Kay Arthur - The Key to Living by Faith: Hebrews

The Key to
Living By
F aith

KAY ARTHUR
PETE DE LACY

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

All Scripture quotations have been taken from the New American Standard Bible, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

THE KEY TO LIVING BY FAITH
Copyright 2009 by Precept Ministries International
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arthur, Kay

The key to living by faith / Kay Arthur and Pete De Lacy.

p. cm.(The new inductive study series)

ISBN 978-0-7369-2306-4 (pbk.)

1. Bible. N.T. HebrewsTextbooks. I. De Lacy, Pete. II. Title.

BS2775.55.A78 2009

227.870071dc22

2008049424

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 / BP-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Reading directions is sometimes difficult and hardly ever enjoyable! Most often you just want to get started. Only if all else fails will you read the instructions. We understand, but please dont approach this study that way. These brief instructions are a vital part of getting started on the right foot! These few pages will help you immensely.

As you study Hebrews, you will need four things in addition to this book:

1. A Bible that you are willing to mark in. The marking is essential. An ideal Bible for this purpose is The New Inductive Study Bible (NISB). The NISB is in a single-column text format with large, easy-to-read type, which is ideal for marking. The margins of the text are wide and blank so you can take notes.

The NISB also has instructions for studying each book of the Bible, but it does not contain any commentary on the text, nor is it compiled from any theological stance. Its purpose is to teach you how to discern truth for yourself through the inductive method of study. Whichever Bible you use, just know you will need to mark in it, which brings us to the second item you will need

2. A fine-point, four-color ballpoint pen or various colored fine-point pens that you can use to write in your Bible. Office supply stores should have these.

3. Colored pencils or an eight-color leaded Pentel pencil.

4. A composition book or a notebook for working on your assignments and recording your insights.

1. As you study Hebrews, you will be given specific instructions for each days study. These should take you between 20 and 30 minutes a day, but if you spend more time than this, you will increase your intimacy with the Word of God and the God of the Word.

If you are doing this study in a class and you find the lessons too heavy, simply do what you can. To do a little is better than to do nothing. Dont be an all-or-nothing person when it comes to Bible study.

Remember, anytime you get into the Word of God, you enter into more intensive warfare with the devil (our enemy). Why? Every piece of the Christians armor is related to the Word of God. And our one and only offensive weapon is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The enemy wants you to have a dull sword. Dont cooperate! You dont have to!

2. As you read each chapter, train yourself to ask the 5 Ws and an H: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Asking questions like these helps you see exactly what the Word of God is saying. When you interrogate the text with the 5 Ws and an H, you ask questions like these:

What is the chapter about?

Who are the main characters?

When does this event or teaching take place?

Where does this happen?

Why is this being done or said?

How did it happen?

3. Locations are important in many books of the Bible, so marking references to these in a distinguishable way will be helpful to you. We simply underline every reference to a location in green (grass and trees are green!) using a four-color ballpoint pen.

4. References to time are also very important and should be marked in an easily recognizable way in your Bible. We mark them by putting a clock like this in the margin of the Bible beside the verse where the phrase occurs. You may want to underline or color the references to time in one specific color.

5. You will be given certain key words to mark throughout this study. This is the purpose of the colored pencils and the colored pens. If you will develop the habit of marking your Bible in this way, you will find it will make a significant difference in the effectiveness of your study and in how much you remember.

A key word is an important word that the author uses repeatedly in order to convey his message to his readers. Certain key words will show up throughout Hebrews; others will be concentrated in a specific chapter. When you mark a key word, you should also mark its synonyms (words that mean the same thing in the context) and any pronouns (I, me, my, mine; you, your, yours; he, him, his; she, her, hers; it, its; we, us, our, ours; they, them, their, theirs) in the same way you have marked the key word. Also, mark each word the same way in all of its forms (such as judge, judgment, and judging). We will give you a few suggestions for ways to mark key words in your daily assignments.

You can use colors or symbols or a combination of colors and symbols to mark words for easy identification. However, colors are easier to distinguish than symbols. When we use symbols, we keep them very simple. For example, you could draw a red heart around the word love and shade the inside of the heart like this: .

When we mark the members of the Godhead (which we do not always mark), we color each word yellow and mark the Father with a purple triangle like this: . We mark the Son this way: and the Holy Spirit this way

Mark key words in a way that is easy for you to remember. Devising a color-coding system for marking key words throughout your Bible will help you instantly see where a key word is used. You might want to make yourself a bookmark listing the words you mark along with their colors and/or symbols.