I have been asked for help at least five or six times since the New Year began from people who are struggling to maintain consistent and meaningful time in God’s Word. The stories are typical: they start with a plan and quit within a week or two, they don’t have time, they get distracted, they’re not getting anything out of it, it feels too rigid. They want to read their Bibles more and they want to get more out of it; their hearts are all in the right place. But they either have no experience or bad experience with intentional and meaningful Bible reading.
What follows are four personal suggestions for better Bible reading. These are four things that have changed the way I read the Scriptures so that every encounter with God’s Word is significant for my own transformation and mission.
Go Heavy on the Gospels
Some books of the Bible are more important than others. Our Lord Jesus tells us that some of the Bible’s commands are more important than others and that we should pay more attention to what he calls the weightier matters. The Bible is not flat—Obadiah and Song of Solomon are not as important as Luke and Acts–not every book is equal. So, start with the Gospels and lean in. Read through one of the Gospels–I recommend starting with Mark or Luke, but it doesn’t matter–before moving on to another book. And then come right back to another Gospel. You might read Mark, 1 Corinthians, Luke, Acts, Matthew, Exodus, John, James, and then back to Mark. However you choose your texts, my suggestion is to read the Gospels much more than you’re reading all the rest of it combined. Jesus is the holy incarnation of our God, the ultimate revelation of the Father, Jesus is our Lord and our Savior. Your Bible reading will be much more meaningful for you if most of it concerns the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Use the Lectionary
I’ve only been doing this for five years now, but I believe reading with the lectionary is the best way to immerse yourself in the text and the story of God and his people. The lectionary provides daily and weekly readings that follow the Church’s liturgical calendar and include most of the entire Bible in a three-year cycle. Every week gives you an Old Testament text, a Psalm, a Gospel reading, and a passage from a New Testament letter. All four of the readings are connected by week, and each week follows the Church seasons so that you are reading Advent passages in December and Lent / Easter passages in the Spring.
One of the advantages to reading with the lectionary is that you are not choosing your own text; the text was already chosen for you centuries ago. You can pray before, during, and after your reading that God would speak to you exactly what you need to hear, that he would show you exactly what you need to see, knowing that you did not pick the text. Second, the lectionary orients you to the church calendar, to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and to a Christian way of marking seasons and time. It reminds you daily that you belong to a different story and you are practicing a different way of living. And, third, it connects you with all of global Christianity. You are reading and praying the same passages each day as most all Christians all over the world. It reminds you that you belong to something bigger, something eternal. It unifies you with all the saints past, present, and future.
You can find a lectionary anywhere. The Revised Common Lectionary is the one used by the vast majority of mainline Protestant churches. I use one called A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants that includes weekly prayers, hymns, and inspirational readings. This is the one the GCR ministry team uses together every morning.
Read Out Loud
A seminary professor told me in 2005 that I should always read the Bible out loud and, by far, it is the one practice that has radically transformed my daily reading the most. The Scriptures were meant to be proclaimed out loud and heard, not read silently to oneself. It’s different when it’s out loud. It’s more real, it’s got more power, it’s physically out there in the air and has to be dealt with. Beyond that, reading out loud ensures that more of you is physically engaged with the text. When you read out loud, your lips and tongue and teeth and throat must coordinate around every syllable; your brain has to cooperate with your emotions and feelings so the words make sense to your ears; and you find that you are paying more attention–you have to pronounce the difficult place name, you can’t just skip it. Don’t ever read the Bible silently to yourself. Always read the text out loud and see if the whole experience isn’t dramatically different.
Never Use an iPhone
Please, do not read the Bible on your phone. When people tell me they are distracted or bored or not getting anything out of their Bible reading, I can safely surmise they are reading the text on their phones. What we’ve known for a couple of decades is now being proven by all the research: screens cause our brains to shift into a zombie mode. Our phones have trained us to mindlessly scroll/swipe through whatever is on our phones and move on and on and on to that next thing on our phones without any impulse to action. You read the words on your phone and then they’re gone, they’ve disappeared, they’re not there anymore, so you don’t deal with them. We’ve been shaped to read and then ignore whatever is on our phones. Almost all of what we read on our phones has no impact on our daily lives, it doesn’t change anything we do or think about for the rest of the day. At some point–and it doesn’t take long–you read your Bible on your phone the exact same way you read an email from work or a news item from Nebraska or a cleaning hack from a corporate sponsored post. Use a Bible, a leather bound Bible with the thin pages that crinkle when you turn them. Do that for a full month and tell me it doesn’t matter.
These are all suggestions that have personally changed my Bible reading for the better. I hope they can help you, too.
Peace,
Allan
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