by Jen | Jan 30, 2024 | 1-15, DISO studies, Matthew 28
NEW TO THIS STUDY? START HERE.
Hello! I’m so grateful you’re joining me again this week! If you’re working along with me, I hope the Spirit revealed something awesome to you in your study since last time. Remember, if it seems He’s directing your focus to different parts of this passage than He’s using with me, it’s okay. That simply means we’re at different places in our walk with God. If we all stick closely to God’s Word and heed the Spirit’s guidance, we can be confident we’re discovering exactly what He wants us to see.
Last Week’s Work
MY PERSONAL TREASURE
As I mentioned last week, I think the Spirit is drawing me to notice the experiences of the women in this passage. Like them, I am a follower of Jesus who’s also felt He was gone from my life. I intend to focus primarily on their interactions with the angel (vv5-7) and with the risen Christ (vv9-10).
That’s a pretty large chunk of the passage, but I’m confident that the Spirit will help me narrow it further as I continue to work with Him.
The other part of the text I examined this past week was setting: who’s involved, and where and when did the action take place?
WHO (CHARACTERS)
I started by looking most closely at Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary.” I need to find out who this other Mary is. It occurred to me if she is Jesus’s mother, she’s already experienced one angel-siting in her lifetime. That might explain why the women didn’t react to the angel the same way the guards did (v4), even though they apparently did feel some fear based on the angel’s reassurance (v5) and Matthew’s statement (v8). And despite—or maybe because of—their fear, they were quick (v8) to obey the angel’s command to go and tell the disciples (v7). How I wish I could say I don’t let fear stop me from doing what I believe God is telling me to do!
WHERE (LOCATIONS)
Two locations are relevant to my focus area: the tomb, where the Marys received their marching orders (v1). And somewhere along the way to the disciples (v9), where Jesus met them. I think it’s interesting that these two activities didn’t happen in the same place, nor did Matthew specify exactly where Jesus appeared to the women, or even where the disciples were.
WHEN (TIMEFRAMES)
But the most amazing thing I noticed this week was Jesus Himself came to the women and reinforced the angel’s command after the women took some action in obedience (vv9-10). Isn’t it just like our God to give us a command that scares us, but when we respond in obedience, He shows up for us in ways we never anticipated?! He is so good!
Dig-In Challenges
I can’t wait to learn more from this awesome passage! This coming week, I hope you’ll join me in one or more of these challenges:
- Start each study session by reading the prayer we wrote in Step 1.
- MINE: Notice if Matthew repeated any concepts in this passage and, if so, how that repetition might be relevant to the treasure the Spirit’s revealing in this study.
- MINE: Locate any special statements (blessings, commands, curses, prayers, promises, and warnings) that connect with the treasure we’re digging into?
- MINE: Ask the Spirit to show us any lists (3 or more similar items mentioned in the text) and their relevance to our personal focus.
I hope to see you next week!
GO TO WEEK 4 >
by Jen | Jan 23, 2024 | 1-15, DISO studies, Matthew 28
NEW TO THIS STUDY? START HERE.
Welcome back, I’m glad you’re here, my friend! Before I share my work from last week, though, I want to remind you these are the results of my personal Bible study. The revelations here are based on what the Holy Spirit is working on with me in this season. If the Spirit has revealed something totally different to you, don’t worry. He’s our primary Guide and Teacher, and He helps each of us to find what we need for our specific faith journey.
I share my answers not because they’re the “right” ones, but to give you an example of what can be discovered through this process. As long as you’re working with the Holy Spirit and staying true to the whole counsel of God in His Word, you’re on the right track, even if your results don’t resemble what I write about here.
As always, I invite your comments and questions to [email protected]: feedback helps me make this process more approachable for everyone.
Last Week’s Work
MY PRAYER
The first task from last week was to develop a prayer I promised to pray every time I sit down to study this section of Scripture. Here’s mine:
Father God, thank You for Your Word and the special meaning it has for me now. Open my eyes, ears, and heart to see and hear the Holy Spirit’s prompts as I work through Matthew 28:1-15 with Him. I believe You have a special message for me in this text, and I want to hear it—even if it’s not all sunshine and roses. I am willing walk the hard road to get there, Lord, to learn hard lessons because I know You love me. You will be with me through all of this and in the end I’ll have something more precious than earthly treasure—experience and knowledge and stronger faith in You. I commit to this study and ask for Your help in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Full Disclosure: I often forget to pray before I start studying. To help me remember, I copied this prayer onto a yellow notecard I use as a bookmark. Now, every time I open my journal to my previous notes, I have a built-in reminder to pray before I dig in!
HUH? and WOW! MOMENTS
Next, I slowly read through the study text again, focusing to my reactions, and noting the parts that caught my attention. Here are my responses:
- HUH? what does Matthew mean, became like dead men (v4)? And I also noticed Matthew mentions fear and afraid several times.
- WOW! The women showed more courage than the guards—they at least remained conscious and could obey the angel’s commands (vv4-8)!
- WOW! The angel must have anticipated the women might be skeptical—he invited them to check out his story about Jesus’s absence—before telling them to share the news of Jesus’s resurrection with others (vv6-7)
- WOW! In the process of following the angel’s command, the women encounter the risen Lord Himself, who confirmed the angel’s directions (vv9-10).
Personally, I felt drawn to the women in this story. I see them—like me (and maybe you, too?)—receiving a calling to deliver a message to fellow Christians that made them both fearful and joyful. Without a doubt, I want to dig deeper into that. I hope you discovered a gem you want to investigate further, too!
Dig-In Challenges
Next week, I plan to:
- Read my prayer bookmark every time I start studying this passage!
- MINE: Identify which aspect of this study I feel the Spirit leading me to dig deepest into right now. It could be one (or more) of the Huh? and Wow! Moments I wrote about this week, or some other item the Spirit hasn’t yet called to my attention.
- MINE: Observe what the passage tells me about the setting of the scene in Matthew 28:1-15 (who’s involved, where and when did the action take place), and note anything the Spirit emphasizes.
GO TO WEEK 3 >
by Jen | Jan 16, 2024 | 1-15, DISO studies, Matthew 28
Hello again! I’m so glad you’re joining me for the first study using the revised Digging into Scripture Ourselves (DISO) process. I’m trying to simplify this process so you can feel confident studying the Bible inductively in the time you have, but I don’t know what I don’t know, and I can’t see the confused look on your face. So please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have questions!
Let’s Study Matthew 28:1-15!
When I suspended our studies last fall, we were working through a select group of miracles of Jesus, and I want to finish off that series with two passages, Matthew 28:1-15 and Acts 1:6-11, which recount Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.
This week, I’ll work through two of the five steps in the new process using Matthew 28:1-15. If you want to work along with me, here’s what I recommend you start with:
- A copy of Matt 28:1-15, plus access to the entire book of Matthew.
I copy the text from www.blueletterbible.org, paste it in a word processing program (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 copy I created that you can use.
- A study journal.
I’m old-school and like the pen/pencil and paper method for journaling my studies, but you can do this any way you want. If you don’t think you have time to physically write or type your notes, consider recording an audio of your thoughts, or use your smart phone to dictate into a notes app.
But really, if you studied with me before, you know you’re welcome to just read the posts I publish here. They’ll help you become more familiar with the new process and show you how the Spirit speaks to my situation. I’m praying that there will be enough similarities between my life and yours that you’ll find it worth your while to keep checking in with me, even if you can’t study along on your own yet.
Dig-In Challenges
So here’s what I’m going to do this coming week:
- PRAY: I’ll be creating a prayer that I can pray every time I study Matthew 28:1-15. I’m going to write it in my study journal, so I’ll have it handy each time I study.
- SURVEY: Then, I’ll read Matthew 28:1-15, 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 next week, I’ll choose one I think the Spirit wants me to dig more deeply into right now.
I’m looking forward to sharing what I discover in this new process you—hope you’ll stop by next week!
GO TO WEEK 2 >
by Jen | Jan 9, 2024 | DISO studies
Hello again, my friend! It feels like it’s been a very long time since I’ve written a post here, and I’ve missed it. More so, though, I have missed digging in God’s Word with you. I am so grateful to be back!
What happened?
When I wrapped up our last study, my plan was to update and reformat previous posts through the end of this year as I cared for an ailing relative post-surgery. Oh, what naïveté! I spent much of October and all of November as a full-time caregiver. Not because my family member required that much care, but I was so unskilled and unfamiliar with the role, it took a long time to trust myself in it.
Then last month, my husband and I spent Christmas with our family up north. While there, the whole house came down with various versions of this season’s flu bug. And I am finding—to my chagrin—healing takes longer. In this case, much longer. As I write this post, I am still not fully recovered. I am healthy enough to sit at my desk and study my Bible, though. And I give God all the glory for that!
Process Changes
I mentioned before my hiatus I was making some tweaks to the DISO process from feedback received after a beta reader review of my book manuscript in 2022. The main problem, my readers said, was the process can be overwhelming. Even highly motivated women didn’t feel they could successfully sustain this type of Bible study long term. If I really want you to use and benefit from DISO Bible study (and I do!), it had to be simplified.
Through research, discussion, and much, much prayer this fall, the Lord has shown me how to walk through a piece of Scripture in just five steps: Pray, Survey, Mine, Refine, and Align.
In previous blogs using the “20 Questions,” I demonstrated answering each question with every passage we studied. That gave the impression we should assign all the questions the same level of importance every time we study Scripture. Since then, I’ve realized that is not always true for all women every time. As a temporary caregiver, I often didn’t have the time to even read my previous posts, let alone study a new passage. So, I didn’t study. And, predictably, the enemy of my soul came looking for a foothold.
But in my wrestling, God revealed any study is good study when it follows inductive Bible study basics: see what the passage says (observation), understand correctly what it means (interpretation), and practice what it preaches (application).
So, beginning next week, I’ll demonstrate this new process the same way I have in previous posts. Each week, I’ll show you the work I’ve done and explain how the Holy Spirit led my study. Each blog will end with Dig-In Challenges, steps you can take to study with me if you like. We will still look for certain elements in the text, consider the same resources to interpret what we’ve found, and answer the same four questions based on 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to use what we’ve discovered. Now, though, the emphasis will be less about answering all twenty questions with equal vigor, and more about learning to recognize the promptings that will help us use the appropriate questions to dig deeply into a single treasure in the passage.
So, instead of digging a wide trench with all the questions, we’ll follow the Spirit to extract a smaller section of the study passage (a sentence, phrase, or just a few words) and mine, refine, and align with that treasure alone.
I hope as we work through these new steps, you’ll be moved to provide feedback about the changes. The best way to do this, I think, is direct email to me ([email protected]). Thank you so much for sticking with me, my friend. Join me next week as we pick up where we left off in the Miracles of Jesus series using the new DISO process to see what God wants to show us there.
It is good to be back!
by Jen | Sep 5, 2023 | 5-13, DISO studies, Matthew 8
NEW TO THIS STUDY? START HERE!
Welcome back, my friend! As mentioned in earlier posts, today’s message will be the last new one till 2024, but I hope you’ll keep coming back anyway to monitor my progress as I reformat and upload previous blogs to this new website!
But first, let’s have a look at how the Spirit corrected me through the Scriptures I encountered in this study, and the action I intend to take away from my time in this passage.
Last Week’s Work
Question 19 (Correction)
The Scripture from this study that gives me pause is, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed” (Matthew 8:13 NASB20). The miracle I need will happen. I don’t have the power to bring it into existence, but Jesus does, and He is willing.
Question 20 (Action Plan)
I’m actually pretty excited about my action plan for this study. I feel like I’ve been getting this message from everywhere of late. A song about it has been stuck in my head for more than a week (That’s the Thing About Praise). And recently I had a conversation with a new friend who randomly started talking about praising God during difficulty.
It’s something I’ve been turning over in my mind for a while now. What better way to show I believe in God and His goodness than to praise Him even when I can’t see it?!
What’s Next?
This is normally where I tell you about the next study I’ll be doing, but for now, I need to reallocate my time to family, finishing out my website upgrade, and rewriting my book, which I’m believing for publication sometime next year. I can’t wait to share with you all the wonderful things I believe God is going to do for us (you and me, Friend!) with the changes that are coming!
