Think twice before deciding to read the Bible in a year

You might be tempted to dismiss this title as “click bait” – provocative headline and the restatement of something fairly widely agreed.

Not this time. I have serious questions about the widespread and very well-intentioned exhortations to read the Bible in a year. Of course, some people can and will do just that – read the Bible in a year. Please don’t allow my thoughts to discourage you. In fact, stop reading right now and go and read your Bible instead!

This post is for those who struggle to read the Bible at all, never mind in a year. It is also for those intimidated by the prospect of attempting such a feat, or been discouraged by past failure.

I hope as well that some pastors might read this post and revise the way they promote reading the Bible to their congregations.

There are many people that struggle with reading the Bible regularly or even at all. Surveys conducted both in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the U.K., bear this out. I say “lesser extent” for the UK, simply because the research is not as extensive here as across the pond.

One piece of research suggests that only 25% of Christians in the 18-37 age bracket read the Bible every day.  And in a 2008 survey by ComRes, 35% of Christians said they read the Bible daily. That means that 65-75% of Christians of all ages do not read the Bible every day. And, unless British Christianity is a lot more robust and disciplined than its American counterpart, “not every day” means something less frequent than not getting around to reading the Bible one day a week. The study by Lifeway, referred to in the previous link, found that only 45% of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week.

For a good while now, Bible reading has been in decline. It is hard to see how exhortations to read the Bible in a year will, alone, significantly turn around the trends in the UK and US.

Why? Simply because we are not only asking people to engage with a whole range of literature, some of which is, let’s face it, not easy to understand, we are also asking them to develop a new daily habit. And a new daily habit of reading which might not be usual for some or even many. To my mind, that is quite a tall order to complete between now and 1st January. And, experience tells me, it is quite a tall order to maintain for the next 365 days. I know, I’ve been there!

Add to that the fact that the Bible is almost 200,000 words longer than War and Peace, you begin to get some idea of the spiritual Everest we are presenting to some inexperienced spiritual mountain climbers.

It might be objected that I am leaving no room for the Holy Spirit’s help. Perhaps. But then again, I don’t know of any scripture where we are commanded to read the Bible in a year. And given that the command doesn’t exist, I could equally query whether we are not actually hampering the Holy Spirit by imposing on ourselves something that He has not expressly commanded.

So if my reservations about reading the Bible in a year have any merit, what should our approach to reading the Bible be?

Deal with your guilt

Firstly, I believe that many of us need to deal with guilt about our lack of Bible reading. Some of that guilt has come about because we set unrealistic targets or we listened to the advice of someone who told us we should read the Bible in a year. In other words, we set ourselves up for failure. And guess what? We failed. Worse still, the experience of failure has kept us from going back to the Bible.

We need to apply 1 John 2.9 to our failed attempts at Bible reading. Ask and receive God’s forgiveness and move on.

Get real

Secondly, we need to get real about where we are at with Bible reading. If you have only read the Bible a handful of times in the past year, it’s probably unrealistic to aim to read four chapters of the Bible – which is more less what is required to read the Bible in a year – every day up until the end of December 2018. Now, I am not saying this is impossible. People can go from couch potato to marathon runner in six months. But it requires enormous discipline and a fairly big lifestyle change.

The same is true of Bible reading. Some of your down time or leisure time has to be given to reading the Bible. The more you want to read, the more time you have to devote to it. The equation is that simple.

Remind yourself of the overall objective of Bible reading

Bible reading is not an end in itself. And it is not a way of gaining spiritual brownie points!! The whole point of reading the Word of God is to grow in our relationship with God.

Set some realistic goals

There are at least two types of goals you can set to do with Bible reading. One type of goal is a quantity goal. In other words you work out how much you want to read. The second type of goal is a quality goal. It is more about what you want to experience from reading the Bible.

Quantity goals will help to develop your working knowledge of the Bible. It’s about knowing the various stories and how things fit together. Those kinds of goals don’t initially seem as spiritual as quality goals, which I’ll explain below. However, they help you to develop biblical thinking.

I would also suggest that like seed sown in the spring time, you don’t always see the immediate results of quantity goals. What you might find is that the Holy Spirit uses your knowledge of scripture that lies hidden in your heart and brings it to your memory when you need it. A scriptural example of this is found when Jesus was tempted by Satan. He countered Satan’s suggestions with “It is written…” and quotes from Deuteronomy (Matthew 4; Luke 4).

By reading the word in this way you are soaking yourself in scripture. The word is dwelling in you (Colossians 3.16) and it is renewing your mind (Romans 12.2). You are increasing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1.10)

Quality goals – it’s not a great term but the best I can think of! – are not just about attaining a knowledge of God’s Word, they are to do with meditating on chunks of it at a time. Or studying some parts in depth.

One of the best ways of meditating on the Word of God is by using the simple acronym S.O.A.P..

Scripture – read a chapter or two and choose a portion for reflection.

Observation – write down your observations about the passage you have chosen. Record your questions / feelings / thoughts about the passage.

Application – ask yourself how what you have read applies to your life.

Prayer- write out a prayer based on your observations and application.

This link will take you to a fuller description of S.O.A.P. with a 10 minute video explaining and illustrating each step. Your S.O.A.P. doesn’t have to be as lengthy as the example in the video. Short S.O.A.P.s can be very effective.

What might quality and quantity goals look like for Bible reading. A quantity goal might look something like this:

“I will read through the whole of Matthew’s gospel by the end of January”.

A quality goal might look like the following:

“I will produce eight S.O.A.P.s based on passages from Matthew’s gospel by the end of January”.

Both these goals have the characteristics of well thought out goals. They are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely (S.M.A.R.T.). For some, they would be easily attainable. For others, they are difficult to attain. Some need to set higher goals than the examples given. And some need to set lower goals. It just depends on where you are with Bible reading! Just don’t set targets that you know are impossible to achieve!

You need both types of goals to achieve the overall goal of Bible reading, namely a growing, fruitful relationship with Jesus.

Make a realistic plan

On the basis of the last point about goals, construct a realistic plan. If you can manage one chapter every day, you could easily read, for example, the four gospels, Acts and the book of Proverbs in six months.

For some reading this post, that is no big deal. For others, that would be a major achievement. Don’t be intimidated by the reading achievements of others. They don’t set the standard for you. Measuring your progress from where you currently are is more important – and more helpful – than measuring yourself by an arbitrary standard of Bible reading perfection.

Recognise the power of reading /studying the Bible in a group

One great way to read the Bible is to do it with other people. Why not consider getting together with some friends and reading together? Community Bible Experience is one great way of doing this. The group follows the same Bible reading plan. You read the Bible in your own time and then get together with your group to discuss what you have all been reading.

Handling failure

If you follow all the advice given above, but find that you are still not reading your Bible every day, don’t give up. Don’t let failure keep you away from Bible reading. Reading a little bit of the Bible is better than reading none at all. God might just speak to you through the little bit that you read!

Conclusion

Bible reading is so important. And it’s so important that we must do all that we can to make it accessible to as many people as possible. To do that we need to ensure that we are not imposing systems of Bible reading that have more to do with our well intentioned traditions than with either scripture itself or basic spiritual wisdom.

If you do decide to read the Bible in a year, I hope you realise your goal. However, if you find yourself well behind by the third week in January, ditch the plan. Make a new, more realistic one. But whatever you do, don’t ditch the Bible.

An Ancient Text For Modern (Or Postmodern) Times

Introduction

2015 has been a year of numerous anniversaries. My parents celebrated fifty years of marriage in 2015. And of course, Elim celebrated its one hundredth birthday.

There were of course other significant anniversaries in 2015 as well. In February 1915, photographs were required on British passports for the first time. The Women’s Institute was founded in 1915.

In June 1815, Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. And, stretching back even further in time, on 19^th June 1215, King John signed Magna Carta at Runnymede.

All of these events have had a direct bearing on the way we live today.

History has shaped who we are. Our society is shaped not only by the societal currents of today, but those of yesterday as well.

An ancient text with no relevance for today?

It is against such a background that we should weigh the oft repeated criticism that the Bible, because it is an ancient text, has little relevance to life in the twenty-first century. Historical events and documents referred to above indicate that dismissing something because it lies outside the modern era is a bit reckless and betrays a superficial grasp of how society functions and develops.

In addition to the many instances and ways in which society has been shaped by history, there are the numerous other ways in which life and thought today are informed not just by the recent past, but also by the ancient past.

Perhaps the most obvious example is that of other religious faiths. The Quran, for instance, still influences the lives of millions of people today.

Another way in which ancient texts impact upon society today, is found in the ongoing influence of the classical world on contemporary thought.

Take the legal system, for example. The English legal system is based on common law or case law. In Scotland the legal system owes more to the influence of Roman law.

Or military strategy. Military officers in training still pick apart Hannibal’s victory at the battle of Cannae .And you could add the ethical role of the Hippocratic Oath in medicine. Or the influence of Euclid on mathematics.

And how could you fail to recognise the impact of the ten commandments on our legal system and on the personal morality of millions?

The idea that the ancient world or an ancient text has little relevance for life today is simply not borne out by the facts.

Even if it is not irrelevant, why should we believe it?

So given that the Bible is not irrelevant simply because it is an ancient text, why should we believe it?

The most obvious answer is that the Bible is the Word of God. And we know it is the Word of God because of the witness of the Spirit.

Ultimately, the Bible is relevant to twenty-first century life because it is the timeless Word of God.

The witness of the Spirit

How do we know it is God’s Word? We know it is God’s Word because the Holy Spirit has given us the ability to recognise it as God’s Word. Here’s what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.12:

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 

This is entirely consistent with what Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit’s role as teacher:

The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you (John 14.27; See also John 16.13)

The primary reason we should believe that the Bible is the Word of God is because of the Spirit convincing us that it is the Word of God.

That is what the church has taught for twenty centuries. This is crucial to our understanding of the authority of scripture. We simply cannot recognise its true nature, let alone begin to understand it without the help of the Holy Spirit.

Five additional reasons that support the witness of the Spirit

So we come back to the question of why we should believe that the Bible is the Word of God. What reasons are there beyond our own spiritual experience?

Firstly, there is the faith of the church.

Throughout church history the church – in all its branches – has recognised the Bible as the Word of God. 2 Timothy 3.16 has been taken at face value as a statement of divine inspiration and authority.

This collective witness to the authority of scripture counterbalances the personal nature of our recognition of the Bible as God’s Word through the witness of the Spirit. Far from detracting from our own experience of the Bible, it  acknowledges that our personal conviction based on the Spirit’s witness to God’s Word is confirmed by the church today and throughout history.

Secondly, there is the historical basis of the Bible

The Bible is not just a collection of religious writings. Its events are recorded as having happened at actual times and in actual places. Luke, for example, places the birth of Christ (Luke 2.1-3) and also the ministry of John the Baptist (Luke 3.1-2) firmly in a historical context.

Additionally, the textual evidence for the New Testament is far stronger than for that of any other piece of ancient literature, historical or otherwise. There are over five thousand eight hundred Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in existence today. If we can’t trust the New Testament as historically authentic, we cannot safely trust any other work of literature from that era or before.

Thirdly, there is the witness to Christ and of Christ

In His life and ministry Jesus fulfilled something like over three hundred prophecies referring to Him in the Old Testament. Given that Jesus had no control, humanly speaking about where He would be born and the details surrounding His death, the fulfilment of prophecy is a very powerful argument for the authority of the Bible (See, for example, Micah 5.2 / Matthew 2.6; Isaiah 53.12 / Matthew 27.38, 57-60 )

Then there is Jesus’ own view of the Bible. He appeals to Old Testament scripture as having divine authority and warns against attempts to tamper with God’s law (for example, Matthew 5.17-20)

The above arguments are powerful reasons in support of the authority of scripture.

However, there are two further arguments that might not carry the theological weight of the two just mentioned, but in their own way they are compelling.

So fourthly, the influence of the Bible on culture, especially on Western culture.

There is no doubt that Bible has had a significant impact on the history of the world, especially the Western world. The sixteenth century reformation unleashed ideas that have had a lasting impact not only on the church, but on Western thought and politics.

The Bible’s influence is not restricted to just those arenas.

Melvyn Bragg, not someone known for His faith, said of the King James Bible: “There is no doubt in my mind that the King James Bible and not Shakespeare set this language on its path to become a universal language on a scale unprecedented before or since.”

Finally, the experience of Christians throughout the world and throughout the ages testifies to the power of the Bible as God’s Word.

Millions of people today and for millennia have turned to the Psalms for comfort in difficult times. Millions have had their lives changed by the gospels and New Testament epistles.

Actor David Suchet, famous for his role as Poirot, recounts how he read Romans in a Gideon Bible in a hotel room and his life was transformed. And how many more could testify to that kind of encounter with God through His Word?

The Bible continues to impact and influence the lives of many. Because it is an ancient text in no way makes it irrelevant. Age and relevancy do not depend on each other, as we saw earlier.

The Bible still has the power to change lives because it is still the Word of God.

I’ll close with a quote from Lee Mack. When Mack was the castaway on Desert Island Discs and was told that he would have the Bible to read on the imaginary desert island, responded:

I’m glad you get the Bible, because I would read the Bible. I think it’s quite odd that people like myself, in their forties, quite happy to dismiss the Bible, but I’ve never read it. I always think that if an alien came down and you were the only person they met, and they said, ‘What’s life about? What’s earth about? Tell us everything,’ and you said, ‘Well, there’s a book here that purports to tell you everything. Some people believe it to be true; some people [do] not believe it [to be] true.’ ‘Wow, what’s it like?’ and you go, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never read it.’ It would be an odd thing wouldn’t it? So, at the very least, read it.”

It would be an odd thing indeed to not to read a book which purports to tell you everything. It would be an odd thing indeed not to read it because you concluded that it was old and therefore not relevant to modern life.

A fortune waiting to be discovered

If you read last weeks post, you will have no doubt about what the Bible says about the power of our words and how even recent psychological research confirms that. Words are powerful things.

What is even more powerful is God’s Word. His Word to all of humanity is given to us in the Bible. Most of us know that. We know and believe God’s Word is true, even if we don’t understand it all. We know that when God speaks, things happen, things change.

However, we sometimes overlook God’s desire for us to take hold of His words and apply them to our own lives and circumstances. Jesus said in Matthew 4.1 that man does not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He spoke those words when tempted by Satan. In fact, Jesus used God’s word to resist every line of attack from the devil.

It’s not only Jesus who is given God’s word to use as a weapon. Paul says in Ephesians 6.17 that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. The word translated “word” is the Greek word rayma. It is also used in Matthew 4.1. Although the distinction between rayma and logos (the other Greek word used to translate “word” – I know it gets confusing!) is not as pronounced as some think, nevertheless the use of rayma does draw attention to the spoken dimension of the “word”.

Why am I saying all that? Firstly, because the word is our weapon in spiritual conflict. Of all the spiritual armour, it is the only offensive weapon. Secondly, when we talk about the word in this context we are not simply talking about the whole Bible. This is a word from God that is specific and appropriate to our situation.

How do we receive such words? By asking the Spirit to open our eyes as we search the scriptures to find what God is saying. Often those words come in the form of promises. Philippians 4.6-7 is a good example of a promise from God: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Bible is packed with promises. Promises that we can claim. Promises that we can speak out in prayer. Promises that we can use like a sword as we engage in spiritual conflict. And they are all there in the Bible. Just waiting for you and me, with the help of the Holy Spirit to discover them.

In 2010, Haiti experienced a massive earthquake. To the appalling poverty which had come to symbolise Haiti was added further devastation and disruption, along with untold suffering. Two years ago, however, a Canadian mining company discovered a seam of gold and precious metals in the mountains in the north of the country. The deposits of gold are estimated to be worth about twenty billion dollars. A whole nation was and is living in abject poverty, yet all the time there was and is a twenty billion dollar fortune waiting to be discovered.

There is a wealth of divine promises for you and me in God’s Word. They are just waiting to be mined. Let’s get digging.