A brass mechanical arm arranges study papers beside an open notebook while a person holds a pencil over a lesson packet, with an open book and warm desk lamp behind them. Title: Putting Old Bible Study Notes Back to Work.

Reusing Effort, Time, and Research

AI is not a replacement or stand in for prayerfully, humbly sorting sifting through scripture, finding the pedagogical idea, or pushing towards exegesis rather than isogesis. AI is good for assistance in summarizing, reformatting, rearranging, and brainstorming.

I recently used some of lthe newer ChatGPT Codex models to to help prepare a Bible class on finances, I already had a lot of the thinking recorded and ready to review. What AI took away was the blank page—and me having to fight a bunch of formatting.

I had taught a longer course before on this topic I am filling in for another teacher for one class session. I supplied my outline, my goals, the regular teacher's previous class notes, and links to new resources I wanted to cover. I also pointed it at my previous notes, worksheets, and leader guides, including things I had thought through but never said in class.

It took my brief outline and filled in supporting material from those sources. It summarized things, linked back to the original documents, and suggested rough wording for things I could say. I got a structured class outline to work from. Then I refined it, changed things, and took things out.

Much of my judgment and previous prayerful consideration was already present in the material I gave it: what I wanted to cover, why, and how I wanted the class to fit together. That direction let it find relevant notes instead of deciding the purpose of the class for me.

I've used it for formatting Bible Study notes too: here are previous materials, here are my thoughts, organize them this way. Then a second request: make a handout, remove my references and leader notes, leave the questions, and format it for the person receiving it.

Less repetitive document work, with the critical judgment and guidance of the Holy Spirit still where they belong. I wrote more about that responsibility in The Fear of the Lord in an Age of AI.

Example

The prompt I gave the AI:

I've been honored with the opportunity to fill in for I think it's the fourth or fifth class in a series on biblical peace. The main teacher is going through how, yes the Bible promises peace, but we often don't have it despite us praying because we're not doing the things that indicate that Jesus is our Lord and Savior in our own lives.

And so we often are fighting against him and his peace because we're not willing to obey in the simple things. So he's gonna go through a couple topics for a couple weeks on that and I'm gonna pick up where he left off and I'll teach a class on obedience with finances.

I have some ideas started here: [file path here] here are the notes from the teacher's first week:[file path here]

He'll share the other weeks that are upcoming when he finishes the notes for those.

Previous class on finances: [folder path here]

What I want you to do is take a look at those previous class notes I had. You can use low subagents to to get things like that and to build out a structured outline based on my previous class notes and based on my ideas for the one night I will be teaching this class to fill in those areas of the different patterns I've seen in scripture and in the tithing section I'll probably actually show the Wes Huff video I linked to a note in there in the tithing class notes.

I think I linked to it in my initial ideas for this class. So help me get this get the scripture references, the major ones. You don't really have to do anything creative here, just pulling in the various resources and linking to them for me. Do this in a new document in that same class directory for the peace class.

Let's just start getting this stubbed out.

The file: ideas file was actually a messy voice to text file capturing what I had already been praying through and thinking through. I was just imagining talking to the class that night and hit record.

The other thing it contains is my brief incomplete outline I was thinking of for that night.

# Obedience with Finances

<sarcasm>It's pretty convenient that the normal teacher is out of town for the night we talk about finances…. </sarcasm> it is one of the most contentious issues within the marriages, friendships, families, and in the Church.

So let's wade in to it together.

Your teacher has been talking through how we will have peace when we have Jesus in His rightful place as Lord in our lives and trust Him in that place. And now he's gone through a few areas where we don't have peace because we don't obey, despite praying.

I wish I could simply say, the Bible states: "God says give 10% of your pretax income, and all your proceeds as an offering to Him through the local church, Mat Greten, yes you, I'm talking to you…"

but it isn't that clear.

I will tell you, everything I just said is my conviction and my understanding of the patterns set forward throughout the old and new testaments.

The first version of this class that we're doing tonight was something that took about five weeks and I'm condensing it tonight into one one week. And in that class we actually read through every single piece of scripture aloud, every scripture passage that had to do with tithing, giving, money, riches, wealth, stewardship, investment, foolish use of funds, talents, gifts, poverty, poor.

We're not gonna have time to read through every single one of those verses tonight. And I think if I were to give that class again today, I wouldn't necessarily structure it that same way again. So I'm hoping that this is an iteration on that approach where we can grab the patterns that we see in scripture, examine some of the prominent verses on these topics.

At the same time I'll give you that list of every single verse. If you would like to do that. When I feel that God is convicting me on something, I tend to find a resource that like a concordance or gotquestions.org and I instead of reading what other people have said about it about that topic I will make a list of all of the scriptures I can find on that topic and that becomes my personal Bible study for the next month or months until I've exhausted that list.

So I've done that a couple times now when it comes to these topics of finances and obedience to finances. The first time I did this was in response to hearing about the financial independence retire early movement probably ten plus years ago is when it struck it captured my imagination.

I realize now that it was partially because I was working in a job that wasn't very fulfilling, I wanted to escape work. And I do believe that God says man should work, that he built us to work. So I shouldn't just run away from it. And part of those convictions were revealed in just going through scripture and reading what scripture says, telling me what God desires of finances and money and how to use it and how to our relationship with money should be, our relationship with others and money should be, what the priorities are there.

So we'll condense things down to make this a little bit more approachable tonight. So we're not gonna sit here and read for five weeks, but we will be reading through some scriptures together to get a handle of some of these big patterns that God sets forward in Scripture.

Patterns:
1. God is the provider
2. We are stewards
	1. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it
		1. money is not ours, it's God's!
3. Our relationship with Money
		1. a tool
	1. a master
		1. warnings
	2. God's intentions
		1. tithing:
			1. I think for tithing we can use the scriptures from this: [[Is tithing biblical for Christians]]
		2. Debt
		3. investing
		4. giving

Try it with One Set of Notes

You don't need to organize your whole archive first. Pick one study, sermon series, or class. Gather the relevant documents and write down what you want to make from them. The same approach can help collect scattered material for a book, but start with an outline and its supporting notes rather than asking for a whole manuscript.

A prompt is your request. Context is the background and material you supply. Here is a starting prompt, not a transcript of my original request:

I'm preparing [a class or study] for [audience]. Here is my outline and what I want people to take away: [simple bullet points or brief outline and goals]. Use these previous notes and these new resources: [files or links].

Keep my outline and assemble the relevant supporting material beneath it. Summarize where helpful and link back to the sources. Tell me which documents you couldn't read. Flag gaps or suggested changes for me to decide, and don't invent quotations or references. Give me a draft to review, not a finished lesson.

After reviewing and changing that draft, you can ask:

Make a student handout from this approved version. Remove my teaching notes, answers, and source list. Keep the questions in order, with space to write beneath each. Don't add new material or change the questions.

Check the result before sharing it—especially that private notes and answers really are gone. Check Scripture quotations and their context too. A well-formatted document can still be wrong.

Getting started with ChatGPT and Google Drive
  1. Use ChatGPT in your browser or install the official desktop app.
  2. Put a few readable documents in a Drive folder. Keep clear titles and original references.
  3. In ChatGPT, open Apps or Plugins, find Google Drive, and connect the correct Google account. Review its permissions. Availability varies; uploading selected files directly is another option. See the current connection guide.
  4. Give it the file or folder links and ask which documents it actually read. Connecting Drive doesn't mean it has read the whole collection, and naming a folder doesn't restrict the account permissions you granted.
  5. Under Settings → Data Controls, turn off Improve the model for everyone if you don't want new conversations used for training. This doesn't make confidential information safe to upload.

For quick formatting, start with Instant. For combining substantial notes, use Medium or High where available; Free accounts have a Think option. You don't need Pro to start. Check the current model guide rather than worrying about model names.

Work is ChatGPT's current agent experience for multi-step assignments and documents. Give it a specific outcome and a stopping point for review; only grant the access it needs. Deep research is useful for a cited investigation across sources. Neither is necessary for a simple handout. See the Work guide.

I do recommend disabling training for your account so they don't use your inputs to train future models.

Keep each conversation focused. The context window is the AI's working space, not unlimited memory. A Project can keep a series' files and instructions together; use a fresh chat for each lesson, with the relevant sources and your current decisions. If a chat gets tangled, have it summarize the decisions, check that summary, and carry it into a new chat. Save approved documents in your own notes or Drive.

Start with a worksheet you already know well. Have it make a student copy from your leader version, then put the two side by side. You'll have something concrete to judge—and a small piece of repetitive work you may not need to do by hand next time.

As with any tool or book, these are not Scripture and don't replace one bit of prayerfully walking the Lord through what He wants you to teach.

AI will confidently be wrong, challenge it's assumptions, this leads back to one of my belief's about it: It's a great tool to get a general intro to something, or a scalpel in a master's hand. But for those in the middle ground; the unconsciously incompetent, it is incredibly risky to use it before great subject expertise is established.