While Bible Study Made Easy will explore a number of great resources in the weeks and months ahead, what really makes any/all of them “power(ful) tools” is when they become as easily accessible and usable as possible. For me, that means packaging them into a Bible software library with solid search and study capabilities.
For example, I have two Bible software programs I use for 95% of my study time, WORDsearch Bible software (www.wordsearchbible.com) and Logos Bible software (www.logos.com). In each library, I have multiple Bible translations and upwards of twenty different Bible commentaries. I can literally search ALL of the commentaries for deeper insight on a specific Bible passage in a matter of seconds. Reading and research that would normally take several hours, if not a day or two, with traditional hardcopy books can now be completed in an hour or two, (if that). Seriously!
Of course, there’s much more to effective Bible study than just checking other people’s insights into Scripture, which is why both software packages let you search your concordances, handbooks, Bible dictionaries, original language references and all the other books you have in your electronic library just as fast.
I currently have about 1,800 books and Bibles in each of my software libraries, so you can imagine 1) the benefit of not having to store that many real books on a bookshelf, 2) the challenge of trying to remember where I’d read something of interest in any one of them and 3) the advantage of being able to search such a large library for a Bible reference or key word(s) in less than a minute.
If you want to spend more of your time studying, instead of searching and sorting, a good Bible software program can be an incredible tool and, dare I say, blessing. I’d even go so far as to say it’s almost become a must have for any serious student of the Bible.
Two comments in closing: 1) A decent-sized Bible study library in either of the two programs mentioned above will require an investment of a couple hundred dollars, (which over a couple years works out to a few lattes a month), but it is so worth it and 2) there are other Bible software programs out there, including several decent free ones, all of which we will explore in the very near future, so stay tuned.
