Christ's Church Free Will Baptist: Growing in Knowledge

In 2 Peter 3:18, Peter says, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." In the previous verse, Peter was warning Christians to guard against those who take the Scriptures and twist them out of context to mean what they want them to mean. Then he tells us to grow in the knowledge of Christ. How do we do this? By studying the Bible. When you want to get to know someone better, you spend time with them. The same goes for getting to know God better. We have to spend time with Him.

I know Bible study can seem like a daunting task at times, but it does not have to be. There are so many helpful tools out there to aid us in this process. Let's look at a few of them.

The first book that I want to mention is a Bible concordance. A Bible concordance gives you a list of every word in the Bible and the reference where you can find it. For example, if you wanted to do a study on love you could look up the word "love" in the concordance and it will list every verse in the Bible that contains the word. It is important to make sure that your concordance matches the version of your Bible so that the words will be the same when you look up the verses. I would recommend an exhaustive or comprehensive concordance for the most thorough study.

A Bible dictionary can also be helpful to your Bible study by giving a little bit of information on people, places, and words in the Bible that you may not be familiar with. Some even include a pronunciation guide to help with all of those difficult names!

If you want to study a topic or passage of Scripture with a little more help and guidance, you can use a Bible study guide. These booklets study the Scripture in an interactive way by asking questions that challenge you to think about what you are reading and show you how to apply the principles of the Bible to your life.

Along the same lines, there are commentaries on the whole Bible or individual books of the Bible that give you the author's interpretation of the Scriptures. These books often include cultural background and other information that show you the context of the setting and time period of the particular passage you are studying.

There are also many books that are not necessarily Biblical studies, but are based on Biblical principles and can really encourage and challenge us as Christians. The main thing to remember is this, just because it is written by a "Christian" author, does not make it accurate. Any time you read a book that claims to be based on the Bible, you should make sure that it matches what the Bible actually says. The Bible is always the final authority to prove something true or false.

Now here's the fun part. Below is a list of books and authors that I would recommend.