[Darris McNeely] I’m a minister and occasionally I have to prepare talks, sermons to people about various topics regarding the Bible. Yesterday I pulled a book off of my shelf that has been there for a long, long time. It’s called Nave’s Topical Bible. It’s a well-known, established topical Bible that divides the Scriptures up by topics. As I was preparing a talk about prayer, I took out my trusty Nave’s Topical Bible and opened it up to the section about prayer, and it reminded me that this is perhaps one of the most effective ways and keys to understand the Bible, when I went through this topic on prayer.

We’re at number seven in our series on keys to understanding the Bible, and it’s basically this – it’s very simple: study the Bible by topics. By topic. Such as prayer, such as study, meditation. You want to do a study on fasting? You can do that just by looking it up in what is known here as a topical Bible and go through every verse in the Bible that speaks to that topic. As I was going through the topic on prayer, it was a refreshing Bible study, going over material I’ve gone over hundreds of times, and I’ve given dozens of sermons through the years on prayer. But just looking at it from a topical point of view, it opened up a whole new understanding for me again, and kind of a personal refresher on the topic of prayer, one of the keys to spiritual growth.

The Bible can be studied by topic, and when you do so, you’re accomplishing something that is mentioned over in 2 Timothy 2:15, where the apostle Paul wrote to a young minister, and he said, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the truth.” Divide the truth, the truth of God’s word by topic, by prayer, study, fasting, or virtually any other topic that you might want to go and do an in-depth study in Scripture. It’s one of the most effective keys, no matter how well you think you know the Bible, or how long you’ve been at it.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.