An Inductive-ish Study of Galatians

The week of June 16-22, 2024

 

Ladies,

I am so pleased to begin this study with you. I know you’ll be patient with me as I facilitate in this medium for the first time. Please do hit “reply all” and share insight, struggles, questions and prayer requests along the way. We will all learn much more if everyone communicates back and forth, so post often! It is my prayer that we may all grow in love for each other as we grow in our understanding of Galatians.

If you’ve done an inductive study before you might be surprised by what’s left out of this one. I’m grateful for the women who taught me to study by this method, but I found the traditional workbook and lecture approach too much for me to continue daily in the long-term. What I’ll offer here is a stream-lined approach that has worked for my private study for years, but might not be exactly what works for you. Feel free to adapt what we do and take every assignment as a suggestion. Make the method fit your life right now. Remember that I’m just providing the method and we’ll teach each other the meaning of the text with the help of the Holy Spirit and trusted scholars.

A couple of experienced Precept leaders have joined the study, and I’m grateful for their input into this conversation. Again, this is my version of Precept light, so if you have time to take advantage of a deeper study you will certainly want to contact one of our other experienced ladies.

If you haven’t done an inductive study before, please know that everyone seems to hate part of it. If you are detail oriented and have difficulty seeing big picture ideas, you’ll hate the first week, when we just listen or read the entire text over and over to get big picture ideas from the book. If you are big picture oriented, you are going to hate the weeks when we make lists of keywords found in the text. I encourage you to stick it out, just this once, at least, until you see how looking at both helps you.

So for this week, please try to read or listen to the entire book of Galatians at least 4 times. I am planning to use my commute to listen for free using the YouVersion phone app. (If you need help with this, please ask the group and someone younger will reply!) While you are reading or listening, see if you can identify:

Who wrote the book?

Why did he write it? What is the main idea the author wants to communicate?

Who are the intended recipients of the letter?

If you have time, you might want to Google “Galatia” and see where it is and read about the background of the country, see what scholars have to say about when the book might have been written, and how the author came to know the Galatians.

If you have suggestions for more big-picture activities for this week, please send them to the group. I’m looking forward to hearing from you as we proceed.

Praying for you as we begin,

Susan

 

Week 2

Ladies,

Thanks for your input on the first week. I was helped by reading your comments, and look forward to more! It looks like we all came to very similar conclusions:

So now that we have our big ideas in place, let’s look for keywords in the text, words that are repeated or ones that pertain to the main theme of the book. There is a lot of room for opinion here, so don’t get too entangled in finding the perfect words. When I do this, I try to pick my top ten words. More than that is more than I can process if I’m doing it regularly, but you may find that more words will give you a clearer picture of the text.

 

You’ll see my top five choices in the workbook I made for you (see me on Sunday to get yours if you don’t have it yet) but don’t let my choices override what you learned from the text – yours might be better. We’ll work together to pick the next five words.

 

Homework for this week:

1. Pray that the Holy Spirit will guide your study.

 

2. Pick a symbol or color to highlight each use of LORD, Jesus/Christ, or Spirit in the text. You can use different symbols for each, or grab your colored pencils and assign each word a different color. Be sure to add the colors or symbols you pick to the keyword chart at the front of your workbook to keep things straight in your mind.

 

3. Highlight God, Jesus, and Spirit in the text. If you do one a day, you will read the text 5 times this week! That’s glorious! Because these keywords are persons, also use pronouns

 

4. Go back and do the same procedure for the phrase “in Christ,” or “In the Lord” and the words joy/rejoice. I know the phrase contains a word you already listed, but include it again with a different mark – perhaps circling in a different color.

 

5. On the notebook pages at the back of the workbook, make lists, one for each keyword. My entries from Galatians look like this:
6. Under Jesus, I might write:

• 1:1 Paul was made an apostle by the power/authority of Jesus

1:1 God the Father raised Jesus  from the dead

• 1:3 Grace and peace come from Jesus
• 1:4 Jesusgave Himself up for our sins to deliver us from the evil age
• 1:6 The Galatians were called in the grace ofChrist

4. When you finish your list, write a couple of lines at the bottom summing up what you learn from the verses in the list.
5. Since Galatians is just three chapters we will move through list-making in just two weeks, so you may want to be thinking about more keywords as you read through the text to mark it. Since we have 5 keywords, you might read it five times this week, too!

 

Don’t be overwhelmed! Spurgeon said, “By perseverance the snail reached the ark.” Imagine yourself as a snail working through Philippians with stolen moments here and there, and you’ll have this done in no time. Don’t force yourself to finish all this in one sitting

 

Week 3