In the first few chapters, Hendricks challenges all the excuses we have for not studying our Bibles and posits clearly superior reasons in favor of doing so. He then uses Scripture itself to show us what we will gain from regular study of God's Word. In typical Hendricks fashion he begins by humoring "I wish we had a better term than 'Bible study,' because for most of us, 'study' is a bad news item. It has all the appeal of flossing our teeth" (13). He tells the story of a man he met at a Bible conference who drove twelve hundred miles to "get under the Word" and Hendricks muses "was he just as willing to walk across his living room floor, pick up a Bible, and get into it for himself?" (9).
There are three steps, which will transform that sometimes-dry text into the spiritual growth that we desire in our lives. They are Observation, Interpretation and Application. These three steps are the heart of the book.
The ability of Howard Hendricks to communicate clearly and effectively is unmatched in this introductory work on Bible study. The pages of this book come alive as he swiftly and painlessly removes the obstacles to personal study while at the same time equipping the reader with the proper tools to understand God's Word. Virtually every chapter contains exercises for the student of Scripture to get hands-on experience instead of just theoretical book knowledge. Much of this book is essentially the application of Mortimer Adler's book, How to Read a Book, (which Hendricks highly acclaims) to the Bible. The anecdotes, illustrations and "quotables" are alone worth the price of the book, not to mention the enlightening elaboration of the three-step approach to Bible study. This book should be the absolute first book a new Christian reads apart from the Bible itself.