Over this break I made it a goal to try to read through some of the huge stack of books that has been forming since freshman year of college. Being a college student doesn’t allow for much fun reading time, but that hasn’t stopped me from purchasing books I want to read eventually. One of the books I was able to read over break is called Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst. It was awesome. Totally a book I would recommend, seriously, you should go buy one right now. Christianbook.com always has good deals (just ordered a copy for a friend and it's currently $8.49). Anyway, I bought the study guide that goes along with this book that spends a lot of time studying Scripture. As I read through her commentary on a passage I had read many times before, I started to think about how much attention I fail to give to studying the Bible when I’m reading it. Being a lover of analogies, I was super hyped when one came to mind for this...
Reading your Bible quickly is a lot like rushing through a meal. When you quickly eat, you don’t take the time to savor it. Eating a meal slowly allows for it to be enjoyed. You take your time and taste all the flavors. You chew slower and think about what you’re eating. Which seasonings were used for this? How does this mixture of tastes and textures work together? Do you hate it? Like it? Love it? All of this is thrown out the window when you speed eat. You chew so fast that you hardly taste it. There have been several times recently where I have been sharing a meal with a good friend and I get so caught up in what my friend is saying that I subconsciously eat way too quickly and then all of a sudden I realize that I hardly enjoyed the food because I ate too fast. Sure, it was still good, but it could have been better if I simply slowed down.
A thousand times worse than not getting all you can out of the food you paid for is not getting everything you can out of reading the Bible. More often than catching myself eating food too quickly, I find myself speed reading through a chapter of the Bible. When I finish I might be able to remember the basics of what happened, but what about all that can be gained from analyzing the passage?
The New Testament is filled with the completion of so many prophecies of the Old Testament. The Old Testament may seem harder to understand, but there is so much more that can be gained from taking time to look up confusing aspects or reading your Bible’s footnotes along with the chapter. Psalms can be read as prayers as opposed to just text. Reading the Gospels is great, but what if you read them and took notes on how Jesus responds and acts and then used that to live your life more like Christ. These are just a few of the thousands of different things that can be gained from taking one’s time to read the Bible. Most importantly, when we read the Bible, not just to get through it, but to understand it all, we are learning more about God and all that He is. Through learning more about God we can love Him greater and also love others more deeply.
Last week I wrote about the importance of reading the Bible, but if you speed through it, you're bound to miss out on more than you would think. In conclusion, consider reading your Bible daily. For more about that, read this. And when you read, read well. Not because I'm encouraging you to, but because it will help you to learn more about God and His Word.
