Highlight God in the Bible

Summary

With this one, we're trying to seek God with all our heart in the pages of the Bible. The goal is to pay hightened attention to God, what He is doing, how, why, who is affected, etc. Along the way, we are also seeing how the participants in the story relate to God as well.

The Process

You can make this as simple or as complex as your heart desires. If you have an unmarked copy of the Bible, you can simply use a pencil. I personally prefer to have a half dozen different highlighters. I'll present my process and you ignore it, use it, or completely change it as best fits your relationship with God.

A word of caution - while it is extremely important to understand the Bible correctly, I'm not neccesarily trying to understand everything perfectly in this process. If I highlight something a certain way, that's more an indication of how it landed with me, but I will often need to go back and re-evaluate a passage if the Spirit makes me question how I'm understanding things or inconsistencies come up in the future in my understanding of the passage. Initially, the goal is simply to see God, how He relates to the universe and how it relates to Him. Try your best and remember God knows better than you that you are imperfect. Let Him correct you as you react to seeing Him in His Word.

  1. Pray - ask God to show Himself to you through His Word. Deal with any unrepentence, unforgiveness, or disobedience that God brings to mind so that your heart is soft and not hard as you read His Word. If this means you need to put the Bible down and go fix a relationship, go do that first.
  2. Start reading the Bible. (If you don't know where to start, start at John 1:1. Or, if you prefer, James 1:1 or Genesis 1:1 can work). Everytime you find God in the passage ("God", "Jesus", "the Holy Spirit", most occurances of "Lord", "the Son", etc.) - highlight it or if using pencil circle it.
  3. Next underline what God is doing or what is being done for or to God and any adjectives descripting God.
  4. If there's a recipient of God's action or direction to God's action, put paranethesis around that recipient.
  5. If there's a stated motivation, purpose, or explanation for God's action, put a box around it.
  6. As your spirit processes these statements about God, pray to Him. Repent or confess when that is what is called for. Praise or worship when that is called for. Ask questions when something seems odd, strange, contradictory to who you thought God was, etc.
  7. Do this for the entire passage you are reading.

Example: John 3:16-18

I normally use orange for God (because it's the most common highlighter color I come across). That said, I also use red to indicate negation (no/not/etc.) Here is how I might highlight John 3:16-18:

For God so loved (the world), that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him (should not perish but have eternal life). For God did not send his Son (into the world to condemn the world), but in order that (the world) ?might be? saved through him. (Whoever) believes in him is not condemned, but (whoever does not believe) is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. - John 3:16-18

 

From highlighting this out, it emphasizes both why Jesus came/was sent and also a clearly stated reason that is not true (he didn't come to condemn). It's also clearly stated that our belief determines our destiny.

Example: Psalm 119:1-3

Different parts of the Bible seem to have God more obviously present. Here is a Psalm where God is talked about, but the people are the ones relating to Him, through His Word. Here's how I might highlight Psalm 119:1-3:

Blessed are (those whose way is blameless),
(who walk in) the law of the LORD!
Blessed are (those who) keep his testimonies,
(who) seek him (with their whole heart),
who also do no wrong,
but walk in his ways!

Again, there could be a number of ways to highlight this, based on what God is making most obvious to you. But from this, it seems a bit repetitive - in that "walk[ing] in the law of the Lord" and "keeping His testimonies" seem the same as "walk[ing] in His ways" (at the end of verse 3). Having a "blameless" way seems to be the same as "do[ing] no wrong." The truly unique thing here is "seeking Him with their whole heart." It seems that this is a progress: 1 - we see blameless people. 2 - They are blameless because they walking the law of the Lord/keep His testimonies. 3 - They keep his law because they seek Him with their whole heart.

This passage feels like confirmation to me that the goal of Bible reading should be seeking God in the pages of the Bible with our whole heart. If we do it rightly, we can expect that we will come to obey Him and see right love for God and others in our lives.

What about the dry parts of the Bible?

There are passages in the Bible, like the book of Esther, where God isn't mentioned overtly. In these passages, it is helpful to read them with an understanding of where the rest of the Bible tells us God is active. So in Esther, her being called a Jew reminds us that Jews were "God's people", so I might underline Jew as a people group that God promised to watch over.

The first step in all Bible reading should often be to pray. Pray for God to reveal Himself to you through His word as you read it. Pray for you to understand Him and His Word rightly.

The entire Bible clearly tells us that God is intricately involved in every life. There is no such thing as random chance and "coincidences" are often God working less obviously. So, I might go through and use my highlighter to put question marks everywhere where I think I'm supposed to see God at work in the story, and then pray asking God to show me where I'm right or wrong and who He wants me to see Him to be because of the passage. I may also circle everything that reminds me of other passages in the Bible where something similar was attributed to God.