I think any Christian from around the world would agree that a key way to continually grow, strengthen, and engage one's faith is by reading the Bible. Obviously, there should be very little conflict when it comes to agreeing with that kind of general statement.

But one of the lessons I learned very quickly when I entered college as a Jesus-following student was the details of how I read the Bible.

It can be tough during springtime to find the motivation to engage with the Bible consistently and meaningfully every day: you have classwork, extra-curricular activities, and the general "summer's almost here" lazy vibe really cuts through any productivity we can have.

I think my biggest mistake starting out as a college-attending Christian is buying into the whole "have a verse of the day" style of reading. (And this is especially dangerous as a new Christian or someone still developing the foundation of their faith.)

I remember just a couple of years ago, I would have my Bible app on my phone send me a daily verse in the morning. Somehow reading a cherry-picked Bible verse in the morning before scrolling through Facebook made me a "better" Christian.

But fast-forward to my second year in college, and I was confronted with a new challenge for me in my faith: wake up a little bit early each morning and read (consistently) from the Gospel According to Luke.

And I did it: two chapters a day (almost every day). The process took over a month, and there were plenty of days where I woke up and I just did not feel like reading. To keep my attention, I would even journal alongside my reading, summarizing what I read and asking questions about all the weird stuff that Jesus supposedly said.

But going through that daily routine opened my eyes to something:

As college students, we often engage with the Bible wrong, and most of that comes from our laziness.

With a daily verse, we can pat ourselves on the back, as we condition ourselves to treat the Bible like a collection of fortune cookies that we can randomly choose from to have a feel good saying to carry through our minds throughout the day.

This is not how the Bible is supposed to be read.

Like it or not, while the Bible is indeed a diverse collection of different kinds of literature, it tells one unified, overarching story about how God is working throughout history to save and redeem the world... with the climax of this story coming in the form of calling us to follow Jesus.

If that truth is what we hold to (that we are accepting the call to follow Jesus) then we cannot become lazy in how we engage with this story we are entering into.

As college students, the "I'm too busy to read the Bible (correctly) every day"-excuse becomes stale and weightless very quickly.

If you, as a college-attending Jesus follower, don't have (at the very least) twenty to thirty minutes each day to dust off your Bible and learn about the story of God and His people that you are claiming you are a part of, then I don't know what to tell you.

Most articles end with a "and here are five easy steps to correct X, Y and Z!"

This article cannot.

The choice to carve out space in our college schedules to spend just a little bit of time engaging with the story that we claim is also our own story is an either "you do it or you don't" issue. It is entirely dependent on whether you see it as a priority or not, and ultimately, if we claim to be independent, twenty-something-year-old adults not living at home anymore, then we should know how to correctly prioritize what we claim is important to us.