6 Helpful Hints for Saturation Bible Study

I grew up reading and studying the Bible but it was more like “devotions” than actual study. It wasn’t until I met my good friend and mentor Stephen Manley that I learned about Saturation Bible Study. In today’s guest post, he shares six helpful hints to encourage you in your saturation study. Connect with Stephen via web or on Twitter.

Saturation in the Scriptures is fundamental to Christian living. You must take it seriously and understand there is no other option! Here are six suggestions to aid you in your saturation.

• Make it fun (perhaps enjoyable is the correct word). If it is a duty, guilt motivated, or a competition with someone else, you destroy the joy of saturation. This is not an assignment. It is a life function. There are no set rules. Allow saturation to fit your personality, schedule, and methodology.

• Make it functional. Saturation was born into my life because I did not have time to set down for three hours a day for personal Bible study. The normal morning devotional time was never a discipline I could master. On the one hand I needed and wanted to get into the Word of God; on the other hand I was very busy with life. Saturation was a marriage of these two necessities. I did not have to do it as someone else did it. The concern of God for my life was for the Word to come alive in my life.

• Make it forever. The development of a life pattern is essential. Do not place a time schedule on yourself. You are not preparing for a test at the end of the quarter. A chaotic day which provides no time for saturation does not need to produce guilt. God understands; we have time. My life pattern is going to be one of saturating in His Word. I do not need to feel guilt because I will not finish the Book of Acts in my life time. I am going to live forever.

• Make it final. I am bending my life to an immersion into the Word of God. I am calling upon the self-control of the Holy Spirit (fruit of the Spirit) to bring my life under the authority of His Word. I will not allow saturation to slip through my fingers. It will not be stimulated nor controlled by emotions, but it will be a determination of my heart-will.

• Make it a frame of mind. A problem arises in your life. You think about it all the time. You go to bed thinking about how to solve it. You wake up thinking about it. As you drive down the road you think about it. Your thought process becomes consumed with this problem. Can saturation become like that for you? Can you begin to saturate in a passage until it becomes the consistent thinking of your mind?

• Make it fundamental. Do not be satisfied with superficial, light, devotional thoughts. Do not make things up from what you have always known. Probe deep (it will take time). This is important; this is why it is called saturation. Be sure when you are finished you have saturated the passage and it has saturated you.