The School of Everyday Christianity 4: How to Read the Bible

Welcome to the School of Everyday Christianity, where we apply the Bible and Christian teaching to problems, situations, and questions that people face in the course of everyday life.

In today's episode, we talk about how to read the Bible. So we know we ought to read the

Bible, we know we need to read the Bible, our pastors tell us we need to read the Bible, other believers tell us we need to read the Bible, but still the question remains, how, how do we do that?

So the first thing that I would encourage you to do is to make Bible reading a normal part of your everyday life, and that means we need to demystify reading the

Bible. Now of course there's something to be said for having a quiet, serious time to read and contemplate the fact that these are

God's words that have been revealed and given to us, but God also put us and made us to live normal, ordinary lives, and we need to be able to take in the

Bible in the normal course of everyday life, and so we need to demystify it. That means you don't have to have the perfect Instagrammable moment to read the

Bible. You don't have to have your cup of coffee there and perfect silence, complete silence in your house in order to read the

Bible. You don't have to be in a library or a study or office of rich mahogany in order to contemplate the deep richness of the

Scriptures. No, you can take in the Bible in the course of everyday life, and so you can scroll and read the

Bible on your phone while you're waiting in line at the grocery store. You can listen to the Scriptures on a Bible app while you're driving down the road.

You want to make Bible reading, Bible intake, part of the normal course of your life.

So that's the first thing that I would encourage you to do. The second thing that I would encourage you to do is to think of Bible reading or Bible intake like eating, and so eating is something that we do every day, and the reason

I want us to think about it like eating is because reading the Scriptures really is spiritual nourishment. It is food for your soul, and so you don't want to skip too many meals, and so you have a feast that God has given to you in His Word, and you want to take it in like you take in food as nourishment for your soul.

But here's the thing. We often get behind in our Bible reading, don't we? And then we get discouraged, and then things kind of pile up, and we feel like we've got to make up all of this reading in order to get where we're supposed to be today by the calendar or the plan that we have, but think of it like eating, and so if you get really busy one day, and you don't eat breakfast, and you don't eat lunch, but a friend invites you over for a nice steak dinner, you don't say, well,

I need to eat a bowl of cereal and a sandwich before I can go eat that steak dinner. No, you just go to their house, and you dig into the feast that your friend has made for you, and you can think of your

Bible reading in the exact same way. You miss a day. You miss a couple of days. You don't necessarily have to go back and make all of it up.

Just jump in with wherever you ought to be reading that day, and just get back in the habit.

Think of it like eating. There's a feast that God has given you in His Word. Pick up your fork and dig in.

It's good, and it's good for your soul. The other thing that I would encourage you is to ask some questions while you're reading the

Bible. This will help you understand what God is saying to you. The first question you want to ask when you're reading is just plain and simple, what does this say?

If you can just restate whatever chapter it is, whatever paragraph it is that you're reading, just restate what does it say, and then think about what did it mean when the first people who read this.

If you're thinking about one of Paul's letters in the New Testament, he writes a letter to the Ephesians. You want to think, what did the

Ephesian church, what did this mean to them? Think about that a little bit, but don't get too bogged down there.

Maybe you don't know what the context of the Ephesians, what that was, that's okay, but as you read and you think about what it just plainly says and what it may have meant to the first reader, then

I want you to start asking questions about what does it tell me about God?

That's probably the most important question that you can ask. If you don't ask any other question while you're reading the scriptures, ask what does this tell me about God?

What does it tell me about His character? What does it tell me about His actions? What does it tell me about His relationship with this world and mankind and me?

You want to ask, what does it tell me about God? You also want to ask, what does it tell me about mankind? What does this scripture reveal about people and more specifically, what does this scripture reveal about me?

You can ask those questions and then as you think about what it reveals about people and you in particular, then you can ask, what does this passage, what does it demand?

Is there a command? Is there something that I am to do? Or what does it tell me about who

I am to be? What does it tell me about my character? What does it demand of me? And then you can also ask the question related to that is, how does what

I'm reading here in this particular chapter, this particular paragraph, how does it change how

I relate to other people? And so you want to ask those questions about, what is it telling me to do and how am

I to live in response to what this scripture is telling me? Another question you can ask is, what does this tell me about the gospel?

More specifically, what does this tell me about what Jesus has done? You see, the grand storyline of the

Bible is how God fixes the world through Jesus Christ. And we want to see the gospel and the implications of it when we read the scripture.

So what does it tell me? Maybe it's very explicitly and direct, maybe it's kind of implicitly, but how can

I think about the gospel and what Jesus has done from this passage? And then the last question you can ask is, how can

I pray? What does this scripture lead me to pray for?

Maybe for myself, maybe for somebody else, maybe in praise and adoration, thanksgiving to God, but how do I pray?

So we ask these questions as we read the scriptures, as we read the scriptures as part of our normal, everyday course of life, and we think of it like a rich feast, or maybe it's lunch, or whatever it is.

You think about it as a meal, something that I don't want to miss, and that I just jump in and enjoy, because God's word is there for your delight, for your joy, for your instruction, and for building you up in Jesus Christ.