Peeking inside my toolbox…

I always get a kick out of watching my son in the garage. His favorite thing to explore is the tool chest. There’s tons of shiny drawers to open, lots of strangely shaped gizmos, nuts, bolts, and screws—and its all part of how daddy fixes stuff.

My tool kit for bible study and blogging doesn’t look as exciting as that chest… at least, not to my four-year old.

I suppose that my kids have a certain fascination with the colored pencil highlighters, my iPad, and my journal… But the books and digital tools aren’t physically fascinating (not for my little ones anyway!) I wish I could say that I had more reference books in my library, but since we don’t have a lot of room to store books, I haven’t been purchasing anything but homeschool books for my children. Most of my reference tools are digital.

One of the online tools that I frequently use for both studying and blogging is the Bible Gateway website.

You may have noticed that my verses have links these days. If you click on one of those links, it will take you to Bible Gateway’s website and straight to the verse in the version I am referencing. Below is an example of what the page would look like. I have zoomed in on two things that I’d like you to notice.

Next to the book & chapter heading (in this case, Psalm 25), there is a stack of lines. If you click on this, it will enable you to view the surrounding context in that chapter. I really like this function because there are times when I do a search by phrase and I only get the one verse. I prefer reading the surrounding context to ensure that I am not referencing the verse incorrectly (i.e. proof-texting).

On the far right of the above image, I have highlighted something that looks like two combs side-by-side. If you click on those combs, you can view another translation of the verse(s) next to the original translation you have selected. You can view up to 5 versions. For those like me who do not have a hard copy of a multi-version bible, this is a wonderful tool.

In the above image, I have noted where you can click to switch versions and how to view the next chapter. If you are still viewing parallel translations, it will still continue in the next chapter.

A digital concordance

My spouse has teased me about being a walking concordance, but it isn’t true. I can remember the gist of a verse in my head (sometimes I can quote it word-for-word), but I don’t always know where to find it. This is when the search function becomes my best friend!

I like being able to type a phrase and have multiple options come up:

Another thing that I like is the ability to copy and paste verses into the blog. You could also do this with sermons, studies, devotionals or class preparation and save hours of typing and potential typos.

I have many more tools in my box. I will share them as the months go on—especially those helpful to study and learning. I hope that you have success with this free internet tool and that it enhances your bible study.

What is one of your favorite tools for Bible Study? Please share it with us below!

(Note: I do not receive any monetary compensation from Bible Gateway.)