Some people have personalities or schedules (or both) that are not conducive to daily time sitting down and reading. If I know there will be a lot of people wanting to talk, I go to the park or a quiet spot in the sanctuary. I wait to turn on the computer, and I close the door. So I have switched to taking the first few minutes when I first walk into my office. Also, having kids who wake up at different times makes my morning routine less predictable. This means that my brain is not at its best when I first wake up. I used to try to do it first thing when I wake up, but there is a glaring problem with this strategy: I drink coffee. I have found that amid the pace of life, Bible reading (like so many other things) tends to eclipsed unless it is structured into our daily schedule. But if Christ claims that daily Bible reading is more important to us than daily food, we can’t neglect our own nourishment, even while seeking to feed others.Īs I have tried to help guys struggling in this area, and also remain vigilant and creative and fresh in my own Bible intake, I’ve come up with a couple basic ideas that some have found helpful.ġ) Plan a regular time and place into your daily schedule And it doesn’t necessarily get easier for those of us who are in ministry or study the Bible in an academic context-in fact, I think many pastors face the temptation of their teaching ministry from the Bible to crowd out, or altogether replace, their own personal devotional reading of Scripture. One of the issues that comes up most often frequently when I am discipling others in the church is the struggle to do daily Bible reading. I might expect Jesus to say, “man shall not disobey the Lord even when he dies of hunger.” Instead, he says, in effect, “even now, as my body wastes away, even here my deepest need is not bread but the Word of God.” In other words, Jesus’ response is not simply a rejection of Satan’s offer, but a reorientation of his condition. But even in extreme hunger, Jesus prioritizes spiritual food above our physical food: “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). His ribs are poking out, and his body is worn away after 40 days of fasting. I picture Jesus there, looking at the stones. And knowing God is the key to the full and abundant life we’ve always longed for.I’ve always been amazed by Jesus’ response to Satan’s first temptation: “i f you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). As we grapple with passages of Scripture, we wrestle to know God Himself. In reality, all pursuit of Scripture must be a pursuit of the heart of the Father, who allows us to know Him by His Word. Just like we learn anything in life, we understand the Bible best when we approach it with the right disposition, seeking to learn and to submit ourselves to what we learn from God. For the church, eagerly anticipating Jesus’s return, Scripture is how we learn to wait on the Lord and live well: in holiness, in active compassion for the widow and the orphan, in pursuit of eternal life, and in bold witness to the lost. Through the voices of the prophets and apostles, God has revealed His will to humanity, including a way of knowing His Son Jesus, the only way to a restored and unbroken relationship with God. God never speaks to us in code – He’s given us His commandments in our own language, so we can know Him. The Bible is the Word of God, so it carries His authority and all we require for godly living.
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