I’ve recently realized how important it is to take time after any meeting, event or church service to process my notes. In the case of a church service, this often includes the various scripture references that are mentioned as well.

In most cases, working from a laptop in Roam during the meeting isn’t feasible so I take hand-written notes (on paper or iPad, and more recently on reMarkable) and then work them into Roam later in the day. For scripture references, I give each chapter of the Bible a unique page in Roam and then add in the verse numbers and the related text.

However, instead of just listing the verses 1,2,3 etc under each chapter number like this:

  • 1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;
  • 2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
  • 3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”,

I add in the full book name, chapter number and verse number as follows:

  • John 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;
  • John 3:2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
  • John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Roam allows me to pull in the actual content of sentences (known as blocks) anywhere from my Roam database by using double parentheses. I can just type “((John 3:3” and it will autocomplete to allow me to click on the reference I want, and this then adds a copy of the verse to that particular section of my notes. The process makes note taking and referencing much easier.

It also works the other way around. If I am looking at at a particular verse, I can see how many times I have referenced the verse elsewhere. And by clicking on the number, it will quickly show me, say, that it refers to notes I took from Piedmont Church on a particular day. And if I want, I can just run back out to that day and see everything that was mentioned then and how the verse fits in with the other notes I took that day.

It’s more work to add it this way, so for now I’m just adding chapters as needed and I’ll flesh it all out over the course of time.

Below is a video that shows my process.