Deep Bible Reading Strategies for the Tired and Busy
00:00:00.000 | It's really valuable to attempt to read the entire Bible in a given year.
00:00:08.000 | Uh, we talked about that last time.
00:00:09.920 | Uh, but we also need to go deep in particular passages too, uh, which
00:00:14.920 | leads to today's question from Mark in New Brunswick, Canada.
00:00:18.360 | Dear Pastor John, I've just finished reading your latest book,
00:00:21.420 | Reading the Bible Supernaturally.
00:00:23.440 | And while I found it delightful and challenging in some respects, in other
00:00:27.600 | respects, I found it overwhelming.
00:00:29.960 | Some of the deeper methods you mentioned in the book, like sentence
00:00:33.040 | diagramming and arcing, seem to be very time consuming, and I'm wondering
00:00:37.880 | how to incorporate some of these into my already very busy life.
00:00:41.240 | Working as an office professional for over 50 hours per week, plus having a
00:00:45.680 | family, uh, plus being involved in various leadership functions within my
00:00:49.560 | local church, I wonder about my time constraints and do you ever just read
00:00:54.040 | the Bible devotionally without getting into all the sentence diagramming and
00:00:57.080 | digging and arcing you mentioned in the book?
00:00:59.240 | Is there a more common approach you take in your daily devotional
00:01:01.840 | reading each morning?
00:01:03.160 | The answer is yes.
00:01:05.720 | Yes, I do read the Bible devotionally like that.
00:01:09.680 | I think I understand what you mean, like that every day without getting into the
00:01:15.400 | actual diagramming and arcing on paper or online, although once you've done enough
00:01:22.880 | analyzing of that sort over the decades, it happens fairly automatically in your
00:01:28.480 | head.
00:01:29.000 | And yes, there is a way that I approach the scriptures daily in this more
00:01:36.440 | devotional fashion.
00:01:38.360 | In fact, there's a five minute video over at DesiringGod.org called "Aptat, a
00:01:47.080 | Strategy for Daily Bible Reading."
00:01:50.600 | I just saw it yesterday, and so it'll be there probably whenever you listen to
00:01:55.600 | this, and all you have to do is type into the search "aptat, a strategy for daily
00:02:02.560 | Bible reading."
00:02:03.040 | So I'm not going to go into those details again here.
00:02:06.000 | What I think will be more helpful here is to paint a biblical picture that might
00:02:12.000 | inspire a kind of radical engagement with the Bible for the purposes of radical
00:02:19.000 | living for Christ.
00:02:21.080 | You know, my goal in writing that book and in everything I've ever done with
00:02:26.280 | regard to the Bible, my goal is not to produce a lot of Bible nerds, but a kind
00:02:33.400 | of Christian or a kind of Christians who are so deep and unshakable in their
00:02:40.480 | convictions about eternal reality that they are not blown over by the winds of
00:02:47.200 | trouble and don't simply float mindlessly along conforming to the currents of
00:02:55.200 | contemporary culture, but use the Bible to become like oak trees.
00:03:01.600 | That's one image you might use from Psalm 1, but strong trees planted by
00:03:06.640 | streams of water that stand in the winds of adversity and give shade to people and
00:03:14.120 | bless people.
00:03:15.000 | Or another image would be one of my favorites, like not like jellyfish
00:03:20.360 | floating in the currents of culture, but like dolphins who cut their own path
00:03:25.240 | against the current and actually reach people who are stranded in need.
00:03:32.080 | Those are my goals, a kind of radical, risk-taking, sacrificial, loving,
00:03:37.920 | countercultural people who make Christ look magnificent in this world because
00:03:43.480 | they find so much joy in him and have broken free from the selfishness that is
00:03:51.440 | so endemic to all of us and to this world.
00:03:56.440 | That kind of Christian living in that kind of crazy, countercultural,
00:04:02.760 | uncomfortable way of serving the glory of Christ is not going to come into being by
00:04:11.360 | mere natural, casual, ordinary encounters with the Bible.
00:04:17.720 | Something radically different has to happen in the presence of the Bible for
00:04:24.080 | this person to come into being and to be sustained for 60 or 70 years of
00:04:29.360 | spiritual warfare.
00:04:30.880 | So I'm not looking for a way to say that the pathway into the precious and
00:04:39.640 | powerful riches of Christ is an easy pathway.
00:04:43.080 | I'm not trying to make it easy for anybody.
00:04:45.880 | It's just not going to do any good if we only take the easy way.
00:04:50.480 | There's a roaring lion, supernatural roaring lion at every turn in this pathway,
00:04:58.680 | and his aim is to keep you from finding the glories of Christ in the scriptures.
00:05:03.160 | So here's the picture I want to create, not the picture of the tree standing the
00:05:08.760 | winds of adversity and not the picture of the dolphin cutting through the
00:05:12.040 | currents of culture.
00:05:13.000 | I love those pictures, but here's the biblical picture that I want to create
00:05:17.840 | to inspire.
00:05:19.240 | Proverbs 2, 3 to 6, "My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my
00:05:26.320 | commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your
00:05:30.760 | heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for
00:05:36.480 | understanding," and here it comes, "if you seek it like silver and search for it
00:05:41.640 | as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find
00:05:46.560 | the knowledge of God."
00:05:48.200 | Or Psalm 19.10, "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold."
00:05:55.040 | Or Psalm 119.72, "The law of the Lord is better than thousands of gold and silver
00:06:03.200 | pieces." Or verse 127, "Your commandments are above gold, above fine gold."
00:06:10.920 | So here's the picture.
00:06:11.920 | Suppose you discovered that 1,000 years ago, your backyard was a burial ground for
00:06:18.000 | the greatest treasures of that bygone world.
00:06:20.760 | Huge chests of gold and silver are very likely buried not too far beneath the
00:06:27.400 | surface in your backyard, and your city has laws on the books that says anything
00:06:31.520 | discovered in property that you own is your property.
00:06:34.760 | And after a week's little poking around and exploration, you had begun to find
00:06:39.040 | incredibly valuable treasures, treasures that could put all your kids through
00:06:43.200 | college and treasures that could get you out of debt and treasures that could make
00:06:48.000 | you a benefactor of a hundred worthy causes, treasures worth hundreds and
00:06:52.400 | hundreds of thousands of dollars like gold and fine gold.
00:06:57.000 | Would you say, "Well, I'm busy.
00:06:59.920 | Got a lot to do.
00:07:01.800 | I doubt it."
00:07:04.800 | It really does come down to a matter of how desperate we are to get rich with true
00:07:12.040 | riches, the riches of Christ and the wealth of his glory and his wisdom and his
00:07:18.640 | power for living the kind of radical Christian life this world so desperately
00:07:22.360 | needs.
00:07:22.600 | So my very practical suggestion is this.
00:07:27.520 | Find a slot.
00:07:29.480 | I'm just talking one now, not seven.
00:07:32.480 | Find a slot in your week, perhaps Saturday morning early before you have to do a lot
00:07:38.680 | of stuff with the kids or work in the yard, Saturday morning early or Sunday
00:07:44.080 | afternoon or Sunday evening on the Lord's Day where you do once a week some serious
00:07:51.960 | digging in God's backyard.
00:07:55.400 | But then on most mornings, you just give yourself to a more devotional kind of
00:08:01.400 | meditation on the word.
00:08:03.600 | It's never the one or the other, never.
00:08:06.840 | It's always both and in proportion to our gifts and the situation we have in life and
00:08:12.520 | the burden and calling we feel by the Holy Spirit to be a strong, uncompromising,
00:08:19.560 | compassionate, persevering, sacrificial, risk-taking, loving kind of Christian
00:08:25.760 | requires two kinds of encounter with the gold and the silver of God's word.
00:08:31.440 | One kind of encounter involves sweat, dirty hands, aching back from all the
00:08:36.240 | digging in the backyard.
00:08:37.880 | And the other kind, just as important, is more tender when you're holding the gold
00:08:45.240 | piece and wiping it off carefully, blowing the dirt off of it, and finding it to be a
00:08:52.120 | thousand years old and worth thousands of dollars.
00:08:55.160 | And you're lifting it up to the light and you're tilting it back and forth and you're
00:08:58.360 | saying, "Wow, amazing, beautiful, glorious, awesome."
00:09:02.480 | And your heart is feeling zeal and joy and contentment and eagerness over the beauty
00:09:10.200 | of this gold you just found.
00:09:12.240 | That meditative, affectionate, tender moment is just as important as all the
00:09:19.120 | backyard digging.
00:09:21.320 | Both of these are utterly important.
00:09:24.880 | And Mark, I will pray with you and all of us that God will show you, show me the kind
00:09:33.080 | of combined tough study and tender cherishing that we're going to need to be
00:09:41.120 | the kind of Christians that this world so badly needs.
00:09:45.440 | - Yeah, amen.
00:09:47.160 | Thank you, Pastor John, for helping us carve out time to study Scripture in depth in the
00:09:51.720 | midst of the bustle of daily living.
00:09:53.880 | I really appreciate that perspective and for the way you explain Bible study in its
00:09:58.520 | preciousness and what it should be to us.
00:10:00.360 | And thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your week.
00:10:03.040 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive.
00:10:06.400 | You can reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that relate to how
00:10:10.240 | to study the Bible deeply in the middle of a busy life.
00:10:14.880 | You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:10:21.280 | I am your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you back here on Friday.
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