Bible Reading 2

How much has your aversion to school  contaminated your concepts of learning and study? Especially, in the sense of Bible study, personal devotions, and Bible reading? For far too many people, the word “study” conjures up visions of difficult tests, poor grades, dull work in subjects holding no interest whatsoever. If there was ever any thrill to learning, it died so long ago, not even a distinct memory of it remains. The end of school meant NEVER having to study again; NEVER being forced to read another book; NEVER having to spend MY own time doing HOME WORK and BOOK WORK!

Sad, because, clearly, the Lord would not have put His truth into book form that required reading, unless He knew reading the written word was the best way for His truth to be maintained and understood. So the people who love Him and want to know Him better, really need to get past whatever damage school has done for their love of learning, because believers, more than any other group of people, need to love self-directed, self-motivated, lifelong learning. They need to read well and enjoy tangling with complicated ideas. They have to enjoy reading the same thing over and over and seeing the new in it.

Bible reading should be a consistent, delightful and thoughtful daily habit. Missing it should leave us feeling flawed, incomplete, unprepared and unfulfilled. The reading time should provide a constant source of fresh material that we want to study further, and think about longer, and memorize so the actual words can be with us always. Re-reading should prompt thoughtful memories of decisions made and lessons learned in earlier journeys through the Book. As years pass, and more of the Word becomes “ours” from profitable study time, there should be a thrill of victory and accomplishment.  Along with genuine victory, however, should be a constant humbling challenge when every fresh reading and new study–satisfying as they are–always opens new vistas to consider, new questions to ponder, and new challenges to obey.

In the spirit of wanting to keep the reading habit a lifelong habit, an exploring-new-options-for-study habit, a lost-without-it habit, here are some ideas for a variety of ways to read through the Bible.You could decide if you want to systematically try each of these ideas, (along with others you may think of or hear about), or occasionally employ one as a specific project for a year. The important point is keep consistent Bible reading a settled habit, but never a thoughtless one.

1. Vary the Bible section where you start reading.  Start with the Pentateuch one year, the Prophets another, the Epistles at another time.
2. Alternate between Old and New Testament books.
3. Combine similar sections between the Old and New Testaments.  Read the history section of the Old Testament, followed by the history section of the New Testament.  Read the Pentateuch in conjunction with the epistles and rejoice daily in grace over law! Read the prophecy sections of the Old Testament with the Book of Revelation.  The Old Testament poetry books and New Testament gospels stand on their own.
4. Acquire a chronological Bible and read it through. Just keep in mind that scholarly disagreements abound over when various portions of the text were written.
5. Read through the Bible with an eye to find texts and truth on a topic you choose specifically to concentrate on: creation, salvation, God’s Will, unfulfilled prophecies, wisdom, Satan’s interference and involvement with man, responses of worship, God’s love, mercy, holiness, omnipotence, miracles of deliverance, or provision.  The possibilities are so numerous your earthly life is likely to end before you exhaust all the options!
6. A different slant to idea #5  is to purchase an inexpensive gift Bible to mark the texts for a chosen topic. One Bible could be for the Attributes of God, or the names of God.  Another could be for Biblical prophecies, or texts about Christ.

Are you getting excited yet with all the options available to you to enjoy time with the Greatest Book on your own time, at your own speed, for your own pleasure, and directed by your own personally-designed program of reading, just for yourself? Do these ideas prompt other ideas of your own? We’ll finish my list in the next post, but I’d love to add other reading ideas if you have something you’ve tried or heard of that isn’t on this list.