How Are You Reading the Bible?

The New Year gives us a great opportunity to examine our lives, priorities, and goals. Upon examination of our spiritual walks, resolutions are often made to pray more, to grow closer to God, or to read the Bible more. While those first two resolutions listed are great goals to have, they are ultimately tied to the third—we will not pray more nor will we grow closer to God if we are not first seeking Him through His Word.

While reading the Bible is of great importance, how we read the Bible also is a significant factor in our growth as Christians. In his book Read the Bible for Life, George Guthrie writes:

For us, the Bible is not just another influential body of literature. It is a "living" book because it comes from and leads to a living Lord. Hebrews 4:12 reads, "For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart." In other words, God's Word, wielded by the Holy Spirit, has the power to sort us out spiritually, to surprise and confront us, growing us in relationship with our Lord Christ.

Thus, reading the Bible ought to at once be as encouraging as a mother's gentle touch and, at moments, as unsettling and disturbing as a violent storm. In his work entitled Eat This Book, Eugene Peterson rightly notes concerning the Bible, "We open this Book and find that page after page it takes us off guard, surprises us, and draws us into its reality, pulls us into participation with God on his terms." This should be our experience of reading the Bible as we move from dry duty, beyond a checklist Christianity, slogging through the "reading of the day," to an experience of the Bible that might be called a "disrupting delight." If we are not being moved in heart and moved to new places in life—new levels of obedience to God—we are not really reading the Bible the way God wants us to.

So as we embark on 2012, I encourage you to examine your individual reading of God's Word. Are you just reading it as a handbook, a life manual, or a suggestion box? Or are you reading it as the inspired Word of God, "profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may become equipped for every good work?"