Category Archives: Personal Growth

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How To Take Notes While Reading The Bible

Since I decided to be more intentional about how get the most out of reading a book, it seemed like a no-brainer to apply that to the most important reading I do, my reading of the Bible.

I’ve developed several different habits surrounding this discipline in my life, from my method of reading, to hand-copying portions of Scripture. I’ve discussed how to gain more from reading the bible, called the Golden Nugget approach. And even wrote a post on how to be more consistent in your Bible reading from my own experiences.

Man Reading

But how do you incorporate what you’ve read into your life? How do you retain what you read?

I’ve discovered that one way this works for me is to take notes, just like I do when I read a regular book. Only I do it a bit different.

First of all, you need to realize this:

It is OK to write in your Bible.

In my first youth ministry, I received a tongue-lashing from a parent because I told her daughter that it was OK to write in her Bible. This mother went ballistic, and berated me for several minutes, telling me is was NOT OK to write in the Bible. She wanted her daughter to keep her Bible in pristine condition.

But an unworn and unused Bible is a sign of a life unaffected by God. I would much rather replace my Bible frequently because I fill up the margins and wear it out than have a museum-ready copy on my shelf.

Here are a few things I do when I read the Bible to help me retain what I read.

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How To Take Notes While Reading A Book

It seems like I’ve seen several different websites post articles about how to read a book in the last few weeks. Many of them had some helpful suggestions; others didn’t make much sense to me. So I thought it might be nice to think through just how I read a book.

In the process of examining my method, I decided that others might benefit from my discoveries, and as a result, this article was written.

Man Reading

Some of the material I read had some interesting suggestions. One site instructed me to read the book through very quickly, scanning more than reading, looking for significant ideas. The next step was to follow that up with an in-depth read of the book. To finish, a third time through the book was necessary, reading only the sections I highlighted, underlined, or otherwise took notes about.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to read every book three times. That is simply not practical for my life. I understand the point that article was making, that this would help me to grasp a much larger portion of the material being read. But it just doesn’t seem workable for me.

Another blog suggested that I simply read the book, making no notes or highlights at all, allowing the material to sink into my mind on its own. This might work when I read fiction, but I won’t learn anything at all using this process. So that isn’t a practical way to read, either.

Here’s a brief look at how I read a book, the notes and symbols I use, and how it works for me. If this helps you, great. But just because I’ve found it to be useful, doesn’t mean that you will benefit from it just the same as I do.

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How To Develop A Daily Routine

Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted several articles on the importance of a daily routine. Since there are several different pieces in this series, I thought I’d gather them all in one place for ease of access.

While there may be more added to this series in the future, this post will serve as a landing page for the series.

How To Develop A Daily Routine

Here are the posts in this series, in order of appearance:

This series is by no means complete. I will continue to add ideas and articles to this topic, and link them here as they are written. If there is something you’d like to see covered, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments!

What would you like to see added to this series? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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9 Habits You Need To Build Into Your Daily Routine

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

One of the most helpful things you can do to increase your daily effectiveness is build a solid daily routine. The sky is the limit for what you can build into your routine. But there are a few things you definitely need to include.

Hammer

In order to be the most effective, simple tasks should be done so easily that you don’t need to think about them. That’s where your routine comes in. But there are a few tasks that you need to make sure happen each day. Otherwise, you can waste precious time and energy focusing on something that should take very little effort.

Here are nine habits that you should build into your routine to help your life run as smoothly as possible.

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4 Strategies For Making A Daily Routine Stick

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

Creating a daily routine can be a incredibly helpful part of your life. But once you have a plan, sticking to that plan may be tougher than you think.

All of us have our tragic stories of beginning something new, and failing to maintain it, whether that is a diet, an exercise routine, a reading plan or anything else.

Glasses On Calendar

In order for your new routine to become, well, routine, you need to have a strategy for sticking to the plan for the long haul. Because it will be tough. Forming new habits takes some time, but you’ll be more likely to see long-term success the longer you stick to the routine.

With that in mind, here are a few things you should consider that can help you stick to your daily routine.

Be specific

This is one of the most important aspects of sticking to a daily routine. When our plans are too vague, they tend to slip through the cracks, we forget about them, or we lose interest.

For example, let’s say that you want to add more time for reading into your daily routine. That’s a great goal, but you won’t be as likely to see success unless you get more specific. What are you going to read? Are you reading for entertainment, or do you want to learn more about a particular subject? How long do you want to read each day? Thirty minutes? An hour? What are you going to do to avoid distractions during that time? Where do you plan to read? In your living room? At the library?

These are all things to consider when making your plans. Being more specific will help your chances of success skyrocket.

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Teaching My Passion

Over the past few years, I’ve had a pretty solid relationship with and connection to the Creation Truth Foundation. So much so, in fact, that we actually considered joining the staff there, teaching the history and truth found in the early chapters of Genesis.

CTF Banner

Through CTF, I participated in a series of classes they offer for ministers, called The Institute For Biblical Worldview Studies. This was a series of classes, taught at CTF, investigating in detail the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

I enjoyed this class so much that I decided to sit through it a second time, gleaning even more information and knowledge.

As a youth minister, I never really had the opportunity to utilize this learning experience as much as I would have liked. Sure, pieces of the information continually popped up in my teaching to teens, and I even developed a series for teens using some of the material.

But I never really had the opportunity to teach it fully.

Until now.
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Reaching Your Goals Using A Daily Routine

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

One of the best benefits of having a daily routine is the way it helps you achieve your goals. Setting and reaching goals can be difficult without a plan or a strategy. Building that effort into your daily routine can help immensely.

Books

I’ve discovered that people have a hard time setting goals. I know I did. People do one of three things when striving to set goal.

They rush in without a plan

Having no plan can kill your goals more quickly than anything else. If you want to go somewhere you’ve never been, you need a route to get there, a map, a strategy. The same is true for your goals. Without a strategy, you have no way of getting from where you are to where you want to be. Take the gym for example. Too many people buy a gym membership and then burn out and stop using it in a matter of weeks. Why? Because they jumped in without a plan.

Without a plan, your goals have little chance of succeeding.

They get stuck in the planning phase

I know a lot of people who want to plan out their goals in detail. They research. They read books. They talk to others. They buy what they need. They lay out a plan. But they never actually do anything.