There are many good ways to read the Bible. The purpose of this article is to explain what I call “a better way” to read it.
Please note that I am going to discuss Reading Rather than studying, meditating on, or memorizing the Bible (which, of course, are also valuable ways to spend time in the Word).
But first, let’s focus on the issue of whether we actually read the Bible. It seems to me that many people who claim to be Christians don’t read the Bible much. If they do, it is accompanied by inconsistency and/or lack.
By “inconsistency” I mean it’s not a habit. We do not read the Bible regularly. We do it every time, hit or miss, randomly. “Maybe I’ll spend time in Word today, maybe I won’t.”
Such an approach to Scripture reflects the view that reading the Scriptures is not a priority. “I’m busy. I have a job and a family and things to do. And reading the Bible isn’t that important to me.”
“I still love God. I regularly attend worship services and give money and serve in church (in a nursery, or as an usher, or in any number of other important ways). I am doing fine without this ‘quiet time’. People talk. Having ‘bhakti’ is not something I need.”
By “lack” I mean that it is for a very short time, and may involve reading a verse from a daily devotional book that follows this format: a poem is quoted and then the author explains and applies. , with a prayer at the end.
Such devotional books are as popular today as they were before. And I am not condemning them. These books contain the truth of God and are written by dedicated Christ-followers whose sincere purpose is to communicate the word of God to God’s people.
I have read such books and benefited from them. My wife and I have read John Piper’s rise of imperishable blissTwenty five daily readings for Advent. It was excellent and follows the format described above.
But if it’s a “poem a day” approach Only Aren’t we minimizing ourselves by the way we read the Bible? Surely it’s better than nothing. But I believe something is missing here, and I hope I can explain why by introducing you to a better way to read the Bible.
To figure out a better way to read the Bible, please think of your favorite book (besides the Bible). It can be fiction or non-fiction. It could be a book you’ve read at some point in your life—a childhood treasure or a classic you read for college literature class. Or maybe it’s a book you’ve read recently. It could have been Alice in Wonderland either grapes of Wrath either chicken Soup for the Soul.
Now just imagine why you like this book so much. And how well did you enjoy reading it and what benefits did it bring – how worthwhile it was.
Imagine that you are talking to someone about this book, perhaps a good friend or a family member or co-worker. This person has not read the book, even though he has heard about it.
and you want to explain How To read your favorite book. Now notice I did not ask to share Why? You really liked this book. Let’s assume that you have already done this. right now, i want you to explain How to read it.
what are you going to say? Would you say things like:
1. Don’t start reading the book in the beginning.
2. Don’t read the whole thing.
3. Instead of reading the entire book from beginning to end, take a random sentence (or at most, a paragraph) from anywhere in the book over the next 365 days and read it.
4. It doesn’t matter what you read every day, or what part of the book you read, just read a small part every day, in no particular order.
5. Not sure where to start? Just pick any page at random and start from there. Or, find someone who has read the entire book and suggest which 365 sentences (or paragraphs) you should read next year.
6. If you find a particular sentence, paragraph or chapter that you really like, you can read it over and over again.
7. After a while, you may find several sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters that you love—your favorite sections. It’s okay to read those parts over and over, and there’s really no need to concern yourself with reading other parts you haven’t read.
What do you think about that approach?
Or instead, would you say this: “Start from the beginning and read the whole book.”
Obviously you’d go with the last comment, wouldn’t you?
There is a better way to read the Bible Read the Bible like any other book, Because to really understand a book, don’t you have to read the whole thing? And isn’t one of the main goals of reading the Bible to understand it? So, shouldn’t we read it like any other book?
Do you find the Bible confusing and difficult to understand? Maybe it’s because you’ve never read it like you read any other book, You never read it from beginning to end. You never read the whole thing.
So this is a better way to read the Bible – Read it like any other book.
I wonder what percentage of Christians have actually done this: read the whole Bible. I do not know. what do you think
But it doesn’t matter how many other people have done it or haven’t.
I worry about you and me.
Have you read the entire Bible, all 66 books from Genesis to Revelation? If so that’s great!
If not… what would be the reason? Over the next few days, perhaps it would be a good idea to reflect on this question, asking God to reveal the answer for you. And if you’re so inclined, send me an email and let me know how this exercise goes for you.
Back to your favorite book… I think you’ve read the whole thing. How long did it take you to do this? And by this I don’t mean how many hours did you spend reading it, but how much time did you read it? How many days or weeks or months or years did it take you?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it took you a few weeks or a few months to read the whole thing.
So when we come to the Bible with the idea that we should read it like any other bookShouldn’t we give priority to reading the entire book within a reasonable time? Of course, the Bible is longer than the typical book you’ll see from a library, by much. Depending on the font and paper size of your edition, the average Bible is over 1,000 pages.
A few years ago I took a Bible translation into the public domain (World English Bible) and published a New Testament. paper size is 6 x 9; The font size is 10 or 11 points. And only the New Testament is 390 pages. Since the New Testament is about 25% of the entire Bible, all 66 books will fill about 1,600 pages.
When setting a “reasonable” time to read the entire Bible, many people settle on the famous “read the Bible in a year” time frame. I think it’s a pretty doable objective, especially when you consider that it serves about 3 chapters per day, which should take at most 20-30 minutes for even a slow reader.
thinking about him. If you set aside 30 minutes a day for 365 days, you can read the entire Bible in a year. How many of us spend at least half an hour a day texting, watching TV, surfing the Internet, liking Facebook posts and other potentially time-wasting activities. (Over the years, my weakness has been in TV, especially sporting events. I wonder what my life would be like today, if in the past 55 years, I spent as much time reading as I did watching television.)
So after all, reading the entire Bible isn’t that difficult. And that’s how we read almost every other book. Why don’t you look at the Bible in the same way?
What do you say? Does everything I’ve written so far resonate with you? I pray that it does.
Let me conclude by telling you about my own experience reading the Bible. When I began to read the Bible in its entirety, my understanding of Scripture reached a whole new level.
It was wonderful. I could go on and on about this. But this is true. God used this simple exercise of looking at the big picture of Scripture to provide insight into the meaning of all the different parts. And there are many parts of the Bible that begin with two main parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, there are historical books and the Law of Moses; There are books of wisdom such as Job, Psalms and Proverbs; And there are books of prophecy – tall ones like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and a bunch of short ones like Jonah and Micah and Malachi. Next is the New Testament, which contains the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles; Then there are letters to churches and individuals; And then comes the grand finale of Revelation.
Wow! How do we make sense of all those different authors and genres and famous characters?
We start by taking a step back and realizing that while the Bible is an incredibly diverse collection of 66 books (like a 1,000-page mini-library), it’s also A book with an author, namely God, Yes, God wrote this book!
And to understand the Bible as a book with one author, we need to read the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time. I pray that you will see the value in it today, and that you will experience the joy of reading the entire Bible. May God be with you the way you do.
Plus, there are many Bible reading plans available online. These provide a schedule for the year, telling you which books to read in what order, and which chapters to read each day. There are many ways to do this, so take a look at these plans and pick the one you like and give it a try. Simply go to your favorite search engine, enter “Bible reading plans” and you’ll have no trouble finding many to choose from. enjoy!
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