How Ought I to Read My Bible?
Some counsels on getting fed while cutting yourself some slack
By Dennis Gundersen
“I like to chew on what I read, so I go slow … but if I proceed that way, only a few verses get covered in a day. So I’m not getting familiar with much of the Bible. That can’t be good!”
“But if I decide instead to read several chapters at a time, I don’t understand a lot of what I read, because I’m not taking time to meditate on it. I cover a lot of Bible that way, but don’t seem to get much benefit from the reading. That can’t be good either! So what do I do?”
And both are biblical practices.
I shall explain:
On the one hand, moving slowly through a text – I mean, at a snail’s pace at times – reading just a few verses or a phrase and milking it, is of great value to your soul! This is part of what the biblical exhortations to meditate mean. Pausing to think, mull over, even write down your observations.
The Hebrew words for meditation actually have to do with talking to yourself, mulling by speaking out loud, thinking the words through by saying them to yourself. Much of the benefit of slow reading is, you ponder, you can take notes, you carefully apply the Word in detail to your life, making sure you are missing nothing, milking it for all it’s worth. There is nothing wrong with the fact that by doing this on a given day, you have not read much of God’s Word – that’s OK! You have taken seriously the portion of God’s Word that you are looking at. That is enough. He has spoken to you and you are being fed.
That is what’s important: is the truth of God’s Word sinking down into you and are you being nourished and built up by it? Slow reading with meditation is one of the best ways to insure that.
But then, let’s say on another day you choose to read several chapters of the Bible in one sitting. So on Monday, you read Galatians 1:1-4, and were captivated by the phrase that Christ “gave Himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age”, and you spent 30 minutes thinking on that and writing down applications to yourself from it. Then on Tuesday, you continued in Galatians and read the rest of the book — all six chapters!
Have you done the wrong thing on Tuesday because you didn’t take time to digest the Word slowly and meditatively as you did on Monday? No! This is perfectly biblical too.
And it doesn’t matter which practice you engage in on which days.
You are likely to understand the overall theme and point of Paul’s letter to the Galatians for having read it all at once. You may want to do that for several consecutive days, to greatly familiarize yourself with the book.
This is why I don’t bind myself to a Bible reading plan or schedule, that tells me how much I have to cover in a day. I just make sure I’m being fed by the Word. I read until it has nourished me.
And yes, on some days that’s more obvious than others. Some days I can tell, a particular portion of the Word very much impacted me. On another day, I didn’t sense it at all – it just seemed to me that I gleaned over many pages and didn’t get much. That’s OK. In ways that I am no doubt unconscious of, my acquaintance with the content of the Bible was enhanced that day. Some portion of what I read on a day that I covered several chapters may hit me on another day down the road.
So back to my point: do some of both!
Trying having two books of the Bible that, at any given time, you are working your way through reading. One of them, you read only a little portion of daily: slowly and meditatively. The other one, you read from that book in big chunks daily. In January 2022, I did exactly this: I chose to read The Epistle to the Hebrews slowly, taking only a few verses at a time, stopping where I wanted to stop and prayerfully meditating on it, saying it back to myself, taking notes and writing personal applications. On the same days, I would read from Ezekiel: often two or three chapters at a time, without pausing to take any notes. Just gaining a better knowledge of the whole book of Ezekiel’s prophecy.
I used the same practices with Ephesians and the Gospel of John this year. I read Ephesians slowly, pondering on and taking notes on just few verses at a time, while reading a full chapter of the Gospel of John daily.
Then, guess what? After completing that, I switched them! I went back and read Ephesians, as a whole, every day for a week! While re-reading the Gospel of John slowly, taking notes on a few verses at a time.
Comparing this to our eating habits, perhaps this could be illustrated by, on one occasion, eating a big meal, a feast, and on another occasion savoring a tiny bite of dark chocolate. Is either wrong? Of course not. You’re just enjoying and relishing the gifts of God in varied ways, and in both instances you can be thankful for what He has given and fed on it in different ways.
Do not read willy-nilly.
My intent to liberate you from binding yourself to the idea that you must read slowly every day and meditate, or must read in big portions daily to complete your Bible reading schedule, is not to make you feel so casual about your habits that, you just get up every day and pick something to read, with no relation to yesterday. That just wouldn’t be healthy. You won’t grasp anything in context doing that. You’ll be likely to misuse Scripture. Pick specific books of the Bible, start them, work through them, and finish them according to reading plans such as were described above, and you will gain huge benefit from your Bible reading!
