Starting a Blog
See the companion video to this post here https://youtu.be/5pVRS4k-K3E
I’ve been thinking about blogging for a long time, and it’s strange to say, but I haven’t known what the content should be. That sounds silly because, why would I blog if I don’t have a particular message? The problem isn’t so much that I have nothing to say, but that I have too much to say. I have a lot of interests and experiences that I wond
er if others would find interesting or compelling, and narrowing the scope of my blog was an obstacle I allowed to keep me from the hard work of starting. Finally, I decided that choosing to begin was better than knowing the ending.
Hopefully, this blog can grow and adapt with the content God leads me to post, but for now, I’m starting with something I’ve been working on every day – studying the Bible. Specifically, studying the 4 gospels, taking each event in chronological order across all 4 books. The object of this study will be to bring you along with me on my journey while I learn. I’m taking the time to study, anyway, so why not write down what I find out and share it with you? The reason I decided to take an in-depth look into the gospel books was I was really convicted by 1 Peter 3:15, which says, “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” So much of the “account for my hope” was my personal experience, which, while a very important part of my testimony, I felt could be coupled with some further analysis to give credence to Jesus as the Messiah.
I will probably reiterate this in many posts, but I want to be sure to convey that I am not a trained theologian. The point of this blog series will be for you to follow me as I learn, and hopefully you will get a lot out of it, as well. I encourage you to do your own studying and research because this has been a huge shift in the way I look at the Bible. If you want to study along with me, I recommend getting together with a small group of people, and each person can bring their tablet or other device. Then each of you can be responsible to look up one type of reference, and the group can all share about the findings of each individual. After being a Christian for my whole life, I feel as though I’m finally starting to learn how to study the Bible for myself, and it’s giving me insight into both the great tapestry of God’s story, as well as the individual threads that make up that tapestry. I’m really excited to share this experience with you because I get really jazzed whenever I have a new revelation about something I never fully understood before.
Here are a couple of notes about my approach to each weekly study. One of the first things I do with each event recorded in the gospel accounts is to take each reference noted with superscript letters and numbers in the passage, and I paste all the footnotes and verses associated with each. Then I read through the various reference materials my husband and I have accrued, as well as sermons or other online resources. Whenever possible, I like to go through the literal translations of the original language because I see a lot of shades of meaning I never would have gotten from the various English versions available. If I can find any extrabiblical references to the events, I like to read those, too, since it helps me connect figures and events I always learned about in history class with events recorded in the Bible, and suddenly the picture in my mind’s eye all comes together as one unified account.
Ok, I think that’s enough for one post! Look for the first study to come soon! Since I want to try to post the study of the Christmas story on Christmas, my goal is to post a couple of times a week until then, in order to catch up. Then I will post once a week for the foreseeable future after that. Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!
See the next post here https://onthepath.online/2018/12/18/the-deity-of-christ/
On The Path 