.
And here's what that looks like at the bottom here:
I've written that from Isaiah 12, I learned that God is forgiving. He's a savior, He's trustworthy, He's strong, He's great and glorious. And this reveals that God deemed me worthy to be saved. He has a high view of me and He's coming back for his children. My action items are to give thanks, share His works and exalt His name, sing to the Lord, cry out to God, and worship and praise Him daily.
So, altogether, there are five aspects of the Heart-to-Heart Method that take you from that blank black and white page, to starting to add some notes, then starting to box them off and add color, adding the summary, and then taking that action. Remember, the HEART acronym stands for “honor”, which is to seek the Holy Spirit first, “engage”, lightly read the text and notice what you notice asking questions… “add depth” is to dig deeper into context, use the Bible first, then commentary… “reflect”, highlight your notes, can you sum up the passage and one or two sentences? And lastly, “take action”. What does this reveal about God's character? About you? Any action steps?
Imagine the ways approaching the Bible like this could lead to an intimate relationship with Jesus, an increased faith, plus a Holy Spirit-led life.
Can you see yourself using the Heart-to-Heart method to study the Bible, complete with notes in the margins and colorful, meaningful highlights? Would you like to spend even more time together going even deeper and further on how to build Biblical confidence and understand God's Word for yourself?
If yes, Read for Revelation Masterclass is perfect for you! An in-depth, verse-by-verse Bible study course for believers who want to go deeper in their understanding of God's Word, Read for Revelation is everything you need to implement real-time, step-by-step learning using the Heart-to-Heart method for personal Bible study without having to rely on other people to teach you God’s Word.
You've already completed "the method" phase, now what's left is foundations, studies, and lifestyle. The meat of the course is the 3, 60-minute in-depth studies on the topic of Spirit vs flesh. This is where we’ll put the Heart-to-Heart method into action verse-by-verse and step-by-step so you walk away with deeper understanding and increased biblical confidence. See your options below to learn more.
Includes the 3, in-depth Bible studies where we walk through the method together. It also has lessons on things like “how to navigate commentaries”, plus a companion workbook to go along with each module.
