How to Use Bible Parlor

By The Bible Parlor Team · July 21, 2026 · 9 min read

This guide walks through four core workflows in Bible Parlor using real verses as examples: looking up a word in Strong's Concordance, tracing a Hebrew or Greek word across the whole Bible, mapping every place named in a passage, and building a sermon outline with cross-references. Each section gives exact steps you can follow right now.

Jump to a section

  1. Use Strong's Concordance to study a verse
  2. Trace a Hebrew or Greek word through the whole Bible
  3. Find every place in a passage on a map
  4. Build a sermon with cross-references

How to use Strong's Concordance to study a Bible verse

Strong's Concordance assigns a fixed reference number to every distinct Hebrew or Greek word behind the King James text — Hebrew words run H1 through H8674, Greek words run G1 through G5624. Behind the English word "love" in different verses, for example, you might find several different Greek numbers, each carrying a different shade of meaning. Here's how to pull that apart for a specific verse.

Example verse: John 3:16 — "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son..."

1Open the verse in the Reader

Go to the Study Bible Reader and navigate to John chapter 3. Scroll to verse 16. Every word in the verse is individually tagged — this is what makes word-level lookup possible instead of just reading plain text.

2Tap or click the word you want to study

Tap "loved" in the verse. A reference panel opens showing the underlying Greek word and its Strong's number — for "loved" in John 3:16 this is G25, agapaō, the verb form of self-giving love, distinct from phileō (G5368, affection between friends) or eros (which does not appear in the New Testament at all). That distinction is the entire reason word study matters here: English "love" collapses three different Greek concepts into one word.

3Open the full Strong's entry

From the reference panel, open the number directly in Strong's Concordance. The full entry for G25 gives you the root, grammatical classification, and the KJV's translation choices for every other place that root appears — so you can see whether "loved" carries the same weight elsewhere.

4Cross-check with Word Study

Open the same number in Word Study for a lexicon-style breakdown: full definition range, part of speech, and every verse where G25 occurs in the New Testament, so you can see the word's full usage pattern in one list instead of hunting verse by verse.

How to trace a Hebrew or Greek word through the whole Bible

Tracing a word means following one specific Strong's number across every book where it appears, not just the verse you started in. This is how you build an accurate sense of a word's range of meaning instead of relying on a single English gloss.

Example verse: Genesis 1:1 — "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

1Identify the word and its number

In Genesis 1:1, tap "created." The underlying Hebrew word is bara, Strong's H1254 — a verb used specifically for God's act of bringing something into existence out of nothing, distinct from asah (H6213, "to make" or "to fashion" from existing material) and yatsar (H3335, "to form" or "to shape," as a potter forms clay).

2Open the number in Strong's

Go to Strong's Concordance and open H1254 directly, or search for it by number. The entry lists the word's transliteration, root, and grammatical notes.

3Pull up every occurrence

From the H1254 entry, open the full occurrence list. You'll see bara used again in Genesis 1:21 and 1:27 (the creation of sea creatures and of man), in Isaiah 40:26 and 40:28 (God as Creator of the stars), and in Psalm 51:10 ("Create in me a clean heart"). Reading these together shows that bara is reserved for acts only God performs — it is never used in the Old Testament for human manufacture.

4Compare with Word Study for definition range

Open H1254 in Word Study to see the full definition range and confirm the pattern across every listed occurrence in one screen, rather than opening each verse individually.

How to find every place mentioned in a Bible passage on a map

The Atlas plots place names to their real-world locations and links each marker back to the verses that mention them, so you can see geography and text together instead of imagining the terrain from a place name alone.

Example passage: Romans 12:1‑2 context and the wider missionary framework — for a geography-heavy example, use any passage naming multiple cities, such as Paul's greeting list or travel notes.

1Open the Atlas

Go to the Atlas tool. The map loads with markers for every place indexed from the KJV text, defaulting to a wide view of the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.

2Search or jump to your passage

Use the Atlas's reference jump to enter a book and chapter — for example, Acts 16, where Paul receives the vision of the man of Macedonia and travels to Troas, Samothracia, Neapolis, and Philippi in the same chapter. The map centers on the relevant region and highlights the named places in sequence.

3Click a marker to read its context

Click any city marker — Philippi, for instance — and a popup opens with the verse reference, a short note on the place's significance, and (where available) supporting media. Philippi's popup ties directly back to Acts 16:12, "a colony: and the chief city of that part of Macedonia."

4Trace a full route

For multi-stop passages like Paul's journeys, follow the markers in verse order to see the full route rendered on the map, rather than reconstructing it from a list of place names in your head. See our guide to Paul's missionary journeys for a complete route breakdown of all three journeys.

How to build a sermon with cross-references

Sermon Builder assembles an outline from verses, cross-references, and notes you gather during study, so the research you already did in Strong's, Word Study, and the Atlas feeds directly into a usable outline.

Example verse: Romans 12:2 — "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..."

1Start from the verse in the Reader

Open Romans 12:2 in the Reader. Tap "transformed" — the underlying Greek is metamorphoō, Strong's G3339, the same word used for the Transfiguration in Matthew 17:2. That connection alone is often the seed of a sermon point: the change described in Romans 12:2 is described with the same word as Christ's visible transformation on the mountain.

2Add the verse to your outline

Open Sermon Builder and add Romans 12:2 as your anchor verse. Give the point a working title, such as "Transformed, Not Conformed."

3Pull in cross-references

Add Matthew 17:2 as a supporting cross-reference for the shared Greek word, then add 2 Corinthians 3:18, which uses the same root (metamorphoō) for believers being "changed into the same image from glory to glory." Sermon Builder keeps each reference attached to the point it supports, so the outline shows your reasoning, not just a verse list.

4Layer in word study notes

Copy the key definition detail from Word Study's G3339 entry directly into your outline notes for that point, so when you're in the pulpit you have the Greek nuance in front of you without switching tabs.

5Arrange and export

Reorder your points, add application questions under each one, and export or print the finished outline once the structure holds together. Because every point stays linked to its verse and cross-references, you can revise the order without losing track of which support goes where.

These four workflows — word lookup, word tracing, geographic mapping, and sermon assembly — are designed to work together. A word you trace in Strong's can become a sermon point in Builder; a place you find in the Atlas can anchor a historical illustration; and everything stays connected back to the verse where you started.