Break Out the Bunny Ears
Bunny Ears (otherwise known as tip-ins) are a great way to add depth to your study and make your bible into a legacy gift for others.
Following Alice
For two years now, I have been sitting with an amazing group of women, opening the Word together and learning to read it slowly. Not skimming. Not rushing to application. Just sitting with the text long enough to let the Holy Spirit speak.
I should say up front that I never trained for this in a seminary, and I do not believe I have found the one true way to study Scripture. What I have is years of sitting with the Word and a handful of faithful teachers who helped me along the way. Authors like Kay Arthur, the practice of verse mapping, and various commentaries and study books gave language to what I was already doing and explained the way I had been thinking. They did not hand me a system so much as confirm a path I was already walking.
And here is how that path began. In the early days, our little group leaned hard on commentaries, because we did not yet know enough of the Word ourselves to hear much on our own. We needed the help, and there is no shame in that. But something happened over those years. As we began tracing the themes and spiritual threads woven through Scripture, mapping how one passage speaks to another across the whole story, the Holy Spirit began to show us things. Quietly at first, then more and more. That practice of thematic verse mapping is where it really opened up. The more we followed the threads, the more we heard from Him. And one day it dawned on all of us at once how much He wanted to say to us directly. Not through someone else's notes. To us.
That is when I understood what this kind of study is really for. It was never about gathering information. It was about transformation. It was about sitting in the presence of the God who breathed out these words and letting Him change us through them.
I still love good commentary. I reach for it often. But the order matters now. I go to the Lord first, over an open Bible, and I listen for what His Spirit is showing me. Then I bring in the trusted voices to confirm and sharpen what He has already spoken. The commentary affirms the conversation. It does not replace it. That difference is everything.
The more we learned to read this way, the more we saw the God who is loving and just and holy and unchanging revealing Himself on every page. And the more we came to know the Lord Jesus through the whole of Scripture, the more His words took root in us. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That stopped being something we knew and became something we lived.
Here is what I kept noticing at the table. The women who were newer often struggled to pick this up at first. It would take months before it clicked. And more than once, after it finally did, someone would tell me, I wish I had something to follow when I started. I would have learned to listen so much sooner.
That stayed with me. So I made these.
What This Is
The Lyric and Letter Study Method is a way of reading Scripture the way it was written. As a living, intentional, perfectly directed narrative with something to say directly to you. It is not a replacement for the Holy Spirit. It is not a scholarly system you need a seminary degree to use. It is a path you can walk, one step at a time, until the day comes when you no longer need the path because the way of reading has become your own.
Every study begins the same way, before a single word is read. With prayer. You invite the Holy Spirit, your Teacher, to open your eyes to what is already there. That is not a formality. It is the whole foundation. Everything that follows depends on Him.
I built it to be simple enough for a brand new believer to pick up on her very first day in the Word, and deep enough that a woman who has studied for decades will still find herself going further than she expected.
How to Use the Bunny Ears
If you have the full Lyric and Letter Study Method, you already know it is meant to be printed and worked through page by page, the kind of thing you keep in a binder and return to as you study. These little cards are the mini version of that. We call them bunny ears (click link to download) around here, because once you attach them to the pages of a spiral Bible they stand up like a little pair of ears. I only recently learned the proper name for them is a tip in, but in our group they have always been the bunny ears. Color them, decorate them, make them your own. You can even attach them to a colorful piece of scrapbook paper and give them a little bunny ear bling. But first and foremost, let them hold your intimate moments with the Lord. They are not worksheets to fill in for the sake of filling them in. They are a place to capture what He shows you when it is just you and Him and the open Word.
Each one is sized at five by seven with plenty of room around the edges, so once you have decorated it you can trim it down to fit your own Bible. When you print it two sided, the five questions land on the front and the How questions on the back, and you end up with a beautiful little page you can add right into your study Bible and keep.
The front of each card holds the five questions that get you inside the text. Who, what, when, where, and why. You sit in the scene before you study the words. You notice who is speaking, what is happening, what came before, what the atmosphere is. Context is not background you look up later. It is the frame that makes everything inside it make sense.
The back carries the How questions. This is where the study becomes a conversation. How is God revealing Himself to you here? How is the Lord Jesus revealed in this passage? How does this apply to your life? How can you be transformed by this Word? You do not rush these. You sit with each one and let the Spirit direct your attention. This is where things move from your head into your heart.
I made the borders as simple line art on purpose, so you can color them if your hands want something to do while your heart sits with Him. There is something that happens when your hands slow down and your mind follows. Print them, cut them out, and keep a few ready in your Bible so you can reach for a fresh one each time you come to the table.
Why It's Free
I do not believe the Word of God should be expensive. What the Lord has shown us at that table was given freely, and I want to give it the same way. All I ask is for your email, so I can keep sharing what He continues to teach me and, Lord willing, stir up in you a hunger to get into the Word for yourself.
That is really my whole prayer for this. Not that you would lean on my notes, or anyone else's, but that you would learn to sit at the table on your own, with your Bible open and your heart open, and hear the Holy Spirit speak through the Word He breathed out. Because in the end this was never about information. It was always about transformation.
Come and see.
