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Tips For an Effective Bible Study

I find that the church can be a lot like a popular gym. If you were to walk into a gym on any given day, you would find several people running on a treadmill at a decent pace. If you leave and come back several months later, you will see those same people still running on the treadmill but they look no different compared to the last time you saw them. Not only have they not improved, but by definition of running on a treadmill, they have gotten nowhere.

What is sadder is that many people repeat this same behavior with their religion. They jog on the treadmill of study but never actually improve themselves. If you find yourself in a similar boat, try these tips to increase the effectiveness of your study sessions.

I – Have a Specific Goal for The Study

You are not doing yourself any favors by having vague goals that are somewhere out there in the clouds. You need to clarify your goals and set up parameters for success and failure. Without a specific goal, you are like a sailor without a harbor to sail towards. So you simply float on the ocean, tossed wherever the winds will take you.

So decide exactly what it is you want. Do you want more general Bible knowledge? Do you want to understand more of the Historical context of what you are reading? Maybe you want actionable steps or strategies for your life. whatever it is, if you do not have a goal to find something, you will find nothing.

II – Do not just Cover Ground (The Treadmill Trick)

The main problem with the treadmill people is that their only goal is to cover ground. That is fine and dandy, but it does not provide a clear “finish line” for you. People who get on a treadmill start and stop at exactly the same place. You must have a finish line to run towards, some destination in your mind, otherwise, you are just grinding your gears.

Many people make the January mistake of saying, “This year I will read my entire Bible“. While that is a noble goal, the purpose of it is to cover ground. When the goal becomes to put miles under your feet, the quality of your effort will be decreased. Instead of being focused and present in the study session, your mind may wander and your focus will be lost. This is because the goal is not to learn, but simply to read. While you may gain some knowledge passively by reading, your gains will not make you happy. You will forever make mediocre gains in your biblical knowledge with passive study methods.

Instead of just trying to cover ground, give yourself some kind of evaluation to test your knowledge. Which is the next tip!

III – Evaluate Yourself with Tests

While I tend to be a fierce critic of the school system and of standardized tests, the idea of testing is an excellent learning tool. Though not always a metric of a person’s IQ or comprehensive understanding of a subject, it is a good measurement of how much stuff they have managed to remember.

Before you start a study, do a broad overview of the section of reading, write down a few questions from the next and test yourself on them in 3-7 days. Or you can go online and find test questions about the part of the Bible you want to study. Then you can do your own study, take the online test, and see how your knowledge stacks up to the questions someone else has presented.

By testing yourself, you are forcing your brain to recall information. It is this difficult task of recalling info that forcing your mind into greater growth and knowledge gain. Self-quizzing allows you to gain knowledge much more rapidly than you have before. We will talk about recall next.

IV – Actively Recall the Previous Day’s Work

Once you finish your reading for the day, close your text, shut your eyes and actively remember everything you can about whatever you just read. You can also do this by taking a blank piece of paper and writing down everything you can remember from the text. By pulling these facts out of your mind you engrain them deeper into your knowledge base and increase the likelihood that they will be stored in your long-term memory.

This is even more potent if you repeat it the next day. Take another blank paper and try to recreate the previous day’s notes and reading from memory. These exercises are difficult but provide a much higher return on investment for the effort.

V – Shorten Your Study Volume

Many people take on far too much reading volume, especially if they are starting one of those “Read your Bible in a Year” programs. By volume I mean the amount of reading they try to get done in a day. Most of those yearly programs require people to read 4 chapters of the Bible per day. While that is not an insane amount of volume, it is very heavy for a person who was previously reading zero verses. Especially considering those programs have you start in the Old Testament where chapters can be 60+ verses long on occasion.

It would be better to reduce the volume of reading and incorporate the active reading techniques outlined above. You will have much better results from studying one chapter, performing the active recall and self-testing exercises than you will from straining to read a massive volume of the Bible in one sitting.

VI – Increase Your Study Intensity

Just because you are reducing your training volume does not mean you are off the hook! You do not get to frolic around the daisies like a progressive and expect to make gains. You still have to give some form of an intense effort if you want to see any results. Just like training the physical body in the gym, if you want results, there must be a degree of intensity that is sufficient enough to overload your body systems. It is not enough to do a small amount of volume if you are not being intense with your focus and active recall.

Instead of passively and mindlessly reading Psalms for the 80th time, muster as much focus as you can and aim it at your reading for the day. Make your intensity like that of a laser beam. Focus on reading short passages and then asking yourself questions about them:

What does this mean?
Exactly what is the context?
What is the historical significance of this?
What are the cultural norms at this time?
How does this story fit into the big picture?
How would I explain this concept to a 5-year-old?

By asking yourself questions and focusing, you keep the studying intensity high which will result in more knowledge gains.

VII – Incorporate Memory Work

No training plan is complete without some level of memory work. For this, I always recommend the old-fashioned method of writing verses on index cards. The most noticeable gains in Bible knowledge will likely come as a result of your memory work. By memorizing large portions of scripture you make yourself more dangerous in an argument. The man whose sword is shaper is more dangerous in battle. You now place yourself in a position of strength to strike your foes.

Start with the Aggressive Verse Study

Memorization is best done by starting with a few repetitions of the verse, and then seeing how much you can remember without looking at the index card. Try to repeat the whole verse without looking.

Try to create a mental picture of what is going on in the passage you are memorizing. This mental movie should be as realistic and memorable as possible so you can recall the verse later.

VIII – Long-Term Goals

While the “Read the Bible in a year” plans are noble, they are very common and do not really inspire people because they are not personal enough. I know this because the majority of new Bible readers will quit this plan as soon as they get to Leviticus. Instead of taking on the same goal as everyone else, create your own long-term goal for Bible reading.

Maybe your goal is to become an expert in the book of James in one month. That is a very reasonable goal that would allow you to be very intense and focused without mindlessly following the crowd. By making your own goals you will have a greater connection to them, they will mean more to you and you can stay focused and motivated for longer.

IX – Day-To-Day Goals

It’s not enough to just be the person who reads a certain amount of Bible in a year, you need to have some kind of day-to-day goals. You need to be the type of person who studies the Bible each day. When your long-term goals seem lofty and far off, just focus on the short-term goals that you can accomplish today.

Did you read the amount of Bible that you decided on personally? Did you engage your mind in active learning with recall and self-testing? Can you look at what you accomplished for the day and check it off as a solid day’s work? It does not have to be a massive amount of work, just a small amount of discipline that is done every day.

Final Thoughts

These tactics should help you greatly in gaining more knowledge than you have gained before. 95% of people study passively 95% of the time. By simply becoming active in the study process, you set yourself apart from the masses and will make massive knowledge gains. Active learning is the key to success.

Do you have any tactics you like to use in your study? Leave them in a comment below!

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How Failure is Like Inflammation (Failure Part 2.)

Failure can be likened to inflammation in the body. When the human body is damaged, it undergoes a process of inflammation to heal itself. This same basic inflammatory process happens whether you scratch your arm or break your leg. It consists of three processes that overlap one another.

The first component is the inflammatory stage.

This period lasts about a week during which the body is trying to stop bleeding, get repair materials to the injury site and fight infection if necessary. This is the stage that is the most painful, because it begins the moment an injury is sustained. The body is rapidly performing all the “damage control” processes it can in order to limit the extent of the damage.

The second stage of inflammation begins somewhere between the 6^th and 20^th day after the injury, though many experts disagree as to when this stage actually begins.

This second section of injury repair is called the proliferation stage.

Here the body is trying to repair the overall damage of the injury by building new blood vessels, build new tissue to replace what was lost or killed, shrinking the size of the wound, and covering it with a new layer of skin. Each of these four processes happen at the same time, it is a masterful renovation of the body. During this stage, the body is recovering in a broad sense, not really paying too much attention to detail but rather simply trying to restore the structural integrity of the injured tissue or body parts. In this stage, you can move the injured site around and even poke the injury, and while it still may be tender or painful, it is much better than it was during the first week.

The final stage of inflammation is called the maturation stage; this stage can last from months to years depending on the injury.

This is where the body is finished with the rough renovation of the injury and really starts focusing on the details. It tries to line up collagen and other cells nicely so that you look like you never injured yourself.

Now what could this possibly have to do with dealing with failure? Here is the answer: when we are hit with a failure as men, we go through an eerily similar process of recovery.

Recovering from Failure – The Steps

I. Inflammation Phase: The moments right after failing a test, performing poorly in a sport, or at work are some of the most painful moments you experience. You may find that your lower back and kidneys begin to hurt. Your head may start to spin, and you question your adequacy as a man and perhaps question if it is worth it to stay alive.

The most important action you can take at this moment is to avoid ruminating on the failure. Just like you put an icepack on a new injury to limit inflammation, you must put an icepack of sorts on your mind. You need to do anything you can to distract your mind and put it on a different loop. What you are trying to do is prevent your brain from replaying the failure over and over again and also prevent yourself from thinking about what you would have done differently.

You can derail your train of thought by training extremely hard, playing a game, or diving into your favorite distraction. You have to prevent yourself from ruminating. One failure is enough, there is no need to mentally relive it for the next hour; that is the source of the majority of stress in people’s minds.

This first action is the Damage Control Maneuver.

II. Proliferation Phase: If you scratch a chunk out of your arm, the body dutifully fills that hole. If you take a chunk out of your pride or self-esteem by failing, you must repair it the same way. At this point, the pain of the failure itself is leaving, though your pride may still be aching. In this period, you can begin to assess what went wrong with your performance in a rational, detached way. You will want to wait several days to begin this process if possible because the pain and emotions of the inflammatory stage make it impossible to be rational about your performance.

You must simultaneously repair your self-esteem by winning small successes in other life areas and reassess and prepare to go to war with your enemy – be it an exam, a project, or a speech. Once you have clearly located the gaps in your ability, attack them with ferocious force. You must train and practice far more than you did in your first attempt with the enemy. You must also put your mind in a superior position. If you go into the next project or exam already demoralized or defeated, you will get crushed. But if you go into the project with a fire in your eyes and the intense desire to annihilate that enemy, you will be victorious.

This second act of mass preparation is the Sword Sharpening Maneuver.

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” ~Sun Tzu

III. Maturation Phase: This is the long-term recovery from failure where you integrate the lessons learned into your character and actually learn to become thankful for the failure. You learn some of the most important lessons of your life in failure from how to manage your immediate emotions, recover self-esteem, and become more intense in your work. Once those lessons are integrated into your character, you are more masculine, and the pain of failure is essentially gone. Perhaps you feel a few nagging aches every few weeks, but for the most part, you have completely recovered.

You complete this phase of healing by looking back on the failure while completely detached and free from the painful emotions of the first two phases. From this perspective, you can see all the ways your failure actually made you better, stronger, and more mentally prepared for your future.

This final action is the Reclaiming the Throne Maneuver.

As bad as failure feels at the time, what you will notice over time is that the more you attempt anything, the more you will fail. The more you fail, the shorter the inflammation of failure becomes. Your first major failure may take you two months to recover from. The next failure just 6 weeks. This will progress until you have accepted failure as a part of life, extract its benefits, and recover within a few days or even within a few hours if you are a master. Learn to manage and appreciate the inflammation of failure and you will undoubtedly be a great man.

You also need standards for your own personal failure, weather in your physical training in personal growth. Without standards and the reality of failure, we have no way to evaluate our performance. When we cannot evaluate our performance, we cannot know when we have failed. If we cannot know when we fail, we will not know when we need to improve. When we do not know if we need to improve, we will remain stagnant. Therefore, failure is a compass of character, it directs us towards who we want to be. A man must first decide who he wants to be before he can begin working on becoming that ideal.

“Those in athletic pursuit first chose the sport they want, and then do the work.” ~ Epictetus

Be willing to fail. Do not let the fear of failure prevent you from acting. Failure is a surefire path to growth and learning. And it comes at a fraction of the cost of a modern college education.

The next time you hit failure, try to rush being thankful for that failure. You just learned a lesson you will never forget. That alone makes failure a better teacher than any egghead in a classroom.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

Reference: Epictetus, and Robert Dobbin. Discourses and Selected Writings. Penguin Books, 2008.

Mentors – Find Examples of Greatness

You need mentors who you can model your behavior after. It will be hard to become great if your only mentors are your family and people in the church. You must expand your collection of inspirational men.

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another”
Proverbs 27:17

“And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Timothy 2:2

“Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.”
Proverbs 1:5

You will almost never reach the majority of your goals by yourself. Every man who was ever great at his craft started by apprenticing under a master of that same craft. He would study and learn from someone who had lived a full life and had hundreds of practical lessons to pass along to him.

Many men think they can be good enough at a craft by teaching themselves, but this is not so.

Very few men are self-taught masters. Men are also confused about what it means to be self-taught. If you are learning math from a book, you are not self taught, the book is your teacher. If you are not taking guitar lessons but you learn by watching videos online or reading articles and books, you are not self-taught. With your ego you tell everyone that you have “taught yourself”, but you have learned your skill from other men.

To be truly self-taught means you extracted unknown knowledge from the ether. For example, the first person to show that you can calculate an unknown length of one side of a triangle by knowing the length of the other two sides was self-taught because he uncovered the underlying principles on new knowledge. By himself he learned what was not previously known, and was therefore self-taught. Another example would be a man who learns how to tie sailing knots by himself with no book. I understand that this is an extreme definition of “self-taught”, but you are reading this because you are an extremist.

The internet has put dozens of mentors at our fingertips.

So even when we cannot find good role models within the church, that does not excuse us from finding them elsewhere. We can find men from every walk of life who are doing everything that we want to do with our own lives. We can virtually model our life after theirs and live the way we believe is correct.

Your father is not enough of a mentor, you will not learn enough from him. The men in your family are not enough for you to learn many of the most important lessons and skills of life. You cannot limit your mentors to those in your church and immediate family. What you need are men who are living impressive lives, are masters at a craft or who are intelligent. You likely do not have many of those kinds of men in your family. In fact, you rarely have those men in your church.

You need to go outside the church to find mentors.

These men are going to help you improve your life on a non-spiritual level. So for this reason you need to go outside the church to find them. There are very few men in the church who are living impressive lives. Most men have used the Bible to try to justify their lack of ambition and subsequent lack of wealth or any manner of an impressive life. Get some mentors.

If you find mentors in the church, you need a large number of them. Do not limit yourself to just a few people. You must diversify your motivation portfolio.

Mantra

You are who you spend time with.

Application

Use the internet to find masters of whatever craft you want to improve at. There are plenty of good mentors online, and you have to pick the ones that best fall in line with the direction your life is taking. You need to be active in your learning and in the ways you gain knowledge about your career path or skill. Throughout the world there are thousands of mentors for music, leadership, training, building, public speaking, thinking and infinitely more topics.

There is no reason why anyone cannot become a master at any craft they want to in the modern world. And there is also no excuse for ignorance or lack of experience in any field. There are endless lessons and lectures online on any subject matter you could possibly think of. The internet has taken away every excuse from man as to why he is not successful or at least skilled in his personal endeavors.

If we truly are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, we need to start spending time with different people.

There is no reason to hang out with losers and to waste our time. We have been given every possible opportunity to improve ourselves, so let us not squander it by allowing the influences of weak men to shift us towards mediocrity.

Unfortunately this is what commonly happens in the church. Very few men in the church are great at anything. Many christian men call themselves righteous because they are not successful. “I’m a good Christian because I’m poor”, or “I’m not a part of those upper class people who think they are better than everyone”. You mean those upper class people who fund the country you live in? How do you know they think they are better than everyone? Could it be that you simply hate them because they have more material possessions than you? That seems like a silly thing to hate someone over.

You do not want to spend time with people who are of that mentality. They can only drag you down, and you are trying to be excellent at something. So get mentors outside the church.

First, decide what skill you want to develop.

Once you know that, you can single out the best men in the world at that craft and learn from them from whatever resources are available. If they have books, lectures or podcasts you can learn from those. Otherwise you can simply learn from observing those mentors in their element. There is no reason why we cannot learn from anyone we want to.

Get some mentors outside the church.

Learn from men who are great.

Model yourself after the best.

Imitate the masters.

Gain immeasurable skill.

Conduct yourself like men.

Physical Nutrition – Stewardship of The Body

We have been given temporary bodies. How we steward over them based on the physical nutrition we take in speaks volumes about our character. Though this may seem unrelated to Christianity, it has it’s purposes.

“If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”
Luke 16:11

Very few men in the church take care of their bodies. They excuse themselves from their responsibility of managing their bodies because of their “other responsibilities”. They have careers to think about. What man has time to train the body or to eat correctly. Try almost 100% of CEOs.

What weak men mean when they say they cannot take care of their bodies is that eating healthy fuel is not easy or fun. Everything men do in life can be simplified to this desire for convenience and ease. No one wants to eat grilled chicken for the fifth time in a row, especially when someone brought donuts to the office.

Physical nutrition must be important to Christian men,

We as men have no right to put garbage in our bodies on a constant basis. It does not benefit the body, but most of all it does not benefit the mind to give into weakness on a regular basis like the majority of the weak world. The mind grows when we prove to ourselves that we can command our own bodies. Our mentality improves when we choose to be disciplined rather than to constantly indulge ourselves.

I want to note that I do not mean that you have to eat perfectly “clean” every single meal. In fact, no one can clearly define what “clean” is. We as men cannot allow garbage fuels to dominate our nutrition. I do not speak against enjoying various foods and various times, just do not make it your habit.

Common Quibble I: “Jesus talked about the food that we eat, and told us that it is not what goes into the body that defiles a man, but what comes out of the man that is a result of his thoughts.” Jesus spoke about the good or evil of eating food and of defilement, not about the nutritional content of that food. Jesus would say that it is not sinful to eat a donut, but it will not build your body if you eat donuts every day.

Common Quibble 2: “It is too expensive to eat clean”. No it is not. Oatmeal, peanut butter, eggs, black beans and a little chicken will suffice if you are on a budget. These foods can be eaten at under five dollars a day. Buy the off-brands.

Men are too lazy to eat well.

Men would rather eat what is convenient. This is a problem because your mind and body can only function to the level of the quality of the fuel you put into it. You are aware of this when you eat foods that you do not burn off as energy throughout the day. If you eat ten slices of pizza, you are acutely aware of how you feel afterwards: sluggish physically and mentally.

You are more than welcome to eat junk food, just know you will have a difficult time performing as a man if you eat garbage. Know that eating weak food will make you a weak man. Make some sacrifices in your diet and you will be a better man as a result.

Mantra

You are what you eat.

Application

Skip most of the aisles at the store. The healthy foods are always kept in the perimeter of the store. The only foods you need from the aisles are peanut butter and oatmeal. Some might argue that the five foods I have outlined are not healthy. Even if they are not healthy based on the standards of some, they are definitely more healthy than the trash you are putting into your body already.

You don’t have to eat the same meals fifty times in a row, just have a collection of nutritious foods that you rotate through. Eat something you like such as donuts every now and then as opposed to eating them every day. It’s not one instance of junk food that creates the problem, it’s chronic consumption. so avoid letting donuts dominate your nutrition plan.

Cook your food ahead of time. This eliminates panic or convenience eating.

Eliminate junk from your house. Cut off the temptation entirely.

Eat like a man, not like a child.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Chivalry and Knighthood

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:”
1 Peter 2:9

Men who wear the name of Christ must conduct themselves with the highest levels of virtue. Throughout history, men have formed various orders or groups by which they hold themselves to tremendous standards in order to improve as men. One of these ancient orders was knighthood.

While it was necessary to have the proper family lineage to become a knight (or gain enough wealth to forge a coat of arms and a lineage of nobility), one could still hold himself to the high standards that the code of chivalry required of knights. Historical accounts differ as to the order of the rules on the code of chivalry.

However, the first rule of chivalry was always the same: Fear God and honor the church. This was the knight’s first and most important duty.

The other rules would lay out the treatment of women and the weak along with ways to live a life of character. Though I would argue that men should not be completely chivalrous with women. Before you throw this book out the window, let me explain what I mean by that. While it is absolutely important to treat women with kindness and to protect them, you must reject the chivalric behavior that placed a woman at the center of a man’s life.

A knight was required to pursue a lady and go through “virtuous rejection” from that lady until finally he convinced her to marry him. At that point he would have to do some grand deed to earn the right to marry that woman and finance her lifestyle for the rest of her days.

The modern knight, the Spartan Christian should not have a woman as the center of his focus.

That place is reserved for God alone. Men can love, honor and cherish their women without making them the focal point of their existence. Chivalry expected men to essentially worship women, and this is the part of chivalry we must reject.

Men in the church need their own code so they themselves can improve their lives.

Unfortunately, many men need something more than the Bible, because they do not read it. Men need concrete rules outlining how they are to behave. We as men must hold ourselves to standards that may seem impossible to meet. By holding ourselves to titanic standards, we ensure excellence from ourselves. No man ever becomes great by trying to be a good man. All great men become great by attempting to be perfect. We cannot meet that standard, but by aiming extremely high we are able to attain greatness. We ourselves must aim at standards higher than we can ever attain.

The church is a select order of men and women who wish to give up the pleasure of this world for the benefits that God’s eternity has to offer. The church is a select, royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) of warlords who rage and war against the powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:10-17). Implicit in the code of chivalry is the need to fight and kill in the name of greater values. The opposition must always be crushed. And the adversary must always be thrown down for the sake of the faith.

You may never have to shed human blood, but you must wage intense war against principalities, powers and rulers of darkness of the age. You must wage war against your weakness. Men must hold themselves to a code at all times.

Mantra

Fear God and Honor the Church.

Application

Set rules for yourself. Write down the characteristics of the ideal man and then visualize how that man would behave and try to mimic it in your life. The only way to be great is to strive to be perfect.

Write your own code of chivalry. Pen your own laws and principles that would drive you to become the ideal man. Frame your code and hang it on your wall. Think and meditate on your code on a daily basis. Then evaluate yourself and see if you are living up to your standards or if you are falling behind.

You must have some goal or ideal that you are striving for at all times, this is the only way that you can make progress and attain excellence Keep records of how you conduct yourself and of how well you keep to your code. Have a notebook where you have written your codes and desired behaviors, then draw a small chart where you can track your behavior. This allows you to measure progress and make adjustments to your strategies, and what gets measured gets accomplished.

You should have a code with women: Never be alone with a woman who is not your wife.

Because the chance that you will try to have sex with her are high, even if you are a complete beta-male.

Do not raise your voice. Because any man who raises his voice in a way that is not calculated, controlled and purposed has not even fully mastered himself and is weak. Make sure you are not that weak man. By controlling your voice you show tremendous strength and power over yourself and your emotions.

Be honest.

Keep to your character.

Make difficult decisions.

We must always be trying to change and improve, this is the only way to live.

Think about your code.

Honor the church.

Think like a man of honor and then act like one.

Aim at perfection constantly.

Conduct yourselves like men.

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