A Christian practice
SOAP Study
Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer: copy out a passage, say what it says and what it means for you, then answer it in prayer.
Where it comes from
SOAP is the method of Wayne Cordeiro, who started New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu in 1995. He set it out in his book The Divine Mentor (2007) as a way to keep a daily journal of Bible reading. The four letters are the four steps:
- Scripture: read the whole passage, then copy out the verse or verses that stood out.
- Observation: what does it say? Who is speaking, to whom, and why?
- Application: what does it mean for you, today?
- Prayer: answer it, in a few honest sentences.
Why write it
Copying a verse out by hand slows you down enough to notice it, and writing down what it means keeps the reading from passing straight through. The old picture of what this reading is for comes from the Psalms:
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Psalm 119:105, King James Version (1611)
How the module works
Four prompts on the daily page, with more lines where there is more to write: two for the Scripture, three for the Observation, four for the Application and three for the Prayer. It is wide, eight columns of the page, so a verse has room to be copied out in full.
Read first, then write. Read the whole chapter or passage, so that the verse you copy is read in its setting. A reading plan saves deciding each morning which passage comes next.
Sources
- Wayne Cordeiro, The Divine Mentor: Growing Your Faith as You Sit at the Feet of the Savior (Bethany House, 2007).
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (Project Gutenberg): Psalm 119:105.
Put it in your planner
Start your plannerFind SOAP Study in the module drawer, under Philosophy & faith. Free, and no account needed to try it.