Mike's Musings

So at Connections Community Church we have been doing a series on the Bible.  This week we are talking about practical ways to use it and apply it.  Each of us, Dave, Mike Zito, and myself will be sharing a different way to start getting into the Bible.  Mine, due to my nerddom (yes it is a word referring to my extreme nerdiness), has to due with electronic resources and how to use them.  Specifically one electronic source called YouVersion.  It is an online bible study program that is FREE!  Yes, that is correct, I said FREE! FREE!  FREE!  That means it will cost you no money!  The web address is www.youversion.com and the home page will look like this... 

Once you get to this page it is best if you create an account fro yourself because it will track everything for you.  You can find this in the upper right hand corner of the screen, it says "sign in".  Once you have an account you can do Bible reading plans and it tracks everything for you!  Very user freindly and has a great interface.  Then if you look at the tabs at the top of the screen you will see some different options.  

In the "Bible" tabe you will see a "reader" you can use, different reading plans, the different books of the Bible, and different versions and translations if there is one you prefer to read over others.  

The next important section is the "My" section.  This is your section.  Personalize it all you want.  This is great for maybe following friends and their reading plans, their thoughts, and anything else that may say. As you can see mine profile name is melkins22 and you are more than welcome to look me up on there! Here you can also journal your own thoughts, see related links, bookmark certain things, and see contributions that people make on a certain verse.

The next section is the community section and that is pretty self-explanatory.  It helps you stay connected with other YouVersion users and communicate with them.  The last section is also obvious and that is the "Mobile" section.  Depending on your mobile device you can get you version on your phone.  I use an "Android" phone so I have a YouVersion app.  This has been great for me because whenever I am waiting in a waiting room, standing in line, riding (Not driving) in the car I can pull up my reading plan and just start reading.  Or if I need to know a verse I can pull my phone out and just look it up.  

The bottom line is this...you can get as in depth as you want or keep it as basic as you want.  For me, I like the heavy involvement just because I find that type of thing appealing.  I love technology, multi tasking, and learning new things so this was right up my alley.  I hope you find this useful and enjoy using it yourself.  Oh yeah, did I mention it was free!  Have fun!

Michael Elkins