Discover new ways to read and personally apply Scripture!
God’s Word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) and finding the right Bible study tools can be a wonderful way to experience the Bible through a new lens.
Browse through our most popular Bible study tools, including free PDF downloads, book excerpts, and even full eBooks. As you explore these Bible study resources, discover new and fresh ways to read and apply Scripture.
- How to Study The Bible
- Invite Friends to Read The Bible
- The Four Rs of Bible Study
- How to Memorize Scripture
- The Word Hand Illustration
- Psalms to Counteract Fear & Stress
- Assurance of Salvation Bible Study
- Women’s Bible Study: Living for What Really Matters
- A Life-Changing Encounter With the Gospel of John
- Journey Through the Psalms
Bible Study Tools
How to Study The Bible
As we grow in Christ, it’s important that we learn how to study the Bible for ourselves and not depend solely on the instruction of others. Consider the challenge from the writer of Hebrews:
Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:13,14 NIV).
One of the best ways to get to the “solid food” of the Word is through “inductive” Bible study. The inductive method makes observations on a passage of Scripture and then draws conclusions based on those observations. Commonly, this method is defined by three parts: observation, interpretation, and application.
Navigator Dwight Hill has broken this method into seven steps. Try it out on one of the short epistles—1 Thessalonians, Philippians, Colossians, or 1 or 2 Timothy.
Invite Friends to Read the Bible
Reading through the Bible together can be an effective way to share the gospel with your friends who don’t know Jesus. You’ll want to approach the study in a different way than you would with believers. Author and missionary Jim Petersen shares six-tips to start the conversation as you read the Word with a friend.
Four Rs of Bible Study
Use this simple four-step Bible study method to: read, reflect, respond, and rest in God’s Word. This can be applied in your own time with God and in small group Bible study. Choose a passage that is not too long— four to eight verses—since people will be listening to it being read several times through. You can also practice this pattern in your personal devotional time.
How to Memorize Scripture
Memorizing Scripture is as an excellent strategy for spiritual growth. It allows you to have gospel truths ready at all times, whether your day brings you temptation, heartache or a friend in need of encouragement. Many thousands of people have shared that this system was what finally worked for them after years of trying other approaches.
Our Scripture memory system works in four steps:
- Step 1: Pick an area of gospel truth you’re motivated to understand more deeply
- Step 2: Dig into the context of the passage
- Step 3: Memorize the passage in bite-sized pieces
- Step 4: Review your passage with friends
The Word Hand
The Word Hand illustration is an easy-to-remember tool highlighting five methods of learning from the Bible:
- Hearing
- Reading
- Studying
- Memorizing
- Meditation
We encourage you to use this resource to spur your own spiritual growth and to inspire others. Download a print-friendly versions below to keep nearby during your personal Bible study and times of meditation with the Lord.
Topical Bible Studies
Psalms to Counteract Fear & Stress
What can we do with our fears when we face a crisis? After reading many newsfeed articles that drain us; these Psalms can counteract fear, stress, and fill us up. They provide profound perspective and real hope! It helps to read each three times, to let God’s heart sink in to yours.
Assurance of Salvation Bible Study
The enemy will often try to cast doubt on the work God has done in your heart. Although you won’t hear his audible voice, he will whisper this in your mind: “You don’t think you are saved and your sins forgiven just by believing and receiving Christ? Surely that is not enough!”
What will your answer be? Your only hope of successfully resisting such an attack is to resort to God’s Word. What does God say about the matter? That is the important thing for you to know.
On the basis of this “testimony”—God’s written Word—you can be convinced you have the Lord Jesus Christ, and with Him eternal life. You can thus overcome in this test of your faith. The attack may recur, but now you can meet it with the Word of God in your heart.
Women’s Bible Study: Living for What Really Matters
We glorify busyness. We hustle, hoping to gain approval and find acceptance. Yet for most of us, we simply hustle our way to burnout. But what if it’s only pointless hustle that leads to burnout? What if meaningful struggle can lead us to growth and depth and even joy?
The apostle Paul understood hustle—and struggle—better than most. But in prison, where we’d expect him to be burned out and depressed, he wrote a letter to his Philippian friends seeking to build them up, a letter filled with thankfulness, generosity, and joy.
Focused on Jesus rather than concentrating on his own discomfort, Paul’s actions brilliantly display what happens when hardship is used for the glory of God.
Philippians shows us how we can grow deep roots and blossom by finding the meaning in our struggle.
Download the first week of the seven-week Bible study here:
A Life-Changing Encounter with the Gospel of John
The best way to study the Gospel of John is to read quickly for an overall view, not stopping for the details. Ask the Lord where He wants you to focus.
Ask yourself:
- What are your first impressions of this book? What overall impression does it give you of Jesus? Is there a lot of action, description, dialogue, doctrinal teaching, instructions for behavior, or what?
- What key words and phrases appear over and over?
- If you are familiar with any of the other three Gospels, how is John’s Gospel like and unlike them?
- Make a broad outline as you read through by giving a title to each chapter or section. To come up with a good title, ask, “What was the author’s purpose in including this section? How does this section fit his overall purpose for writing?”
- After you have read through the whole book, pull your thoughts together into a summary statement. What would you say was John’s main purpose in writing this book?
Click below to download the full excerpt of this Bible study tool:
Journey Through the Psalms
When do you turn to the Psalms? When you’re feeling joyful or in the midst of profound grief?
Whatever your answer is, author Tricia Lott Williford understands. She turned away from the Bible when she experienced the hardship of losing her husband Robb ten years ago, but the Psalms was the first book she connected with when she came back to the Scriptures. It was there, among honest grief and exaltation, that she found exactly what she needed.
“I found prolific writers who cried out to God in the midst of real conversations in their actual lives.”
In her eBook, Journey Through the Psalms, Williford will walk you through the Psalms as a book of both mourning and of praise.
Journey Through the Psalms is actually an eBook in three parts:
- Psalms for grief
- Psalms for hope
- How to write your psalm for any season
David and the other authors of the Psalms wrote out of the overflows of emotions both good and bad, and Williford will help you interrogate and harness your own emotions to follow their example.
Click below to begin your own “Journey through the Psalms.”
Study Tools from NavPress
The Navigator Bible Studies Handbook
The Navigator Bible Studies Handbook is a classic collection of principles and methods for people who want to find out for themselves what the Scriptures say. Learn how to do question-and-answer studies, verse analysis studies, comprehensive chapter analysis studies, and topical studies. Discover the underlying principles for doing inductive Bible study, as well as some of the specific, time-tested methods of Bible study that The Navigators have used for over 60 years.
Design for Discipleship Series
For fifty years, the bestselling Design for Discipleship Bible study series (DFD) has offered millions of new and experienced believers a chance to learn firsthand what it means to be a modern-day disciple of Jesus. Every study can be used individually, in Life-to-Life® discipleship, or with small groups.
These field-tested studies offer interactive, discussion-prompting questions that inspire and nurture growth toward Christian maturity. There are seven studies in the series and a leader’s guide. Go in order or choose the topic that best fits your need.
LifeChange Series
LifeChange Bible studies are optimized for small group use. Every study is broken down into 8-9 sessions of about 45 minutes. Each session includes:
- Questions, interpretation, and application of a passage to the topic
- Personally focused “Your Response” question
- “For Further Study” section that gives readers another passage to explore around the topic
- Callouts that include language study, historical context, and illuminating quotes from commentaries
