Please watch the video above of Molly Watts the Director of Precept UK (England & Wales) who will take you through a Lightning Study (LS) on Luke chapter 10 verses 38-42. Please click on this link to download and print the study so you can follow along.

Please try a few more LS by yourself and then read the rest of these pages on the Inductive study method.

First, we carefully examine the text to see exactly what it says.  To help us do this, we use 3 very simple skills:

1.   Ask open questions (i.e. questions that cannot be answered simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’) of the text, using the 5 W’s and an H; which are:– (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?)

The text will determine which of these questions you need to ask and as shown not every question can be answered, see the examples below:

Example 1 – “Yesterday my brother went on his bicycle to the farm to visit his friend.”

With this sentence you can ask a Who? Answer – my brother, a What? Answer – went on his bicycle, a When? Answer – Yesterday, a Where? Answer – to the farm, a Why? Answer – to visit his friend, and a How? Answer – on his bicycle.

However with this example, “My brother went to the farm.”
You can only ask a Who? – Answer – my brother, a What? Answer – he went and a Where? – Answer – to the farm.

You can see that the sentence determines which of the 5Ws and H questions you ask of it.

2.   Mark repeated, important words (key words) in a distinctive way using different colours. Please click here to print a simple marking guide. When reading the text for the first time, a good question to start with is ‘who?’ e.g. Mark every reference to the author or main character in one colour and every reference to the recipients in another colour putting a circle around each reference.

Marking words:

Makes us read the passage slowly and intentionally.

Helps us see where we need to go back and dig for more information.

Helps us to remember what we have studied.

3.    Make a list(s) Once we have marked words, we go back and make a list from those words by asking the 5Ws and the 1H question again.

A list is:

a.       A place to collect information provided by the text.

b.       A tool to help us observe all the passage says about a given person, word or theme.

INTERPRETATION

Next, we carefully consider the text to understand exactly what it means – in context! (If you take ‘text’ away from ‘context’, what are you left with? a ‘con’. A verse, or verses, taken out of context all too easily becomes a pretext.)

There are other tools that help us interpret the text such as Concordances and Commentaries, but the best interpreter of Scripture is Scripture.  Remember, the Holy Spirit is our Teacher and prayer is key!

APPLICATION

Last, we prayerfully consider how what we’ve discovered in God’s Word should change the way we live. Why? Because the goal of Bible study is not education, but transformation; it’s not about being clever, it’s about being changed to become more like Jesus!

Click here for a more in-depth overview of how study, drawing all this together.

Please now read our Go Deeper page to try some of our free studies and learn more.