Bible Reading 1

Long ago we were encouraged to read something from the Bible every day. Not another devotional book or a commentary, but the Word itself. At least five minutes. Since the Harvard Classics could be mastered with fifteen minutes a day, over a lifetime, five minutes certainly seems like it ought to be doable. Of course, to actually get through the entire Bible in a year takes more than a five minute daily investment: maybe twenty minutes? Four chapters every day. But as we’ve discovered, even that seems to be too much for some people.

One of the best parts of en suite is taking the time to read the Bible. Part of my motivation for a cleaning routine, and children being in order, and having a designed schedule was to make certain that time for Bible reading would not be frittered away. The benefit to thinking is immeasurable. So much so, we’re going to stay in en suite long enough to send along some ideas about Bible reading.

Continuous reading through the Scriptures begins the process of having spirit and mind prepared to think like Christ.  Without His Words in us, our responses to life situations are essentially subjective reactions built from what we think.

A Christ-controlled walk shifts us away from our thinking to God’s teaching about what is best. Devoted believers are determined to get beyond the sorry habit of reading the Bible “because we have to.”  Devoted believers want to come to the point where their intimate understanding of the Lord, His way and His words, indicates the appropriate response for any given situation and they want that response to be their response.

Many people soldier through reading the Bible once. But even if they survive the ordeal, it takes so long, and so much of it seems to have nothing to do with their issues, and well, they’ve never read any other book more than once, so the idea of turning right around and starting over is simply not going to happen.

The truth is, the longest read-through of the Bible is usually the first. Once you start through the Bible in subsequent readings the connections between passages, accounts, and events become more apparent, and that makes the whole Bible “shrink.”  Continued reading brings the benefit of beginning to find your own cross references, not just those printed in the particular Bible you are using.  Further reading builds the sense of majesty and mastership of the Lord, until (like a older married couple completely in tune with one another) you “know” the texts, principles, and commands He wants applied to a circumstance that presents itself.

So enough pampering and trying to make everyone feel ok about lazy Bible reading habits: if you live twenty or thirty years after your salvation decision, it should be expected that you’ve read through the Bible at least fifteen to twenty times, if not twenty or thirty times. No excuses.

In families, Bible reading should happen, even for children who cannot yet read. Parents should be doing the reading (so, yes, you could count that as some reading time, I guess). One thing I wish we would have done (sit up and take notice young parents) is use those Bible reading charts when we did our family Bible reading, just so we would know how many times we actually got through the Bible together as a family.

While it is not uncommon to find believers who made decisions for Christ when they were four or five, if you ask most of them, they did not begin personal devotions at that age. What message does that send? That you don’t need personal devotions when you are a four year old believer? Doesn’t it make sense that parents of believing, but non-reading, children would work daily with those children to have a devotional Bible reading time,  in addition to family devotions?  Parents work daily with their children who can’t feed themselves, to both feed and teach them to feed themselves, right? Ah, but if the parents don’t have consistent personal reading and devotional time for themselves, how could they find the time or the  desire to meet with a child?

So while it seems so reasonable that believers would spend time every day reading the words God Himself sent to us to enable us to understand Him and His Ways, and His many nuances and the differing means He has used over the centuries, it will always be a challenge. Maintaining a thoughtful reading habit, day in and day out, is difficult.  Even dedicated Bible readers tend to drift toward reading less and less, until it takes three or four or five years to get through the entire Bible, or systematic reading stops completely and all that remains is reading a very few favorite passages  over and over.

Faithful, consistent reading might even stand in the way of personal Bible study.  The time spent reading three or four chapters and some prayer is about what most of us feel comfortable giving to personal devotions, and once we have “done our reading,” we just don’t take more time to study out or meditate on a text that touched us during our reading.  Sitting with just a Bible (or a Bible on an electronic device) is easier than collecting a notebook, a pen, a concordance, and other helps to study. If we don’t have study resources in our home, we don’t often seek out answers to things we don’t understand about our reading. Instead we get into the habit of glossing over difficult or “boring” sections—doing so year after year.

Did I ever mention that en suite is where we make ourselves uncomfortable? En suite is where we put ourselves under the microscope and find ourselves wanting. Then we use en suite to realign ourselves with what God really wants. En suite is not the place for excuses. It’s the haven where we face laziness, fear, weakness, and instead of coddling ourselves, set about to rectify ourselves. So if you’d like to be made uncomfortable about your erratic or non-existent personal devotional habits, read on. If that is too much reality, come back in a few days. If you are perfect, pray for the rest of us.