24: How to Write a Bible Study or Devotional

Have you ever felt called to write a Bible study or devotional but were not sure where to start or how they are different?

In this episode, I break it all down for my faith-based writers. We dive into the key differences between devotionals and Bible studies, what readers expect from each, and how you can structure your content to truly impact lives. I walk you through how to create a clear transformation for your reader, choose a focused theme, and build a strong outline that keeps your writing intentional and effective.

Whether you are writing for busy moms, women navigating loss, or anyone seeking deeper faith, this episode will give you practical steps and clarity to move forward with confidence.

If you are ready to finally bring your Bible study or devotional to life, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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Welcome to For Women Who Write Podcast. I'm Mikayla, a certified writing coach, editor, and self-publishing expert with over a decade of experience, helping women turn their ideas into powerful, best-summoned books. If you felt the call to write, share your story, share your experiences, and how you can help other people, then you are in the right place. Here we talk about the real instance of writing and publishing. From finding your voice to structuring a book, from overcoming resistance and imposter syndrome to launching it into the world with confidence. My mission is to show you that becoming a published and best-selling author if it is possible. It's absolutely within reach. Your story matters, and chances are you're closer to holding your finished book in your hands than you think. Hello, welcome to another episode of the podcast that helps you get way closer to your book publishing dreams. This episode today is for my faith-based ladies. For those of you who have always wanted to write a Bible study or a devotional, we're going to talk way more specifics for you today. Everything that we talk about in the podcast absolutely does relate to writing Bible studies and devotionals. All of it applies. But there are a couple of nuanced differences that we're going to talk about in today's episode that I feel like deserved a whole 20, 30-ish minutes to talk about. So that's what we're going to do today. But before we do that, I want to tell you guys a story. When I was in college, I got an incredible opportunity to live in New Zealand for three months. That was my study abroad trip. And it was the coolest thing ever. There are so many moments forever seared into my brain from that experience. Every weekend I would go to a different city and explore new foods, new locations, new culture experiences. It was incredible and so drop dead gorgeous. One of those experiences was that I got to hike up a glacier. Now, this glacier was situated in a valley with mountains all around us. But not just mountains, there was also a little opening kind of in this valley that butted up against the ocean. And because New Zealand is an island, it's really easy to get to the beach and to see the ocean. And so at one point, as I was climbing up the glacier, I stopped and looked all around me. And to the right of me were mountains towering high over me. But the mountains also had waterfalls just cascading down the mountain. And then behind me was the most beautiful mint ice glacier that I'd ever seen. It was so stunning. And then I looked to the front of me and there was this gorgeous beach just with the waves lapping onto the shore. And I was like, I will never get to experience all of these things at once, ever again in my life. And it was absolutely incredible. But in order to have that experience, I first had to get ready for it. There was no way that I could go up that glacier alone or not equipped. I needed to have the right equipment before I could go up the glacier. And so before we did our incredible hike, I linked up with a guide and they got all the things that I needed. We had multiple different types of jackets because it was incredibly cold. We had lots of gloves. And then we had these like ice sticks that we could use to hike up the mountain. It was also in a season in which the glacier was actually melting a little bit. And so that made it a little more dangerous. And so we had these like special like spike-type shoes as well. They were super heavy, but that helped us climb up the mountain very safely. So before we could have this incredible experience, we had to be equipped. And that's exactly what you are doing with your Bible studies and devotionals. You are equipping people for whatever is in front of them, the challenges ahead of them. I'm guessing if you are working on a Bible study or devotional, you probably have a certain type of person in mind. Maybe you're writing for moms, you're writing for women in corporate, you're writing for people who have experienced a loss, whatever it is, you likely have a certain type of person that has a challenge, an adventure, something in front of them, and you are equipping them and getting them ready for that with your Bible studies and devotionals. So let's talk a lot more about those two different types of genres because there are some differences that are really important for you to know and to kind of follow because people have certain expectations when they pick up a devotional or when they pick up a Bible study. Whether they realize it or not, they absolutely have these expectations. And so we're going to make sure we meet those expectations so that you get the great reviews, word of mouth, and you feel really, really good about what you've written. So first we're going to talk about devotionals. Devotionals are intended to be very short shots of inspiration. You should not be doing a ton of teaching in a devotional. These are really meant to be almost like supplement to studying the Bible, or they're for people in seasons where reading the Bible is just not possible for them. It's not super accessible. Maybe it's a postpartum mom who is really like can barely put like two sentences together herself. And so, but she still wants to read the Bible, or it's for somebody in the car line, whatever it is, it's intended to be really short shots of inspiration. Most devotionals are between 500 to 750 words, each of those devotionals. So it is not long. If you are somebody who struggles sometimes with being really long-winded, like you have things you want to say, but you don't know if you could even fill 2,000 or 3,000 words for a chapter, a devotional could be for you. Because if you just like kind of want to get in, get out, you've got something you want to say, and you want to say it and through, you know, 500 to 750 words, great. A devotional could totally be for you. Some people I've talked to and clients I've had sometimes like try to force what they have into a book and it's not hitting. But then they change it into a devotional, and that's when it really sings because so many of the ideas just fit better within that container instead of a container of a full chapter. So for some of you listening to this, maybe you've been struggling with your book and it's not registering. Try it as a devotional, see if that helps it a little bit. Devotionals are almost always, most of the time, contained within a time frame. So 30 days to X, Y, and Z, 60 days, or in some cases, like a 365-day devotional. It's intended to be read on certain days. So like day one, day two, day three, and as kind of a daily practice. Versus books, it's like you read it as you can, but a devotional is intended to be just a little bit every single day. So you do want to figure out to how long your devotional should be 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, anything. It's usually 30, 60, 90, or a full year. It's a little uncommon to have like six months or something like that. Usually that's what resonates most with people. So you will just need to choose what kind of time container you want to put through it. Now, if you listen to any other episodes on this podcast, you know we talk a ton about transformation. What is the promised transformation that you're going to bring people through your book? The same absolutely still applies for a devotional. You really want to bring people through a transformation. So if you are working on a devotional for postpartum moms and you want to talk specifically about anxiety in postpartum moms, you don't want to just hang out in the problem and just like make everybody feel like this is terrible. You obviously want to deliver a solution to them. And you're going to do that in a transformative way. You're going to show them the path to becoming a woman who is confident, who trusts the Lord, and maybe doesn't do it always perfectly, but she can walk in more faithful trust. And you're going to walk her through a path. So here's an example of what that looks like. We um I recently helped a client with her devotional, and they were really great devotionals, but they felt a little scattered. So we broke up the devotional into three different parts. Her whole idea was going from broken to brave. And so we used that transformation to structure the whole devotional. And so for the first section, we really talked a lot about the brokenness. And there was definitely hope involved, but it was very much of like, hey, I see you and I understand this brokenness that you're feeling, but we're not gonna stay there. We are going to eventually move to being brave. But there's this middle section because you don't just go from being broken to brave. You have to become a certain type of person before you can start living out in bravery. And so we spent the second middle section of the book talking a lot more about becoming, about becoming a certain type of a person. And again, lots of hope infused in there. But that's what a lot of the devotionals were really focused on. And then we moved into bravery. Bravery is expressed with action. And so that's why we ended with bravery, is because we want to end the devotional inspiring people to move forward, inspiring them to action in their life. And being brave only comes by acting. And so we focused a lot of the devotionals at the very end on being brave. So people went through this transformation journey of being broken to being brave. And that is what you really want to imitate when it comes to your devotional, taking them from where they currently are, expressing empathy, that you see them, but we're also not staying there. You're reading this because you want hope, you want a solution, and I'm going to bring you to that solution. Now, some of you are listening to this and you're like, okay, cool, Michaela, but I'm like doing a devotional on the book of Luke. So that doesn't really work that way. And I would challenge you if you are doing a devotional on a specific book of the Bible, to pick a theme that you are going to track and create a transformation path that way. So if you are doing a devotional on the book of Luke, there are so, so very many themes that you can pick on that you want to trace through your devotional. And I highly recommend you create a transformation path through that. You could pick the divinity of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus, the upside-down kingdom that Jesus presents, the theme of Jesus gathering around a table, the theme of religious leaders versus the quote unquote sinners. There's so many different themes that you could pick. And if you try to do multiple of those themes, you're going to lose your reader, especially in a devotional, because a devotional is intended to be short, quick, narrow. You do not want to cover a ton of topics in a devotional because your reader is going to get lost and she's going to lose that sense of cohesion that keeps her going. So pick a theme and then find a transformation path through that theme. Once you have that in place, then you can do one of my favorite parts, which is write an outline of your devotional. Now, some of you are cringing because you hate outlines, and I absolutely understand that. Outlines are really just intended to be like a trellis to allow the vine of your book to grow up. We need that structure in order to keep the book intact. Now, some of you at this point are like, but I can't create an outline that's too structure and too rigid for me, and that's okay. Some people just need to free write several devotionals before they're able to outline, and that's totally okay. At some point, though, I am a firm believer that you need a really strong outline. What outlines do is they help expose the problems of your book before you've done a ton of writing. They can start to show you, hey, this is not connecting, or this doesn't make sense, or this devotional is actually getting us off theme or off topic off the transformation that's going to help people. And so an outline is really there to kind of call you out in the best of ways. I love these, but I also don't recommend that you always do outlines in isolation because sometimes you can get stuck in a spiral as you're outlining because you're like, I don't know, and you start to second guess yourself. So I would be remiss to not let you guys know about my outline intensives. If you are at this stage of writing your book, an outline intensive can be insanely helpful for you. In fact, it was during an outline intensive with a client that we realized she really needed to write a devotional. And so we switched a lot of her book and moved a ton of it around. And now it's a 30-day devotional. I'm about to start editing it and it is beautiful. And once that clicked in her brain that this was actually a devotional, she was able to finally get the book actually finished and done where she had been stalling before. And so when we forced an outline on it, that's when the problems start to get exposed. And then we could create a solution for her that really propelled her forward. So that's what these outline intensives do. It's two three-hour sessions with me where we look at all of your content and then we force it into an outline so that then you can make some serious forward progress on your book, your devotional, or your Bible study. I've done all three, and outlines are just going to help you substantially in all of that. So once you've got your outline in place, then you can start filling in your outline and start writing it more fully. You may need to do some research if you are, you know, going into a little bit more on some of the cultural specifics or some of the theological specifics of a passage. You may need to do a little bit more research. There's some great resources for you online. Of course, if you have a great relationship with your church, then you can always ask leaders there at your church as well to help you with some of maybe some sticky parts or things that you just don't feel super confident about. If there are some devotionals that you don't feel confident about, that's okay. Highlight them and come back to them later. Don't let that stop you. This is really great for you too to learn more about the Bible and about God as you are writing this. So don't let that paralyzer stop you. I've talked to so many women who are afraid that theologically it's not correct. And that is a good and healthy fear. We want to be theologically correct, but don't let it stop you because there are ways that you can get that confirmation. So when you are working on a devotional, I mentioned this earlier, but you want to be roughly 500 to 750 words. So it's really short. I almost always recommend that you start with a story. Stories really hook and grip people in incredible ways. So start your devotional with a story. It can be a personal story or a story like from the Bible, what it means, how it can apply to them, and then you're done. It's very simple, three-part structure. You can kind of move some of those things around if it's starting to get formulaic. But again, you don't want too much variety in a devotional. This is exactly what women are coming to get simplicity and structure. So that's what you want to give to them in your devotional. Make sure that every devotional also has a verse attached to it. Most devotionals have a verse attached to every single one of those. So even if you're talking on like a certain idea, make sure you have a verse attached to that. You can list out the verse there or you can encourage them to go and read it themselves. It's just kind of up to you and how long the devotional is, but either one is totally great. So that is how you write a devotional. Let's talk a little bit more about a Bible study. The big difference between a Bible study and a devotional is a Bible study is going to go way more in depth on scripture than a devotional. Bible study is exactly what it sounds like. You're going to study the Bible. Devotional is a bit more contemplative, slower. Bible study is let's roll up our sleeves and get in deep to studying scripture. So Bible study length of chapters are going to vary quite a bit. And it really just depends on the study itself. But usually they're going to be roughly 2,000-ish words. And I say that with a ton of fear and trepidation because most Bible studies are more questions than they are necessarily words. Because again, you're trying to encourage people to study scripture. It's also really important to know what the function is of this Bible study. A lot of Bible studies that I've helped edit or been a part of were in conjunction with like stage teaching. So you would listen to the stage teaching and then you would go and do your Bible study homework. If that's how this Bible study is going to function, then you don't need a ton of like explanation for people, right? Because they're going to get that teaching and explanation in the on-stage teaching time. If this Bible study, though, is solely just like the book itself, then you're going to need a little bit more explanation and guidance for people. So your chapters may be a little bit longer. Instead of using a word count gauge like you do with devotionals, I want you to use a gauge of have we sufficiently explored this idea for this chapter and doing it without overwhelming people. How you oh, you know, what people's like overwhelm threshold is really going to vary depending on who your audience is. So only you will really know the answer to that question, but you definitely want to be able to deeply explore the topic. Once again, just like with devotionals and with everything else, though, you do want a transformation. How are you going to help people and how are you going to progress them? Even if you're doing a Bible study on the book of Genesis, pick a theme. What theme, specifically through Genesis, are you going to track? Are you going to track God's goodness, God's creation? What is it specifically that you are going to track? And how are you going to guide people to that? Sometimes this transformation, too, that you're taking people through, is where you're like, I don't know. I'm just going to trust the Spirit is going to guide and direct them wherever he wants to take them. But I want for us to really focus in on this idea or this big picture thing that is really important for us to really focus on. When you narrow down that theme, it's going to help you decide what questions to ask in the Bible study and what not necessarily to explore as much. Because as we all know, there are so many different things that you can explore, so many different trails that you can go down. And when you know, well, we're only exploring the goodness of God through the book of Genesis, we can't really, you know, kind of go down this path. All of those questions, those other, you know, paths that you could explore are great for other Bible studies, devotionals, or books that you could write later. But make sure you stick to that path that you really want for people to explore that theme. And again, in all of this, and I hope this goes without saying, is we always just trust the spirit with whatever he wants to do in people's hearts and minds and lives. And so he may take things a completely opposite direction that you had no idea. And obviously, we never, ever, ever want to get in the way of the spirit, but the spirit also does work within structure and order. And so if he's calling you to a certain passage or a certain way that you should lead this Bible study, go with that. So once you have that in place, then you will write an outline. Your outline is likely going to be a little different than a devotional or a book because you are largely asking questions instead of necessarily writing a whole ton, again, depending on the format of your Bible study. But you do still want to have a map of where you're going to guide people. What type of questions are you going to be asking them? How are you wanting for them to engage in scripture? Because yes, there are questions, but there are also so many other ways that you can have people engage with the text, having them actually physically write out the verses, having them compare and contrast and having tables for them to do that, having like exercises for them to do outside of a workbook, like having these types of conversations or doing these types of research, whatever it is, there's so many different ways that you can direct people to engage with God's word. And so when you create an outline, you can start mapping out all of those different ways and mapping out how you're going to talk about it. And outline intensives, again, can be super helpful for you. I recently helped a client who was actually had half of her Bible study written. And so I looked at it, reviewed at reviewed it, and then we got together on a call and talked through like, hey, this is really great. I think we should move this chapter over here. What if you like had a couple of different exercises right here, some tables right here, just to really like fill it out? And that has just helped her keep moving forward with this dream of writing this Bible study. So Outline-intensive clarity sessions can be really helpful when you're like even in the middle of writing your Bible study. So the main difference again between Bible study and devotional is that you're just going way super deep. So don't be afraid to ask hard questions, deep questions. That's exactly what Bible study is for. It's a chance for people to wrestle with scripture. So don't be afraid to ask some of those really, really great questions. So those are the two main big So those are the main differences between Bible study and devotional, and of course, with other regular chapter books as well. If this was super helpful for you and maybe start getting some clarity for you and you are ready to start working on your Bible study or your devotional, then an outline intensive may make a ton of sense for you. You and I would get together and we would figure out the flow of everything, kind of section it out so that we have this really beautiful transformation path that we bring your reader through. If you're like, maybe I still have some questions, or could you help me like think through my idea a little bit more? Then a monthly clarity workshop is absolutely for you. That is going to be a great first step. It helps us get to know each other a little bit better because these are small group sessions, only three people in them. So I really get to know you and your voice and your goals and give you some helpful feedback on how you can move forward. So if you want more information on those workshops, you can find the link in the show notes or go to www.mikala matthews.com backslash workshop. Michaela is M-I-K-A-E-L-A Matthews with one T because yes, my name is a little complicated. So you can always just click on the link in the show notes if you prefer. So I hope this is super helpful for you guys. Keep going, keep equipping these women and men in whatever spaces that you are in. We need more of you, and I am just cheering you on.