I’ve talked a good bit about the mistake of thinking about reading the Bible with a checklist mentality. Today I’m going to introduce two mistakes people make when they think about Bible study.
Both of these mistakes keep us from reading our Bibles. They discourage us and mix us up and keep us from pursuing a daily relationship with God. And both of them are completely wrong.
Mistake #1 – Thinking it’s about KNOWING A LOT
I have a minor in Bible from a Christian university. I know a lot about the Bible, and I have a lot of background to draw from when I sit down to read the Bible.
But probably, you don’t have either of those things. Is that a problem?
Nope.
Honestly, when it comes to reading your Bible, an open and questioning mind is much more valuable than a lot of background knowledge. Mostly because you can learn all the stuff I know either by reading the Bible itself or by getting the information from another source.
Does it help to know some background stuff? Yep, absolutely. But if you don’t have it, don’t worry about it. God always meets us when we engage with the Bible openly. He wants us to understand it. He isn’t trying to hide it. So read. And keep reading. You’ll quickly get familiar with much of what you need to know.
But it does help to know where to look for extra help, too. You can always buy or check out books on the Bible from library. Books are always good. But if you don’t have time to read a bunch of other books on top of the Bible, no worries. Go online. There’s a lot of great information there (there’s a lot of bad information there, too, so do be careful). If you’re interested, my favorite source for all that background knowledge is The Bible Project. The videos and blog and information here will give you a fantastic start to understanding the Bible–its flow, themes, and characters. Start with their videos series titled “How to Read the Bible.” It’s a fantastic crash course on all things Bible.
Mistake #2 – Thinking they have to DO IT RIGHT
This one is almost as big as the Checklist mistake. Everybody seems to think you HAVE to read your Bible this way … or that way … or some other way.
There seem to be a lot of rules, don’t there? People like to say things like, “You should definitely read that book.” Or “you definitely should not read this other one.” Start with John. (It’s actually a good idea.) Or Proverbs. (Also a good one.) Maybe skip the genealogies altogether. (That’s definitely a good thought!)
It’s like everybody’s got these rules that are supposed to help us “do it right.” But in my experience, doing it “right” doesn’t actually help us do it at all. Mostly it just makes the whole thing feel overwhelming. We sit down with our Bibles, and we try to follow the rules, but it feels stilted or we can’t keep our eyes open or it takes longer than we have time for. So we quit. We give up.
And here’s the thing: We cannot quit reading the Bible. We need it. We need God to be part of our every day lives, and he does that through his Word.
So we need to get away from all the rules. We need to stop worrying about doing it right and figure out how to do it effectively … even if you method looks a bit different from mine. That is totally okay. Really.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to do it “right.” You’ll simply end up not doing it at all.
Avoiding the Mistakes
So what can we do? Can we actually read the Bible, every day, in an open and effective manner? Can we make the actual time count for something more than checklists and Bible minors and getting it “right”?
Yes. We can.
In the next couple of posts, I’m going to talk about a number of ways you can effectively read your Bible. And I’m going to offer a pattern that I think works really well for effective Bible reading. There will also be some other tools or methods that may work for you. Tools can be helpful, more rules are not.
So no more rules. My ultimate goal is to encourage and equip you to read your Bible effectively … every day. I totally believe you can do it. And I totally believe that doing it will change your life.
Just like it changed mine.
