Sometimes the Bible can be intimidating at a glance, but with the right tools & resources, your family can receive the Word of God and allow it transform your home. In this video, Matt explains why you NEED to start a bible study with your family.

Welcome back to Beyond the Pew again. My name is Matt Rice, and today I want to talk to you about family bible studies, actually sitting down as a family reading scripture together and reflecting on it. Many of us Catholics, sadly, we haven’t spent a lot of time in bible studies.

So when someone says the word bible studies, we actually don’t know what they mean. Sometimes we’re like, “Wait, hold on. Does that mean I have to have a theology degree? Does that mean I have to know everything about the scripture?” Absolutely not. A Bible study is honestly just your take on the scripture and sharing that with the people that you’re with.

So you would find a particular scripture that you would read aloud, everyone in the group and let’s say your family would share about what that means to them like what came out to them. If there was a specific word they really just caught their attention and talk about why it might have caught their attention.

Read that scripture and just reflect on it together as a family. What does it mean to you? How can you apply it to your life?

Now that actually is probably a little higher level Bible study for a family, especially depending on the ages. So my youngest is three and my oldest is thirteen. So that level of Bible study might work for my thirteen-year-old but it wouldn’t work for my seven-year-old or my five-year-old. So we actually use a devotional if you will it’s called Jesus is Calling. There’s actually one that’s an adult version and then there’s this kids version, and I actually like the kids version better. The reflections seem to really fit really well with where my kids are in their life.

So our family Bible study is relatively short and it’s in the mornings. We do it before we leave the house. So we’ll sit together, we’ll go to the day that this particular devotional is set to, we’ll read the scripture that’s at the top of it, and then we’ll read the reflection on it. And that’s basically what our Bible study looks like in the morning.

Now sometimes you might be able to spend a longer time in Scripture, so let’s say your family is going to Mass next Sunday, which hopefully you are, you get to sit down and look at the scripture that you’re gonna read at Mass that week. So sometimes during the week whether it’s Wednesday or maybe even Sunday morning before you go to Mass, sit together as a family and reflect on the Gospel. Start there, that would be relatively simple because the Gospel readings are really easy to find, you can go to USCCB.org and find the readings for the next week, and it will give you is exactly what you’re gonna hear at Mass.

So you sit down together as a family, open up with the sign of the Cross, read that scripture and just reflect on it together as a family. What does it mean to you? How can you apply it to your life? Is there a word that you don’t understand? Look it up. And that’s where having a Study Bible will really be beneficial, because there are ideas and concepts and words in scripture that aren’t part of our everyday language and our everyday understanding. So those footnotes in a Study Bible will help you to understand that a little bit more.

My hope for you again is that you dive into Scripture as a family, that you spend some time studying God’s Word and allowing him to love you and to love your family through that. God bless

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