How Colored Pencils Revolutionized My Bible Study Routine

Is your personal Bible study time dull and boring, or exciting and delightful? Either way, today I’m sharing how you can make your quiet time more colorful… and how colored pencils revolutionized my Bible study routine.

Before I dive into that, though, here’s a little backstory:

At the beginning of July, I decided I would read the book of Luke.

I started off reading a chapter a day because that’s what I had been doing the previous month when I was reading Proverbs. But it just got to be too overwhelming for me. Luke’s chapters were longer and more in depth, and I didn’t like feeling like I was rushing through it.

So I started taking it section by section. Somedays I’d read more than others. I mainly strived to read until something stood out to me that I could ponder for a while.

Then in Sunday School, we talked about various ways to study the Bible. One way the speaker mentioned was to focus on the verbs of the passage.

Hmmm, I thought. That’s a good idea!

So when I got home that evening, I broke out my colored pencils to use them to “highlight” the various verbs in the passages.

Since then, my Bible study became much more in-depth and much more colorful.

I know some people don’t like writing in their Bibles, and if that’s you, that’s totally alright! We’re all different and we all like to study the Bible in different ways.

However, if you’re on the fence about it, I really do recommend giving it a shot. Writing in my Bible definitely keeps me focused and enriches my Bible reading.

So, that being said, let’s dive into how colored pencils revolutionized my Bible study routine!

Supplies:

• Bible
  • My Bible is in the English Standard Version and it’s a “student study Bible.” I bought it from crossway.org several years ago. You can find similar Bibles here.
• Colored Pencils
  • Mine are Crayola, but you can use any brand, of course ;)
• A Pen
• A Sticky Note

Like I said above, I started off just marking the verbs. But every now and then, someone would say something that stood out to me. Or someone important would enter the scene and I wanted to highlight them as well.

So, I created a key.

I created this as I went, so the colors don’t really mean anything specific. I don’t know why verbs are orange and people are green. It just happened that way LOL!

So here’s my key for the book of Luke:

• Words of Jesus: Red
• Key Verbs: Orange
• Actions of Jesus: Light Blue
• Key People: Light Green
• Key Nouns: Purple
• Words of Others (anyone besides Jesus): Green
• (Mentions of the) Holy Spirit: Blue
• Anything Else that’s Important: Yellow

As I write this blog post, I’ve only done this specific color coding for the book of Luke. If you’re reading a different book of the Bible, you can certainly still do this. Just tailor the different “categories” of things to color based upon what book you’re reading. And you can create your key using any colors you want :)

As you can see in the above picture, I wrote my key on a sticky note. This is so that I can stick it in my Bible and it not get lost.

I kept the sticky note posted on whichever page of Luke I was currently on. Then, when I turned the page, I took off the sticky note and reattached it on the new page. That way I wouldn’t forget which color was what.

By using colored pencils as I read sections of Luke, the stories come alive. Details that I may have otherwise missed stand out to me.

Below is an example of my color coding process. I’ll either color over the word/phrase, underline it, or circle it.

So that’s how I used colored pencils to study the book of Luke!

I think colored pencils definitely add depth to my personal Bible study time, and I definitely recommend you try it out. Colored pencils revolutionized my Bible study routine, and they can revolutionize yours as well!

Related: How to Bible Journal without a Journaling Bible

Let’s be Instagram friends! @essentiallykarabeth

Posted by Kara Beth & filed under Faith Tips. This post has 2 comments.