Rosemary Catbells's Profile

how to study the Bible by James M. Grey who was a
past president of The Moody Bible Institute many, many years ago.
Kind of refining off of that process, here's what worked for me.

Take a book of the Bible and read it repetitiously for 30
days. And here's how I did it. I took the book of 1 John, 1 John
has five chapters and I read 1 John every day for 30 days, just
simply read it in the same version 30 times in a row. In fact I
became so enthralled by it that I actually broke the pattern on
the first book and read it ninety days in a row. But at the end
of 30 days I knew what was in 1 John just because of the
repetitious reading. In fact, I began to visualize my Bible and
if anybody asked me to this day what it says in 1 John 1 or 2 or
3 or 4 or 5 I'm pretty familiar with that because of repetition.
That's how your mind retains things. In fact if somebody says,
"Where in the Bible does it say,`If we confess our sins He is
faithful and just,'" that's easy, 1 John chapter 1 left hand
page, right hand column halfway down. You know, you begin to
visualize your Bible because of the familiarity of the text as
you go over it and over it and over it.

Now at the same time I wrote a one-sentence summary of each
chapter and just over the period of 30 days memorized what that
chapter was about so that I was locking into my mind an
understanding of the chapters and familiarity with the text
itself. Well at the end of 90 days I had a fair understanding of
what was in 1 John. I didn't yet fully understand all of it. I
hadn't gone into the depth of studying it all, but I was familiar
with it. And it elevated an awful lot of questions in my mind.

Then wanting to stay within the framework of John, I went to
the gospel of John. Now the gospel of John has 21 chapters and
that's too much to swallow in one month, so I divided it into
three sections of seven. Using seven is about the maximum number
of chapters you want to work with. I read through the first seven
chapters of John's gospel for 30 days, a second chapter, a second
seven for 30, and a third for seven for 30, so in 90 days I had
gone through the gospel of John and in the process wrote out a
simple little summary of each chapter, each of the 21 chapters.
Well, at the end of those 90 days of reading seven, seven and
seven, I understood what was in John. And to this day I can
still visualize that and that's been many, many years ago,
probably nearly 30 years ago and I remember that the wedding at
Cana was in John 2 and that the woman at the well in Samaria is
in John 4, and that Jesus encountering His brothers and their
lack of faith in John 7, and the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6,
and John 10 is the shepherd chapter, and John 15 is the vine
chapter, and the highly priestly prayer is in 17 and so it goes
and so it goes. Jesus in the garden is in 18. Just pure
familiarity.

I also began to realize that some of the things I didn't
understand in the epistle of John were explained in the gospel of
John. And that the best interpreter of Scripture is Scripture
itself. And I learned that very early and that's why when I
teach you the Word of God, I explain the Scripture with the
Scripture, don't I? Because that's the way I learned the
Scripture.

And then after that I went back to Philippians and took
Philippians which is a brief book of four chapters, read it 30
days in a row and was familiar with what was there. Then I went
back to the gospel of Matthew and took 28 chapters, broke them
into four sections of seven...seven for 30, seven for 30, seven
for 30 and in four months I had a grasp on the book of Matthew.
Now at that pace at about seven chapters at a time going from a
shorter book to a longer one, in two and a half years you will
have done the New Testament. Now you're going to read the Bible
for the next two and a half years, I hope. How about reading it
so that you produce familiarity? And that calls for repetition.
That calls for repetition. And in that process in two and a
half years you will have learned that there are parts of the
Bible that connect very obviously