I think like most people, I find it hard sometimes to find time to read my Bible. It is not that I don’t want to read it or learn from its pages, I do and long for that knowledge, I just seem to get distracted. Growing up going to church, I always heard that it was imperative that you read your Bible. You must be in the Bible everyday in a quiet time or something to grow in Christ. I agree, we will love, serve, honor, ect. Christ more the more we know about him. So reading for me unconsciously and consciously at times has been a task to do. Something to check off of a list. If I can read through the Bible in a year, then I’ll be better for it. I’ve tried this method of study for some time. I do learn, but I feel like I forget it after a couple of days. I read the Bible but I’m not really learning that much. The word of God is not being that impressed upon my heart.
As I have been listening to different men of God, namely Paul Washer and John MacArthur I noticed that their method of study differs to what I’m used to. It is that of repetition. They a book of the Bible over and over again many times. I am going to try to adopt MacArthur’s recommended method of study. He recommends taking a small book or seven chapters of a book from the New Testament and reading it everyday for a month. While it may seem tedious after the tenth time by the thirtieth read you will have practically memorized it. I can’t say that I’ve ever done this before, but my roommate has done so with James and he knows that book inside and out. I think I’m going to start with 1 John or Ephesians and then move onto John.
You can read more in detail about what MacArthur recommends or listen a short audio clip describing what I just laid out.
I think the thing that is intimidating about reading the Bible is: where do you start?
I wasn’t raised in the church and didn’t come to Christ until much later in life, so I didn’t understand the importance of reading the Bible daily until my second semester here as a freshman, so maybe I am just intimidated because not being raised Christian and having the repetitiveness of the importance of daily reading like many people raised in the church; I think I look at the Bible, which is a “big book,” and simply don’t know where to start. I find myself re-reading the same passages because I think I view it as a sort of comfort-zone because I know I need to read everyday. I try to read daily, but I don’t want to do this guessing-game, flip-to-a-random-page type of thing. Recently, I have been trying to read about different women in the Bible because of the leadership positions I am in, but what about when summer comes? How do you decide where to start?
I know we talked about this a little bit before, but I think what it depends on what is it that you want to learn about. You got the life of Jesus, end times, the church, Paul’s rebukes, christian living, history, ect. If you are like me, I want to learn everything all at once and it is difficult to choose where to start. What I wanted to start out with was the gospel. You can find this in any book. So it doesn’t really narrow it down much. Romans is probably the best systematic approach. Paul lays down how we are saved. It can be confusing, but so can every other book. I chose Ephesians because it was short and was theologically rich and explains a little bit of the mystery of the gospel. Plus Doug is going to be doing an in depth study of this book next semester in a class and I wanted to be able to discuss it with him. Probably not to much of a help, but I would probably avoid Acts and Revelation to start with. Everything else depends on what you want to read and learn.