What is Verse Mapping? It’s using Bible study tools to research what you’ve just read in the Bible to learn more about what God is saying to you and how you can apply his Word to your life today. It’s comparing Bible translations, focusing on meaningful words, and delving into the deep meaning of each verse using starter verse maps and prompts. Verse mapping will help you study the historical context, transliteration, translation, connotation, and theological framework of a verse.
Bible Gateway interviewed Kristy Cambron (@KCambronAuthor) about the NIV Verse Mapping Bible, Comfort Print: Find Connections in Scripture Using a Unique 5-Step Process (Zondervan, 2021).
[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, New Verse Mapping Bible Study Launched]
What is Verse Mapping?
Kristy Cambron: Simply put, Verse Mapping is getting real about studying the Bible. All of it. More than just reading a verse, it’s researching everything you can to learn who God is and how he wants to speak to you through his Word.
In five simple steps—meant to move with you, in any season of your faith journey—Verse Mapping is a tool that trains your mind to think, read, and understand Scripture as a researcher would. And the big takeaway? It’ll develop a heart-pattern of study that becomes a life-long hunger for God’s Word.
The NIV Verse Mapping Bible is designed to be able to work in tandem with Bible Gateway Plus. Members search for a verse in the New International Version (NIV) Bible translation on BibleGateway.com using Bible Gateway’s search tool at the top of the page. Then select “Reverse Interlinear PLUS” under the page options menu (the small Gear icon above the Scripture). Clicking each word of the Bible verse will open details about that word in the accompanying tab titled Original. While every verse of Scripture in the NIV on Bible Gateway is able to be mapped in this way for Bible Gateway Plus members, the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek words in 350 verses are able to be viewed by those not yet members.
How did you discover Verse Mapping?
Kristy Cambron: On the heels of stepping away from a 15-year corporate career to become a full-time author, the first stop I made was to walk into a women’s Bible study. But I learned very quickly what I didn’t know about Scripture and that I didn’t have confidence in my ability to understand the Bible in an in-depth way. I knew if this book is our field manual for living—the oxygen for our daily faith walk—that needed to change within my heart. And fast.
The key with Verse Mapping is to adapt a unique style of study that works for you. Adopting the curriculum design models I’d learned as a corporate writer just fit—looking for patterns in each verse, tracking those verses across multiple Bible translations, doing deep-dive word studies in Greek and Hebrew, and as a storyteller would, looking for the underlying story in each verse to then walk it out and really apply that verse to my life.
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What makes your Verse Mapping study system unique?
Kristy Cambron: Verse Mapping has been around for decades in various forms of inductive study, contextual verse-by-verse research, word studies, and even in artistic Bible journaling. But the key that worked for me was to make this method of study my own—to throw out all the rules and think like the storyteller would. It was freeing to imagine myself in the story of each verse and watch Scripture finally come alive.
I started small. I took the curriculum design concepts I knew and applied them in five teaching steps that I could do anywhere, anytime. And it took off from there:
- Select a Verse
- Look at the Design of that verse across multiple translations
- Dig deep into what will Develop the verse in its Hebrew or Greek context
- Go all out to research the Actions that make that verse’s story come alive, and
- Summarize the quick-hit Outcome that I’d use as takeaways to really apply what I’d learned to my life.
Sign up for our Verse of the Day to receive a daily Bible verse in four well-known translations.
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How do you incorporate Verse Mapping into your regular Bible study?
Kristy Cambron: I love this question because Verse Mapping is my daily Bible study. But being an author and researcher by trade doesn’t give me an advantage on this method; it meets anyone right where they are on their faith journey. The way we read, study, and connect to God through his Word is as unique as we are to him. (Check out Psalm 139 for more on that.) So instead of sitting down at a desk and saying, “Okay—time to study the Bible!,” thinking through these steps is an undercurrent that now flows through my mind whenever I encounter Scripture.
What can we expect in the NIV Verse Mapping Study Bible?
Kristy Cambron: This Bible series is meant for the individual as much as it is for groups—families too—and we hope will become the faith journey of a lifetime. We’ve incorporated 350 partially-completed maps for you to deep-dive into study through all 66 books of the Bible, and to record that journey right there in the pages of your Bible.
It really will become your field manual for living. What’s more: we’ve developed editions for both adults and girls ages 8-12, knowing that building community and spaces for families to study together is what makes this method of study really come alive!
The NIV, Verse Mapping Bible, Comfort Print: Find Connections in Scripture Using a Unique 5-Step Process and the NIV, Verse Mapping Bible for Girls, Comfort Print: Gathering the Goodness of God’s Word are published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway.
Bio: Kristy Cambron is a vintage-inspired storyteller, writing both award-winning historical fiction and Bible Studies. She’s served as a women’s ministry leader and speaks at events across the country, encouraging women to experience a deeper life in the Word through verse mapping. Her work has been named to the Publishers Weekly Religion & Spirituality TOP 10, Library Journal Reviews’ Best Books, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, has received multiple INSPY Award nominations, and is a 2020 Christy Award Finalist.
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The post Use Verse Mapping to Enhance Your Bible Study: An Interview with Kristy Cambron appeared first on Bible Gateway Blog.
