Thank you for joining me in this eight-week study! This time we’re digging into Chapter 12 of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
This is the second to the last study in the Restoration series I created to revisit fourteen passages I’ve previously examined online. I’m repeating them because the original studies were lost when another website host took down my site a few years ago. Rather than repost those earlier versions—which were created using previous iterations of the DISO study method—I chose to work through them again using the current framework. I love having those earlier posts for comparison as I work on new ones. It’s amazing how the Spirit continues to show me new insights in these passages. God’s Word is such a treasure that way!
Let’s Study Romans 12!
This week, I’ll begin by praying and surveying Romans 12. If you want to study on your own with me, here’s what I recommend you have ready:
- A copy of Romans 12, plus access to the entire letter to the Romans.
I like to refer often to the text I’m studying and sometimes make notes on it, so I copy the passage from blueletterbible.org, paste it into a word processing program like Google docs or MS Word, change the formatting to suit my preferences, and print it out. If you want to use the ESV translation, here’s a pdf of my Scripture study sheet with lots of room for doodles and notes. - A study journal.
We’ll spend the next seven weeks immersed in and learning about Romans 12. And the work we’ll do each week builds on what came before, so plan to record at least some highlights from your work over the coming weeks. I’m old-school and like the pen-and-paper method for journaling my studies, but it’s okay if that doesn’t work for you. If you don’t have time to write out or type your notes, consider dictating them into a notes app, or recording audio files, instead.
Or, you may decide to just read the entries posted here. That’s good, too, because you’ll become familiar with the process and see how the Spirit speaks to my situation. Either way, I appreciate you checking in with me, even if you can’t dig into Romans 12 yourself this time.
Dig-In Challenges
So, here’s how I’ll be studying this week:
- PRAY: I’ll be creating a prayer with which I’ll start each of my weekly study sessions. If you’ve studied with me before, you know I usually just adapt a previous prayer. Though I’ve pretty much memorized my prayer, I still write it in my study journal to remind me to pray it each time I open the notebook.
- SURVEY: Then I’ll read Romans 12, noting anything that makes me say, “huh?” (as in, “I wonder what that means?”) or “wow” (as in, “that is so awesome!”). I’ll record these and later ask the Spirit to direct me to the one I should dig into right now.
If you’d like more information about these steps, check out this printable summary of the process I’ll be using over the next eight weeks. Or, you can always reach out to me with your questions through my contact page or at [email protected]. I’m looking forward to sharing what I discover in this process with you, along with relevant snippets of my previous study of this chapter in 2021, so I hope you’ll keep checking in with me each week!