When people tell me about when they first became Christians, a lot of times they’ll say, “And for some reason I just could not put down my bible. I kept reading and reading and reading… I just had this huge desire to learn about God, so I read as much bible as I could.”
Which is very cool. But that’s not every Christian’s experience. I’m one of those people who plowed through the entire bible, but I know plenty of Christians who admit—sometimes with a great deal of embarrassment—that they’ve read one of the gospels, and some of the apostles, and tried to read Leviticus, and the rest is just bits and pieces.
If that’s you, relax. You far outnumber the bible junkies.
Many times people are made to feel guilty for not being bible junkies—for not being the sort of people who just can’t stop reading bible. They shouldn’t. The only time you should feel guilty for not reading bible is if you’ve promised to read it. There is no command in the scriptures to read bible. Some claim that 2 Timothy 2.15 is just such a command, but that’s Paul’s instruction to Timothy, a pastor—and by extension, all pastors ought to follow it—but that makes it advice, not command.
Still, it’s good advice. Every Christian ought to read bible. It’s the most reliable book about God, and we want to follow God, right? So we ought to read it. Go to the source. Don’t just read what someone says about the bible; read bible for yourself.
For the bible junkies: You’re reading bible already. Good job. You don’t need to bother with the rest of this post. Keep up the good work.
Okay, for the rest of you: You need to figure out how to get some bible in you.
Some of you are not readers. I fully understand. I know; plenty of the testimonies from the bible junkies go, “I never used to be a reader, but now, I can’t stop reading my bible.” Maybe they’re right; maybe God actually turned them into readers so that they’d start tearing through the bible. Maybe they were already readers and didn’t know it. Maybe they’re just so hungry for God that, despite not being readers, they ignore any lack of interest in reading, and read bible. (You can recognize those folks by the fact that they don’t read any other books; just bible.) For one reason or another, they read. You don’t. That’s fine. Everybody’s different.
Two ways you can overcome this limitation:
Audio bible. The bible has been in audiobook format ever since audiobooks were invented. You can find quite a few on iTunes. You can buy bible CDs from ChristianBook.com. Or Amazon.com. Or you can download free bible mp3s from AudioTreasure. There’s nothing stopping you—unless you have hearing problems—from listening to the bible instead of reading it.
I would like to say that there are video bible options, but honestly, most of the video bibles are crap. It’s either somebody reading bible over interesting images, or foreign bible films, or even PowerPoint slides of the words. You may as well listen to an audio bible and read along in a regular bible—or look at pretty pictures, or whatever.
There were actual movies made of Matthew, John, and Acts, where the dialogue is word-for-word bible. The Gospel of John is really well done. The other two suffer from the usual problem with Christian movies: actors who were hired mostly for their devoutness, rather than for any actual ability to act. (Although the guy who plays Jesus is pretty good. He’s a lot happier than Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth. But I’ll get off that tangent now.)
Biting the bullet and reading the bible already. That’s right: make a daily plan to read the bible, and stick with it.
There are bibles that have a reading plan all put together for you. The One-Year Bible, for example, (and here’s the Amazon link) divides the bible into 365 daily readings. (There are even audio versions.) If you skip a day, you can read two readings… but that’s up to you.
That’s not my favorite reading plan, but it works for most people. I’ll share mine next time.