Instead of regarding the Bible as "more to be desired than gold" and "rejoicing the heart", like David in the Psalms, somehow, for many of us, regularly feeding on God's word ends up in the same category as regular exercise: a healthy chore we know we should fit in and that we benefit from, but which is hard to manage amongst everything else, and ends up slipping off the agenda. As the Lord Jesus said of his sleepy disciples: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak".

Whatever your current Bible reading habits (or lack of them), and whatever your level of knowledge and confidence, Six Steps to Reading Your Bible will help you make progress in getting into your Bible. The course is especially designed for use in small groups, and utilizes a mix of video instruction, fun skits, Bible study, discussion, practical exercises, prayer and home assignments that will help you on the road to establishing a new and more enjoyable Bible reading habit.

Who can benefit?
Six Steps to Reading Your Bible is an ideal course for three groups of people:

• People who are new to the Christian faith. It will give them a very valuable introduction to the place of the Bible in the Christian life, and a set of basic tools for getting started in reading it.
• Those who have been Christians a while, but who have never had much training in simple but important Bible study principles.
• Experienced Bible readers, who will find Six Steps to Reading Your Bible a valuable 'refresher' course, and will gain a healthy new vigour in their personal Bible reading.

Six Steps to Reading Your Bible is a course best undertaken in a small group (of 3-8 people).

To run the course you will need a workbook for each person, which also contains notes for group leaders, plus the to use in the group. The video content is also .

Over the six sessions of the course, you will:

• become familiar with the basic shape and nature of the Bible
• be motivated to read the Bible for yourself
• learn how to apply basic reading skills to the Bible
• learn how to apply a Bible passage to your life
• understand how the whole message of the Bible hangs together and centres on Jesus
• benefit from the encouragement and experience of others, as you work together in learning to read the Bible
• be well on the way to establishing a new habit of regular Bible reading.

Outline of the six steps:

• What is the Bible?
• Why read the Bible?
• Reading in faith
• Reading what's there
• Reading through Jesus
• Reading for life

About the authors

Since founding Matthias Media in 1988, Tony Payne has written more than 30 books, ministry courses and Bible studies, including The Trellis and the Vine, The Course of Your Life and The Tony Payne Collection: The best articles from three decades of Christian writing. Along with his continued work at Matthias Media, Tony is also the Director of The Centre for Christian Living at Moore College. He is married to Ali, with five adult children, and five grandchildren. Tony is the DVD presenter.

Simon Roberts is also the co-author of the multimedia training courses Six Steps to Talking About Jesus, Six Steps to Encouragement and So Many Questions. He is employed by a church in Sydney where he runs their School of Ministry, which builds and equips congregation members for the work of service.

About downloadable files and group licences

If you wish to share copies of the study with others, or plan to read out the questions or explanatory text to a group, consider a group licence. A group licence allows for up to 15 copies of a PDF to be shared within one growth group, making it quick and easy to organise. Otherwise, adjust the quantity you're buying to match the number of people participating. Volume discounts still apply to digital files, and these discounts will be automatically applied at checkout.

Please read the full .