Even One Bite of Scripture Can Feed Your Soul

Do you ever struggle with Scripture study?  I do!  I don’t struggle with the desire to study God’s word or even the understanding of how important it is.  I struggle with how to study the Bible in a way that really keeps me motivated – that keeps me coming back day after day, excited and ready to dive in.  I envy those people who seem to have it so figured out and put together.  You know those people.  They don’t miss a day of study and they have all sorts of scriptures memorized.  I want to be them – I really do!  But it is a part of my Christian walk that isn’t quite there yet.  Do you know what I mean?  If you do, you probably also understand the guilt and shame that can go along with admitting I am not one of those people.  I feel like I am not good enough (yes – that again!).  I feel like I am letting God down.  I feel like people will judge me for it.  You might identify with the sense of failure that goes along with admitting that I am sporadic – irregular and unfaithful in my Bible study.  Highly motivated and reading 10 chapters one day, then skipping the next three because it feels too overwhelming.  It isn’t that I don’t do something every day.  I do.  I pray, I read a devotional, I meditate on God.  But none of that is really diving into God’s word on my own, without someone else’s interpretation from the latest devotional or listening to someone else’s sermon about the Book.  It is sometimes easier to hear or read about the Book than it is to actually read the Book!  And yet I know that the Bible is God speaking to me – His special revelation of Himself to me.  And more than anything, I want to really know Him.  So where is the disconnect happening?

I feel like someone is going to judge how I study Scripture.

One day, instead of beating myself up over my perceived failure, I decided to try and figure it out.  I am pretty excited to share what I learned.  It helped me clear out some of the voices inside me that are always so good at derailing me and keeping me distracted.  Turns out the root of this problem is the same as the root of so many other things I struggle with in life.  I feel like I am not achieving enough – that I am not being perfect enough.  I feel like someone is going to judge how I study Scripture.  Maybe you have some of that going on, too.

Sometimes we treat Scripture like it has an expiration date.

The first thing I realized is that I put all sorts of unreasonable expectations on myself.  I give myself schedules.  I tell myself that I need to read 10 chapters a day, or that I need to read for 30 minutes every morning.  I make it a performance task.  We have all done it and there are elements in the Christian world that encourage that.  How many guides have you seen for how to read the whole Bible in a year?  Do you know how many references pop up on Google when you type in “How to read the Bible in a year”?  So then I had to ask myself, “What is so magical about the time period that we call a year?  Does Scripture have an expiration date?”  I mean, really!  Sometimes we treat it like it does – like if we don’t consume the whole thing within 12 months, it is going to spoil and we will have to throw it out.

There is no magical number for how much to read every day.

Along with that, I had to start asking myself, “Is there a certain amount of scripture that I have to read every day before it starts to be good for me?”  And what is that magical number?  Does it suddenly start being beneficial at 5 chapters? 10 chapters?  30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour?  It is like I was thinking that it was a vitamin or something.  Like there is a “Recommended Daily Allowance” that I have to ingest every day or I won’t be healthy.  Got to get enough fruits and veggies in, after all.

Reading the Bible isn’t an exercise routine – it is a relationship.

Yes, I am being a little over the top here, but the point is that when we set these schedules and strict time limits for ourselves, we miss the whole point of studying the Bible.  It isn’t an exercise routine where we need to get in an hour a day to lose weight.  It is a relationship.  Reading the Bible is a conversation with God.  I can guarantee that if you have to say you will spend exactly 30 minutes talking to your spouse every day, no more and no less, you will be having some pretty serious issues in your marriage. 

Too often I reduce God to a checklist task.

How did we start getting under this pressure to read a certain amount of the Bible every day anyhow?  I really don’t know.  I think like many things, it is intended to be a tool to help us focus and make sure we carve time out of our day for reading the Bible.  And that isn’t bad.  But I do have to ask myself – if we have to schedule time in our day to hear what God wants to tell us in His Word, shouldn’t we start to worry about what the state of our relationship to Him is?  I would hope He would be a priority rather than a checklist item.  And too many days I unfortunately have reduced Him to a checklist item.

Throw out the schedule.

So the first thing I resolved to do is throw out the schedule.  I will not decide on an amount to read or look at the clock to see if I am devoting enough minutes.  I will just start reading and when I am ready, I will stop reading.  Some days it may be shorter and some days it may be longer, but it removes all of that “Am I doing enough” obligation and guilt out of it.

Do we read the Bible as a listener?

But that was not the only problem.  The next thing I had to look at was how I was reading the Bible.  I would start reading dutifully and before I knew it, I was tracking the words on the page with my eyes but nothing was going in.  I had “read” whole verses full of words and hadn’t understood or connected to any of it.  I was reading, for sure.  But I wasn’t communicating.  I wasn’t listening.  It made me think of human relationships.  How many times are we poor listeners with the people in our lives?  How many times do we pretend to listen by nodding and smiling and saying “Uh-huh”, but inside our thoughts are on what we would rather be doing, what is really more important and interesting to us at that moment, and often what we would rather be telling that person if they would only be quiet long enough for us to talk.  My Scripture reading has often been like that, too.  “Uh-huh, yeah, I get it God.  Now that I heard You out, can I get to the part about me now?”  It doesn’t work well in human relationships and It doesn’t work well with God.

Things seemed to pop out of the page.

I wasn’t really sure how to fix that problem at first.  I tried to use superhuman focus as I scanned the verses.  But I kept finding my mind drifting.  Then it hit me.  I was going too fast again.  Trying to get the exercise in and the vitamins taken so I could move on to what I really wanted to do.  I hadn’t yet learned to savor each word.  So I slowed down.  I purposefully stopped after every verse and thought about it.  What did it mean?  Who was it about?  Was there something that God specifically said?  Was there something I had never noticed before?  And if there was something new or interesting or that really seemed to apply to me, I wrote it down.  I got a journal specifically for that purpose.  I don’t write down something for every verse – only those things that startle, surprise or resonate with me.  But I am finding that I am writing down more things than I would have initially thought.  Amazing things!  Things that just seem to pop out of the page.  Things that startle me and delight me and intrigue me.  Things that teach me and comfort me and convict me.  This book we call the Bible is alive!  God is truly in every word.  It has transformed my reading by just slowing down, thinking, and writing a few notes.

It changes what I want to pray about into what I deeply need to pray about.

I know this sounds like the “kumbaya” moment.  The “I was changed and my life was forever different” moment.   I am not going to go there.  I still miss a day here and there of reading the Bible.  I get distracted in my morning routine or I have an especially busy day.  I am not perfect.  But I can truly say that I am so much better.  And that I enjoy it so much more.  I can say that it motivates and deepens my prayer time because I let God have some time to talk to me before I start praying and tell Him all that I want to say.  I know it changes what I want to pray about into what I deeply need to pray about.

It is all good and it is all God.

Another thing it has done is to make me not see Scripture as something I have to tackle and know all at once.  It has made me realize that every word in the Bible is important.  Every word is God-breathed and inspired.  It doesn’t matter if it takes me 5 years to get through the Bible.  None of it is going to go bad because I haven’t read every single word of it quickly enough.  It is going to be okay if I don’t get through books like Leviticus as often as I get through the Gospels or Genesis or other books.  It is all good and it is all God.

“All Scripture is God-breathed . . .”

2 Timothy 3:16-17

And you know, if I had been taking Scripture more deeply and fully in, and savoring every word like it was a piece of chocolate melting in my mouth, I might have already realized that no matter how much I read, or how little, it is all good.  I would have realized it when I read 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”  Every verse – every single one is God breathing.  It is Him speaking to me.  It is Him teaching me, correcting and preparing me for the day, and for His work.  And that is just as true if I read one verse, one chapter, or one whole book.  So throw out the schedule and the time limit.  Dive in and savor hearing the voice of God for however long He needs to talk to you today.  Listen slowly and think much.  You will be amazed at the words you end up writing in your journal.