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Today we’re going to talk about reading the Bible. When I was younger, my grandmother gave me a Bible and always said, “Read your Bible, Steven.” I confess, at the time, I didn’t really appreciate how valuable the Bible would be in my life. Now, I definitely feel it’s an invaluable part of my life, especially my walk with God.
How to start reading the BIble
So why read the Bible? Especially since it’s a text that’s 2000 years old! Are the elements that we read in the Bible relevant today in 2022? I say yes. While there are many, many reasons one might read the Bible, I’d like to focus on three that have really impacted my life.
#1 Learn the character and nature of God.
Reading the Bible in all the different various stories between the Old and New Testament, you really get to learn the nature and the character of God. Of course, we’ve heard many of these things, from our churches and from all different types of sources. God is loving. God is kind. God is faithful. God is sovereign.
God is holy. You also learn in the Bible that God has a sense of humor, and of course, we learn the things that humanity has done in our past that have even driven God to anger. So learning about the character of God has really been vital for me to get to know Him on a very intimate level as I plan to walk with God.
#2 Learning the nature of man
Humanity througout Scripture has all types of stories and scenarios where we learn about the very nature of man’s greed, lust, envy and also compassion, grace, and generosity. These are things that represent the very nature of man and I feel that reading stories about humanity n in the past has helped me frame and even cope at times when I see that in many ways
man has not changed.
#3 Words of wisdom
Words of wisdom from the Book of Solomon, all the way to the teachings of Jesus Christ we have numerous examples of learning what it means to be a good human being in today’s society. How to treat one another, how to love one another, and how to respect one another. There are many, many, many teachings and examples that we can learn as we not only walk with God, but we walk with our fellow man and try to contribute to being a good part of society.
So how does one get started reading the Bible? I recommend a mobile app actually that’s called Big Surprise, the “Bible“ app. It’s made by a company called YouVersion. https://www.youversion.com/the-bible-app/ It allows anyone to get started at the very beginning levels. You can start, for example, with just a daily verse.
The “Daily Verse” feature of the “Bible” app from YouVersion consists ofone or two sentences of scripture that you can read every day to inspire you and to educate you. You can eventually move up to Bible study plans. The Bible app has an entire library of resources that are topics that are explored in the Bible, and you can pick a particular topic and it will provide the scripture that you can read around that topic.
The Bible app give you the context and it will give you the takeaways on how you can apply that context for that scripture in your day-to-day life when you’re actually ready to dive into the Bible.
Bible reading plans
I don’t recommend reading from one cover to the end as the books in the Bible are not necessarily in chronological order as they would be with most types of historical books.
What I do recommend is you look for a Bible reading plan. I highly recommend a chronological Bible reading plan. They are very popular and they are available from a number of different sources, and you can pick a one-year plan if you’re looking for a plan that will allow you to read the entirety of the Bible within a year.
If you want to read a little bit less, but still get a chance to get immersed in the Bible on a day-to-day basis, a one or two year Bible reading plan will allow you to read the entirety of the Bible at a gradual pace. As I said, I recommend a chronological order plan so that you can actually read the events depicted in the Bible in a somewhat chronological order.
Here are a couple of reading plan resources you can consider:
- https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-reading-plan/
- https://www.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/?version=NIV
- https://bibleproject.com/reading-plans/
I think you’ll find that once you start immersing yourself in scripture and learning the stories of the Bible in all the things that you can gain from reading the Bible to help you in your day-to-day walk with God, you’ll find it an invaluable source of wisdom. Not only for day to day interactions with society, but most importantly, enriching your walk with God.
