Reading

When I first started trying to read the Bible, I would just flip randomly to some passage and flip to another one if the first one didn’t hold my interest. As a result of that experience, I now maintain that any Bible reading plan is better than no plan. (I do sometimes flip the Bible open and read what I’ve opened to, but it is not how I approach a scheduled time for reading the Bible.)

Here are some things I’ve learned about reading the Bible:

• A verse here and a verse there does not give context for what a passage is saying.
• God sometimes gives me insight into my own life or circumstances through a passage, but that does not mean that my insight is the correct theological interpretation of the passage.
• The length of time I spend reading should be based on how much I can read and still be attentive to what I’m reading. (The amount may vary; it’s easier to read narrative than theology.)
• The letters were written to be read in their entirety; for a short letter, try to do so. (Some people may be able to read Romans in one sitting and be attentive the whole time; I am not.)
• There are advantages to reading small sections and looking at the details; there are different advantages to looking at the big picture—mix it up.

Ideas for reading plans:

• If you are new to the Bible, Matthew is one good place to start. It’s a nice combo of teaching and narrative. I find it helpful to pay particular attention to how Jesus relates to others. I think it is worth seeing the difference between the way he relates to the Pharisees, who thought they were keeping the law, and the people who were repentant, knowing they did not keep the law. The Sermon on the Mount makes it pretty clear we should identify with those who cannot keep the law.
• Pick any book of the Bible and begin reading it through. I suggest a minimum of one chapter per day.
• Pick a book and spend an extended period of time with it. (I’d give credit where credit is due, but I can’t remember where I read about this.) This is about reading the same passage multiple times (in one sitting or over multiple days) until you experience really knowing the passage. (In the story I read, a man finished reading Ephesians and felt like God told him to read it again—multiple times—and at the end of it, the man said he felt like Ephesians had entered into him.) I first tried this with Philippians and ended up spending 3 months in that book. Loved doing it. I moved on when I felt like God was no longer showing me anything new in it. I mentioned in the Reading, Part 1 post that there was a Bible reading plan where I liked the approach of listening to what God might want to say to me. This is the one. I find that as I repeatedly read the same passage, God does seem to highlight different sections of it. When he does, I spend some extra time looking at that section and thinking about it.
• If you want to read the whole Bible and decide to just start at Genesis and read through, be warned. There are places where your reading will bog down. Exodus has detailed information on plans for the tabernacle and later the same detailed information on building it. (Saying, “Moses obeyed,” could have reduced Exodus by four chapters.) 1 Chronicles has genealogies of people not mentioned anywhere else. Numbers has stories that are interspersed with sections filled with, no surprise, numbers. Some choices:
  • Read straight through, planning on skipping the parts that are of no interest to you
  • Read from multiple places in the Bible at once so it’s unlikely that all of the reading on a given day might seem tedious. The down side of reading the Bible this way is that it breaks up the natural continuity of many of the books. On the other hand, I find reading to discover what the whole Bible teaches about a particular topic helps to provide a different sort of continuity—so I read topically when reading with this plan. If you would like a reading plan where the Bible is divided for you into daily readings, there are online plans that you can find, or you could just divide the Bible into segments and read one chapter a day from each segment. The Bible easily breaks into three chapters a day (a little over a year to read) if you begin reading starting at Genesis, Job, and Matthew. If you would like to finish in less than a year, the Bible also breaks easily into five chapters a day, starting to read in Genesis, Joshua, Job, Isaiah, and Matthew. These segments do not have the same number of chapters. For instance, if you are doing five chapters a day, you will end the books of the law before you reach the end of any other segments. You could then choose to reduce the number of chapters you read per day, or keep it at five chapters by reading two chapters from a longer segment.

So, what do you do when you finish a plan? I find that sometimes I know exactly what I want to do next and sometimes I have no clue. No reading plan is detrimental, so if I don’t know what to do next, I just choose something and start with that. If I later sense God leading me in a different direction, I can always stop what I’m doing and change plans.

You may also find that your reading leads you into wanting to study a particular passage more closely. The next post will be about studying the Bible.

NOTE: I had a friend who read this post ask me why I did not suggest the daily readings from one’s own church tradition as a reading plan. In truth, I had not thought of it, because I do not do it. Many churches do have daily scriptures. If yours does, it’s an option well worth considering.

My ability to recall what I read is directly related to how much attention I bring to my reading. If I pick up a book just to pass time, I tend to read passively. It doesn’t really matter if I remember what I’m reading or not. If I am reading something that interests me, I pay more attention to the content. When I am reading something that really speaks to my heart, I concentrate fully on what I’m reading because I want to be changed by it.

In the same way, I can read scripture passively to check it off my “to do” list. Or I can read it more attentively because I want to understand. If I read something that I want to incorporate into my life, I really zero in on that portion of the passage and give it full attention. Unsurprisingly, reading the Bible passively is both the easiest and the least effective way. My next article will also be about reading scripture and will focus on reading plans, but here I want to offer some suggestions on how to minimize reading the Bible passively. This improves any reading plan.

One approach is to read with the expectation that God has something he wants to say to us through the portion we’re reading and to be actively engaged in looking for it. This method is not usually the most fruitful for me, but it is sometimes helpful. (And it might be the best method for someone else.) When I cover what to read, I’ll come back to this because there is one reading plan where I do find this to be particularly useful.

A second way would be to have a topic in mind and read to find out what God has to say about that topic. There was a time when we were homeschooling our children that we tried to read one chapter of Proverbs and some chapters in Psalms every morning. We had a particular focus in mind that was related to the current topic we were studying. We cycled through the same scriptures every month and saw different things in those same scriptures every month because we were looking for something different. Currently, I am reading through the whole Bible to see what it says about joy. I find I am by nature a complainer. It is not God honoring. I’m looking for scriptures to meditate on so I can gain a more God-like perspective on life’s irritations and inconveniences.

Asking questions of the passage is a third way of focusing our attention on what we are reading. Here are three ways to ask questions:

• Some people like taking the journalist approach; asking “Who?” “What?” “When?” “Where?” “Why?” “How?” This requires that we focus on the elements of what we have read. Personally, I only like this set of questions if I add the question, “So what?” The other questions are useful for gaining information; the last question asks me what my response should be to what I’ve read.

• A friend from church told me she had learned that Martin Luther asked these questions: “What does this mean for me?” “What praise should it bring forth?” “What should I confess?” “What petitions should I make?” I find these questions to be more thought provoking than the journalist questions.

• I also like the single question, “What does this passage show me about God?” He is unchanging, and while the specifics of how he works in anyone’s life may change, his goals have not changed. What Jesus did while he lived among us in human form he still seeks to do. By asking this question, we help ourselves notice what kinds of things God likes to do in the world—and maybe more clearly hear his invitation to join him in that work.

While it cannot be used for all our reading in the Bible, in his book, Hearing God in Conversation, Sam Williamson offered a suggestion that I had never thought of before: asking ourselves the questions that God asks others. For example, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” He asks us that question, too; and how we answer him is important. When Elijah was depressed and in the cave, God asked him, “What are you doing here?” This question invites us to look at our own motives. It may also present a chance for God to give us a job, as he did to Elijah, as a way of ministering to his depression. (By the way, I highly recommend Sam’s book. If you want to see an example of his style of writing—which I find to be very readable—visit his blog, beliefsoftheheart.com.)

Ultimately, the most effective thing we can do to focus our attention on what we are reading in the Bible is to remember how important it is. God uses his word is to show us what he is like, to renew our minds, and to change our perspectives. He uses his word to give us life. Remembering that scripture is vital to my spiritual well-being helps my mind focus on its truths.