Feeling guilty for not reading your Bible?

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Have you ever felt guilty for not wanting to read your Bible? Welcome to Ask Theocast.

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I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. And today we're going to be answering some of your questions about the

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Bible. In studio with me, I have Andrew Johnson. Andrew's going to be reading us the question. Andrew, most important job in the world, ask the right question.

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What do we have today, man? Hey, John. So we had a listener recently ask a question on our

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Instagram. She asked, should I feel guilty about not wanting to read my

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Bible? That's a question that we get quite often relating to Bible reading. So what do you got for us,

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John? I would say, I would also reword it too. I would almost say people not only feel guilty, but they think that the level of Christianity or the watermark, the high watermark, or even the word could be the barometer of the

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Christian life is met by Bible reading. Let me set it this way. You're struggling with your faith.

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You go to a friend and you tell him, man, I'm just been really struggling with such and such sin, or I've felt down or I'm depressed.

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And for whatever reason, the default answer or question they ask you is, well, are you reading your

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Bible? Or how much are you reading Bible? Or how consistent are you reading your Bible? And so we turn Bible reading into this almost spiritual workout.

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This magic pill that if we take this, and I know right away people are agreeing with me, but at the same time, there's this uneasiness about like, oh, wait a minute.

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This is God's word. Aren't we supposed to be consuming God's word? And God's word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.

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And the God's word is powerful, sharper than two others stored. And so what do you mean we shouldn't be using it?

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So let's talk a little bit about how we have put something on top of the

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Bible that the Bible never did. So let me ask you this one question. Jesus says, come unto me, all you are heavy laden, and I will give you what?

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Rest, right? He gives you a place to feel safe, a place to feel secure. So when you come unto

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Christ, you should feel safe and secure. There should be nothing that should pull you away from that.

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And yet I find to this dear saint's question, so many people, the act of interacting with God's book creates anxiety.

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It creates fear. It creates guilt and shame, which blows my mind to think that God's word can create guilt and shame.

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Now, the law should. The law in God's word is designed to show us our sin, but someone's interaction with it shouldn't do that.

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So where does this come from? Well, we have to think back about, you know, for the first 1 ,500 years of Christianity after the

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Bible is completed, there is no personal Bibles. It doesn't exist. The apostles would write these epistles to the church, and the church would then make a copy and send it off to the next pastor, and they would read these letters.

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And so there was a slow accumulation over time. But as these letters are being written, the temples house the

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Old Testament. But these letters are just circulating all around. And if you listen to the New Testament writers, they don't write in such a way where you're interacting with God by yourself.

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You're not interacting with him in a way where it's you alone with God every single day.

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You could even just go to the book of Acts, where it says, you know, they're meeting in homes discussing the disciples' teaching with each other.

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So our interaction with our Bibles as a habit day in and day out, and it's the way in which we measure our faith, is not a concept found in the

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New Testament. It's just not. A concept in the New Testament is found. Ephesians chapter 4, you have

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Paul finishing up talking about the glories of Jesus Christ, all the hope.

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He is giving you every reason to rest in Christ, every reason. And then in chapter 4, he says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

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He does not mention anything individualistically. As a matter of fact, he's drawing us all together into one unit.

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So he says, with gentleness and meekness and patience, being eager to maintain the bond of peace.

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What you hear is, well, you're a Christian, be eager to be reading your Bible. That's what we hear. That's not what

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Paul says. So then he goes on, he says, we have one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one salvation.

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And then he continues on and says, okay, now God has gifted the entire church with all of these people with unique gifts, preachers and teachers and evangelists.

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And then he says, they are here for the equipping of the saints, for the building up the body of the

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Christ, for the work of ministry. And then he says a phrase that is so clear about the

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Christian faith and the word of God. He says, you have God's gifting of these teachers and preachers who spend their time in the word to equip the saints.

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When the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love. So the word of God, from the beginning, has always been a corporate consumption.

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We always gather together to hear from God's word, to discuss God's word, to apply

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God's word. That's the other thing that's funny to me, is that people read the word of God and they want to apply it. And it's like,

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I would dare to say that 99 % of applications of God's word cannot be applied alone.

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Like meekness, patience, gentleness, long -suffering, you can't apply that to yourself.

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That's supposed to be applied in the local context. I mean, two greatest commands, right? Love God, love your neighbor. Sure, you can love

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God by yourself. So you can do half of the two greatest commands by yourself. But the second one, you have to do in person.

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So when it comes down to your Bible reading, we have created a new law. We have created, really,

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I would say a new sector of Christianity, that nowhere in the New Testament is this idea, it's me and my

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Bible and God. It's we and our Bible and our God loving each other, discipling each other, coming together.

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And so if you are struggling to read your Bible, there's probably two reasons. One, you don't know how to interpret it.

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You don't even know how it is that you are going to read the text and then you walk. Man, in my church, once I start having this conversation with people,

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I ask them, how often do you read your Bible? And then as soon as you're done, you don't even know what you read.

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But in your mind, you're thinking, well, at least I read my Bible. You have to, like, how is that?

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What is this, a lucky rabbit's foot? Is this some kind of, like, God promises that if your eyes glaze over this magical book, then something magical will happen to you?

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God's word is alive if you believe it, if you understand it. But if you don't understand it, then it has no power.

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This is why even Paul says, faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God. And the concept of that is hearing and understanding, right?

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You have to understand the words that are in there. So the fact that people struggle so much with this idea of, man,

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I just, I need to read my Bible more. I need to be doing this more. It's heartbreaking because God never intended his people to look to the actions of reading his letter to find whether they are truly his disciple.

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Jesus says, how do we know that we're his disciples? By the love we have for one another, right?

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So we walk by faith, trusting in the truths of Christ. We love one another. And that's where we find our hope.

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That's where we find our rest. If someone ever tells you that your Bible reading is the indicator of whether you're a

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Christian or not, it's not biblical. Now, am I saying, oh, no one should ever read their

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Bible. Well, I have in the past told people to stop reading their Bible because if it's the source of their discouragement, it's kind of like, well, it's not required.

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And if it's causing you to be discouraged, then how about you go spend time with another brother and sister in Christ? You know, build up your faith.

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What Paul says, consider how to build one another up in love and good works. But yeah, the word of God should be the source of our encouragement.

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It should be the source that leads us to rest. It should never be the source of our assurance, meaning that my interaction with it guarantees my standing before God.

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It's faith in his word. It's not reading his word that guarantees your assurance. Hopefully that's helpful. Hey, John, that was awesome and very helpful,

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I'm sure, for a lot of people, including myself. Do you have any recommendations or sources that we can go to and maybe hear or listen or read a little bit more about this?

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I would say two things. Most people have a kind of a weak understanding of the local church and the priority of the local church and how helpful it is.

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So there's two videos that I want to recommend, I think, that you should listen to right after this. We'll put them in probably up in the description down below and on the video somewhere.

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One is called Leaving Pietism. It will really help you understand this draw that we have to prove ourself to God through our actions like Bible reading.

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The other one I would say is watch is called Spiritual Disciplines. Highly confusion on how it is that we struggle in the

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Christian life. Where do we find our source of hope? And both of those are going to help kind of peel back this weird layer that we have about this mysticism around Bible reading and then give you a proper understanding of the gospel and the local church.

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So those are the two I would recommend. If you have not downloaded our free book, that is also in the description. It's called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness. It too is a quick way, a good way to continue to understand how we trust in Christ's faithfulness, not our faithfulness to do a particular action.