Church people like to talk about reading the Bible. And the talk isn’t all that helpful. So what’s the real point of daily Bible reading?
Building Relationship
To maintain a relationship–with friends, colleagues, business contacts, or family members–we have to talk to each other. We have to make time to connect and communicate.
Some friendships are strong enough that you can go months, even years, without much contact and still be totally connected when you see each other, but most aren’t like that. We need to keep in regular contact to maintain most friendships. Marriage relationships won’t work without daily connection. We have to keep up shallow relationships, like marketing or business contacts, with mailings and phone calls and surveys. Even the pseudo-relationships that social media offers require connection. We become addicted to the updates, the likes, the comments because those feel like communication, even though we’re sitting alone at our computer or ignoring the real people around us while we stare at a device.
In reality, relationships require a steady habit of interactions, meaningful interactions, if you want them to survive. And that’s what reading your Bible is really all about.
The Bible is the primary method by which God communicates with us. God speaks through his Word. His Spirit is actively applying that Word to our lives. And if we don’t read it, we cannot maintain any kind of meaningful relationship with God.
This is also why the checklist approach to reading the Bible will never work. A friend who makes you feel guilty for not talking to them isn’t a real friend; they have an agenda. God’s desire is to have a relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to check Him off a to-do list. And he doesn’t have an agenda. He wants us to show up, regularly, to communicate with him. So we can be his friend.
Blending In
The real point of Bible study is not so much about running your eyes over the words God gave us. It’s not about getting more spiritually astute. It’s also not about being able to pass a Bible knowledge quiz.
The second real point of reading the Bible is to blend God’s life with our own. In practical, meaningful, daily kind of ways, we’re looking to intertwine who God is and how he works with who we are and what we do. The end goal is a life so interconnected that we begin to reflect God through our words, thoughts, and actions.
Again, no checklist can do this. Whether we focus on spiritual actions, like bible study and prayer, or physical actions, like taking care of the marginalized or protecting the weak, a checklist doesn’t cut it. We need to be intentionally knitting our lives together with God, so that our good deeds come out of the that connection, instead of being another performance we put on for God.
I like to use the image of a hook. Imagine an elastic rope with a hook on each end. The goal of reading the Bible is to put one of the hooks into the Word of God and the other hook into our actual lives. And leave them there. The more connections we create, the tighter we are bound to the Word and the more effectively we begin to understand not only the Bible, but the God who gave it to us. And as more more of his Word hooks into us, the more likely we are to think like he does. The more opportunities the Holy Spirit has to bring to mind a verse or passage he wants us to remember. The hooks create a framework that supports the spiritual growth that is required as the foundation for the actual work God has for us to do.
The Real Point
God wants us to know him. He wants us to let him into our lives. His goal is to actively work in us so that we look more like Christ.
He does that through Bible reading, when we openly and honestly engage with his Word and create connections between those words and our lives. Checklist Bible reading keeps God at a distance. It’s not the kind of relationship with us God is looking for at all.
He wants the real, deep, connection that allows our lives to be a display of his beauty, power, and glory. And it only comes by reading his Word.
