If you find yourself rushing through your reading, deliberately slow down. The Bible doesn’t TikTok well. Our digital scrolling trains us to skim but God’s Word needs to be stored and hidden deep within us to have its effect.
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Bible reading
If you just need some life hacks, maybe a Christian self-help book will do. But if you realize that your problems go deeper than that, you need something more powerful. When you invest in daily Bible reading, you’re taking a blow torch to the impurities in your life and a sledgehammer to the hardhearted attitudes that get in the way of your growth.
They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but with the Bible, familiarity often breeds laziness. The first problem with the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is that everyone assumes that they know what it means. The Sunday School story and our own casual reading seem to present a classic story of seduction, so we don’t feel that we need to put much effort into actually studying the passage.
Brevard Childs published a book in 1975 that set the entire theological world talking. His basic thesis was that the Bible is a book and God intended for it to be read as one. That may seem obvious to you, but the academic world is still coming to grips with its implications, and you probably haven’t considered them.
When you first start reading the Bible, it’s all so new that just taking it in can be overwhelming. As you begin to read more consistently, though, you can’t help but notice that stories about Jesus are often repeated in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In fact, Jesus’ teachings are often repeated also. As you wonder why, you might be told that the gospel writers are each giving an account of the event from their own perspective like witnesses to a traffic accident. And that much is true, but the reality is a little more complicated, and it affects how you should read what they’ve written. Let me explain.
So, you’ve decided to read the Bible. You open the passage. You read it a couple of times and you notice some interesting things. Your curiosity takes over. Why is that there? Why is it phrased that way? Why didn’t they say this instead? Before you know it, you’ve spent the entire time you had set aside for Bible study going down rabbit holes and, in the end, learning very little about what God was likely trying to teach you. I had an experience like this yesterday. And it reminded me how critical it is to look for the right things and ask the right questions as you read the Word of God. Missing the forest for the trees is a real danger in Bible study and it’s one that we can all avoid. Let me explain.
I was on a road trip with my two sons and something they said led me to share a very personal story. I went into detail about what happened, what I’d learned, and how it had such an impact on me. As I came to the end, I looked over at my sons, half-hoping to see wide-eyed expression of wonder and awe. They were both fast asleep! Communicating with children is hard. Let me share some tips from the Bible about how to speak in a way that reaches your child.
When I was in university, I tried to tackle some of the Russian classics on my summer break. At first, I found the complexity of them overwhelming. The challenge was that they had so many characters and they all had multiple names and different people used different names to refer to each other depending on the nature of their relationship. I came to the conclusion that you need to be prepared to just spend the first hundred pages trying to figure out who everyone is and how they’re connected. Once you get past that, they’re fascinating stories. Those books showed me the importance of a reading strategy.
It’s easy to keep doing the same things without thinking about what you’re doing. That’s not a recipe for personal growth, though. This week, I’m taking a course called “Preaching the Narratives of Scripture.” There were a couple of books that I had to read in preparation as well as papers to write, summarizing their contents and my reflection on them. On Wednesday and Thursday, I’ll take in day-long lectures with the instructor, Kent Edwards, who will come to us from California by Zoom video call. On Friday, I’ll preach to my computer screen and then have the professor, and fellow pastor-students analyze and critique everything I’ve said and done. Pray for me! In the follow-up to the course, I’ll submit another three sermons for written feedback from the others and in turn, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the other participants. Having gone through the same process for the course I took in the winter, “Preaching Old Testament Poetry,” I know the value (and the stress!) of the feedback and reflection. You can’t grow in the echo chamber. Let me share some of the lessons I’ve learned so far.
These are not easy days to be a parent of young children. Having kids home for summer holidays can be difficult enough to plan for, but the COVID-19 school closures were too sudden to allow for planning and there are no camps to send them to or programs to enrol them in. Educators are doing what they can to provide online learning options and, as a church, we’re working to launch an online children’s ministry for our families. But still, many parents see this time as an opportunity to invest in their children’s faith and discipleship and are looking for tools and resources to help. The best place to start is the Bible itself. There’s nothing that can replace reading the Bible to your children and helping them to read it for themselves. You want to make sure that your children’s Bibles are well worn. But as you do that, you may want to supplement the Bible reading. Let me share what I feel are some of the best free materials available right now to encourage your child’s spiritual growth.