Big idea: How to do a word search to reaseach specific words used in the Bible.
Why look for special words in the Bible?
Topics are a reason to do a word search. If you want to know what the Bible says about "grace" in the Bible, you might ask yourself where the verses are located that talk about "grace". Compare how often they occur in the Old Testament and the New Testament. If you are studying the book of Ephesians, you might check how often the word "grace" appears in that book. You could see what chapters seem to focus on it more. You could see if it occurs as a word more in one epistle than another. The one with more occurances might be a good place to study if you want to learn about that topic.
Focus on a subject can be done using a word search. Let's use the word "grace" again. You could look up a number of verses in one book of the Bible, or the whole if you wish, and write down each verse reference and what it teaches you about grace. Then look at everything and compare and contrast.
Finding a key verse based on a key word is another way to use a word search. Say you have always heard the verse, "For by grace you are saved through faith." But you are not sure where in the Bible to find it. You can look up the word "grace" and most likely will find it's address, it's reference, in the Bible.
Concordance
One of my favorite concordances is called the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. It is one of the oldest and best ones out there. It was put together by James Strong and published first in 1890. It was first used with the King James Bible. Now it is also available for the NIV. It lists the occurance of every word. See the second photo for the list of every occurance of "the." Since it is so old, it is very easy to find it available for free on many software programs and websites. For instance https://biblehub.com/
There are other concordances available as well. Cruden's Concordance and Young's Concordance are two examples. Many study Bibles will have a less exhaustive concordance at the back of the Bible.
Electronic Word Search
One of the most common electronic Bibles is YouVersion, espcially as an app for tablets and phones. You can find the app by the Appstore or Google Play. https://www.youversion.com/
Here is how to do a word search using the YouVersion Bible. You will want to look in the upper right hand corner of the Bible page in the app and find the magnifying glass. Put the word in you are looking for.
You will find there are options for your search. You can isolate the word to the Old Testament or the New Testament, or confine your search to just one book of the Bible.
It is even intruiging to see how many times a certain word occurs in each book of the Bible. You can then go to each instance and note what it says about a particular word.
There are other excellent Bible programs out there, each with a different way to search. Bible Hub, mentioned above does. Another one I like using is https://www.biblegateway.com/. Play around with them and see what you find! Bible Hub also has tools that include Bible dictionaries. Those are helpful too. More on that another day!
Up Next: Be a Scripture Spy
