Yesterday, I was visiting with a gentleman at Starbucks (enjoying a Vanilla Skinny Latte) and we were discussing methods I employ in studying the Scriptures, so, with pleasure, I reiterated my stew method.
I find it helpful to relate to something as basic as, um, food. Take stew for example. Yeah, you can use ground beef for a quick fix, but stew meat usually takes time to get tender. Then you add in all those flavors and veggies for a rich, full-bodied stew. The longer it cooks, the better it seems to get. Let it cool and reheat it, and you will get a bigger surprise at how good it tastes.
This is the method I use in Bible study. (By the way, I love my new Personal Size Reference ESV.) Anyway, I take a passage and read over it day after day, looking for new gems, asking God to reveal truth to me. I am trying to “throw it on the back burner” for a while. Then I start adding some touches. I will ask questions, like “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, or what are some questions I have, what are some obvious applications, what does God want me to live by, what does this reveal about God, how does the Gospel square with this?” In the course of this, I am looking at the Greek/Hebrew text to see what nuances emerge. So, things are just coming together on that “back burner.” Then I look at commentaries and think about what they see. (This is much like consulting a cookbook. Oh, that’s interesting, they used this seasoning or that flavoring in the stew.) Then I let all this steep and stew for a while and what emerges is a text I understand with several directions for living this text. This is the STEW method. It is effective in my life.