Last week I listed 5 excuses for not reading my Bible in my 30+ years of attending church and just living life in general…
My #1 excuse was always that I never had enough time to read my Bible every day.
But in reality, I did have enough time, I just never set it aside to read my Bible.
Out of all my excuses, this is the hardest to overcome because it involves will power. It involves making the decision to actually show up every day and be there to read, whether I feel like it or not.
I read each morning before I begin my day. I used to just jump out of bed, eat, shower and go to work. Now I take time to read and study each morning. At first this was hard, now it’s a habit. If I don’t read my Bible in the morning my day feels wrong right from the beginning.
Here is my best tip for beginning the habit of reading your Bible daily: All you need to do is start and then finish.
That might seem too simple but people tend to approach Bible reading with the idea that they need to be sitting on the top of a mountain with their legs uncomfortably crossed and experiencing divine intervention and insight while reading every single word.
This is not to belittle the idea of reading the Word of God. It is very important. But sometimes that sense of importance frustrates us because we don’t immediately feel good about ourselves or even understand what we read.
Waking up early to read was not easy for me at first. I’m not a morning person. To be honest, there were mornings where I wouldn’t even get out out of bed, I would just roll over, grab my Bible, read my pages and sometimes fall back asleep immediately after. Was it the most productive way to read the Bible? No. But it was part of the process for me and the more interested I became in what I was reading the easier it became to roll out of bed for my reading time.
My goal was to just read the Bible, that was it. I didn’t expect anything profound, I just wanted to read it completely.
Honestly, my daily readings probably take between 20 and 30 minutes total. I make it a point to read my scheduled pages from start to finish, straight through and then revisit anything I didn’t understand or make a note of anything I want to study more in depth later.
Tips:
- Just start, then finish – Sounds simple, right? It is. Just find where you left off the day before and read your daily page limit.
- Don’t over think the process – Focus on the goal of reading the entire Bible, not how or where you read it. At first, this will be the only thing to get you through when you feel like quitting.
- Don’t feel guilty if you didn’t have a miraculous experience – There are plenty of times when I read the Bible and g0t very little from what I read. Is that wrong? I don’t think so. Again, my goal was to read the entire Bible and let it speak to me from beginning to end. If I quiet my inner worries about not feeling spiritual while reading my daily pages and just work my way through I will almost always stumble upon a passage that will speak to me. In years past, I just opened the Bible and hoped it would speak to me. I learned more working my way through each day than I ever did with blindly opening and picking a random passage.
My next post will give specifics tips on how to not worry about understanding what you read the first time through.
