Before you ask what a passage means, ask what it says. Who is speaking. Who is being spoken to. What kind of writing this is: a story, a letter, a poem, a courtroom argument. What just happened, and what happens right after.
This step feels slow because it does not produce an answer yet. That is exactly its job. Most misreadings do not come from asking the wrong interpretive question. They come from skipping observation and reaching for meaning before the passage has finished saying what it says.
Read the passage again and just describe it, out loud if that helps, the way you would describe a scene to someone who was not there. Only once you can do that should you ask what it means, and only after that should you ask what to do about it. Observation, then interpretation, then application, in that order, every time.