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The Easily Understanding Scripture series is not how the Bible is commonly taught in the world today. The books in this series are not a sermon or a directed teaching. They are a simple explanation of the scripture, whether they are verse by verse or topical.
Modern study bibles are marvelous gatherings of commentary—but often the Bible itself is lost in the clutter. Easily Understanding Scriptures is the result of a simple goal: presenting the bible richly in an easy to comprehend format to people who have a real desire to understand what was written and why it is important to us today.
Obviously, it is foolishness to think that we could possibly do this without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. On your part, it is equal foolishness to not pray for His guidance every time you pick up one of our books to read.
One of the issues we are dealing with here in mid-America is the lack of Bible studies. There are quite a few groups (often barely holding together) that meet around a book that claims to be a bible study. But they really are not a bible study—they are a topic study with some biblical references.
We're currently involved in a topical group like that. We are using an entertaining book based on very shaky premises. The basic assumptions are easy to tear apart by anyone with a solid background in the Bible as a whole. But no one wants to do that.
As a result, we have a so-called Bible study where we don't study the Bible, but simply share opinions. It is not required that you back up your opinions with Biblical references. This is nice and useful for building personal and social relationships—but it is of very little value in helping group members know the Lord better or grow in holiness.
All leaders assume that their sheep are doing regular daily verse-by-verse bible study. In truth, few sheep do that. Even worse, few ministers do that. The result is that I constantly see and hear people in the church who do not have any biblical foundation with which to discern the latest fashionable teachings.
The danger is found in teachers who make major teaching series based on inadequate understanding of the whole Bible. Scripture is not something where you can pick out a verse, put your personal interpretation on it, and build a theology upon that limited base.
Whoa! What does that mean?
You must study the Bible line by line, verse by verse in its entirety. Only then can you safely pick out pieces woth which to build a teaching. Only then can you accurately discern the teachings you hear. Only then can you learn to recognize the voice of your Lord and build a relationship.
This encouragement to study is not to limit you or God. It is to help you get to know God better. Remember the core of the bible:
The word know here is the same one used for a husband knows his wife—an intimate relationship, the purpose of creation.
The best method to learn materials is to quickly skim or read like a novel (you'll probably need a refernece version for this as most study bibles do not allow simple reading of scripture), then study everything a second time, finally reread in a regular repeating pattern that covers the entire bible.
Read the epistles (the letters to the church from Paul, James, Peter, and John + Hebrews) the most. Read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John + Acts) the next most. Then, in order of frequency, I recommend Psalms, Prophets, Proverbs, the books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), and least often the history books.
The Bible is all important, but this type of order will build up foundational knowledge and understanding the quickest.
When you begin this quest, an order of study is very helpful. I'll give you what my father gave me in 1974. It worked very well and I highly recommend it. He suggested this for beginning to study and for your lifetime habitual study of the bible.
After that you can go to a regular routine of epistles, gospel, psalms, epistles, gospel, prophets, epistles, gospel, revelation, epistles, gospel, books of Moses, epistles, gospels, proverbs, and so on.
The basic idea is that you need to focus on the New Testament—especially the letters and the gospels.
There is a lot of good information in the history portions of the Old Testament. You need to read them, but only after you have a solid background in the gospels and letters. When reading the Old Testament, you need to be careful about slipping back into legalism. Remember, the Law kills, but the Spirit gives life!
Don't read Revelation until you have read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, & Daniel. There is a great deal of prophecy in Psalms, also.
Before you study the Bible, every time, ask the Holy Spirit to use the words to speak to you clearly and to keep you from error. You want to know what God said. The only way to do that is to ask God to teach you as you read. Always contact the author first!