It's really valuable to attempt to read the entire Bible in a given year. Uh, we talked about that last time. Uh, but we also need to go deep in particular passages too, uh, which leads to today's question from Mark in New Brunswick, Canada. Dear Pastor John, I've just finished reading your latest book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally.

And while I found it delightful and challenging in some respects, in other respects, I found it overwhelming. Some of the deeper methods you mentioned in the book, like sentence diagramming and arcing, seem to be very time consuming, and I'm wondering how to incorporate some of these into my already very busy life.

Working as an office professional for over 50 hours per week, plus having a family, uh, plus being involved in various leadership functions within my local church, I wonder about my time constraints and do you ever just read the Bible devotionally without getting into all the sentence diagramming and digging and arcing you mentioned in the book?

Is there a more common approach you take in your daily devotional reading each morning? The answer is yes. Yes, I do read the Bible devotionally like that. I think I understand what you mean, like that every day without getting into the actual diagramming and arcing on paper or online, although once you've done enough analyzing of that sort over the decades, it happens fairly automatically in your head.

And yes, there is a way that I approach the scriptures daily in this more devotional fashion. In fact, there's a five minute video over at DesiringGod.org called "Aptat, a Strategy for Daily Bible Reading." I just saw it yesterday, and so it'll be there probably whenever you listen to this, and all you have to do is type into the search "aptat, a strategy for daily Bible reading." So I'm not going to go into those details again here.

What I think will be more helpful here is to paint a biblical picture that might inspire a kind of radical engagement with the Bible for the purposes of radical living for Christ. You know, my goal in writing that book and in everything I've ever done with regard to the Bible, my goal is not to produce a lot of Bible nerds, but a kind of Christian or a kind of Christians who are so deep and unshakable in their convictions about eternal reality that they are not blown over by the winds of trouble and don't simply float mindlessly along conforming to the currents of contemporary culture, but use the Bible to become like oak trees.

That's one image you might use from Psalm 1, but strong trees planted by streams of water that stand in the winds of adversity and give shade to people and bless people. Or another image would be one of my favorites, like not like jellyfish floating in the currents of culture, but like dolphins who cut their own path against the current and actually reach people who are stranded in need.

Those are my goals, a kind of radical, risk-taking, sacrificial, loving, countercultural people who make Christ look magnificent in this world because they find so much joy in him and have broken free from the selfishness that is so endemic to all of us and to this world. That kind of Christian living in that kind of crazy, countercultural, uncomfortable way of serving the glory of Christ is not going to come into being by mere natural, casual, ordinary encounters with the Bible.

Something radically different has to happen in the presence of the Bible for this person to come into being and to be sustained for 60 or 70 years of spiritual warfare. So I'm not looking for a way to say that the pathway into the precious and powerful riches of Christ is an easy pathway.

I'm not trying to make it easy for anybody. It's just not going to do any good if we only take the easy way. There's a roaring lion, supernatural roaring lion at every turn in this pathway, and his aim is to keep you from finding the glories of Christ in the scriptures.

So here's the picture I want to create, not the picture of the tree standing the winds of adversity and not the picture of the dolphin cutting through the currents of culture. I love those pictures, but here's the biblical picture that I want to create to inspire. Proverbs 2, 3 to 6, "My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding," and here it comes, "if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God." Or Psalm 19.10, "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold." Or Psalm 119.72, "The law of the Lord is better than thousands of gold and silver pieces." Or verse 127, "Your commandments are above gold, above fine gold." So here's the picture.

Suppose you discovered that 1,000 years ago, your backyard was a burial ground for the greatest treasures of that bygone world. Huge chests of gold and silver are very likely buried not too far beneath the surface in your backyard, and your city has laws on the books that says anything discovered in property that you own is your property.

And after a week's little poking around and exploration, you had begun to find incredibly valuable treasures, treasures that could put all your kids through college and treasures that could get you out of debt and treasures that could make you a benefactor of a hundred worthy causes, treasures worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars like gold and fine gold.

Would you say, "Well, I'm busy. Got a lot to do. I doubt it." It really does come down to a matter of how desperate we are to get rich with true riches, the riches of Christ and the wealth of his glory and his wisdom and his power for living the kind of radical Christian life this world so desperately needs.

So my very practical suggestion is this. Find a slot. I'm just talking one now, not seven. Find a slot in your week, perhaps Saturday morning early before you have to do a lot of stuff with the kids or work in the yard, Saturday morning early or Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening on the Lord's Day where you do once a week some serious digging in God's backyard.

But then on most mornings, you just give yourself to a more devotional kind of meditation on the word. It's never the one or the other, never. It's always both and in proportion to our gifts and the situation we have in life and the burden and calling we feel by the Holy Spirit to be a strong, uncompromising, compassionate, persevering, sacrificial, risk-taking, loving kind of Christian requires two kinds of encounter with the gold and the silver of God's word.

One kind of encounter involves sweat, dirty hands, aching back from all the digging in the backyard. And the other kind, just as important, is more tender when you're holding the gold piece and wiping it off carefully, blowing the dirt off of it, and finding it to be a thousand years old and worth thousands of dollars.

And you're lifting it up to the light and you're tilting it back and forth and you're saying, "Wow, amazing, beautiful, glorious, awesome." And your heart is feeling zeal and joy and contentment and eagerness over the beauty of this gold you just found. That meditative, affectionate, tender moment is just as important as all the backyard digging.

Both of these are utterly important. And Mark, I will pray with you and all of us that God will show you, show me the kind of combined tough study and tender cherishing that we're going to need to be the kind of Christians that this world so badly needs. - Yeah, amen.

Thank you, Pastor John, for helping us carve out time to study Scripture in depth in the midst of the bustle of daily living. I really appreciate that perspective and for the way you explain Bible study in its preciousness and what it should be to us. And thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your week.

You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive. You can reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that relate to how to study the Bible deeply in the middle of a busy life. You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

I am your host, Tony Reinke, and we will see you back here on Friday. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪