Hook, Book, Look and Took are the four elements of a great lesson as shared in the book, Creative Bible Teaching by Lawrence O. Richards.  In this article we examine the Look portion of the class.

The Look part of the lesson involves guiding the students to discover and grasp the relationship of the truth they have just learned to their daily living. How is this lesson relevant to me, here, today? The teacher and the student must explore the implications of the lesson and scripture to life with the goal of motivating the students to action.

One way to do this is to have the students brainstorm and consider all possible ways they can think of to apply the lesson. You can break the students into discussion groups for this activity. One student’s shared idea causes another student to think of another application, possibly more relevant to their own lives. This causes everyone to have greater insight. They can make a list of the possible applications and discuss them with the entire class.

Here is a great alternative idea: Case Study. Give students a scenario (a story) they can relate to from their own life experience and have them apply the principles in the lesson. The students can do this as a group discussion. How would this story play out if you apply these biblical truths? How would this story play out if you handled it according to the way you have handled similar situations in the past?

Even though we all have similar life experiences we all process and deal with life differently. As a result, the application to their personal lives will be different for each student.

It is important to remember that our goal is to equip our students to be lifelong learners. They cannot rely on the teacher. They must learn to understand the relevance of the Word of God to their lives and how they can apply it to their daily lives. Let’s teach them to be reliant on the Holy Spirit and give them the tools and processes that they can latch onto and take with them for the rest of their lives.