There are more than twenty mistakes we can make when reading the Bible. I made most of them in the past and I’m battling with some of them right now. We will – and we should – constantly fight against them. I will write a post or two about each of them, but I wanted to start with the most serious one – the mistake of reading the Bible without connecting with God.
Let’s see what this mistake usually looks like and then we’ll think about how to fix it.
The mistake
It is when we say: “It’s time to read the Bible”, and then we open it, read a few chapters, close it, and go on with our day. Yes, we’ve read the Bible and we can tick the box in our Bible reading plan, but our mind and heart and soul were not in touch with God. It’s when we do not invite Him to be present while we read, when we do not communicate with Him before, during and after Bible reading, when we don’t think about His text and don’t talk to Him about it. It’s when we read as if reading the Bible was the main goal in itself. That, in my opinion, is the biggest mistake we can make with Bible reading because we are missing its main point. It’s definitely not a way to become more like Jesus and to experience the blessings of God’s Word.
How to fix it
It’s not hard to fix this mistake once we become aware of it. There are seven steps we can take to connect with God through reading the Bible, and the first step actually happens before reading.
1 Invite God
Here is a simple, but foundational principle: Always connect with God before you engage with the Bible. Clear your thoughts from everything else and concentrate on God. Turn your mind, your heart, your soul, and your attention to Him. Call on Him. Invite Him to be present while you read. Tell Him he is welcome. Spend some time in prayer. I suggest you pray about five things.
First of all, see if there is any sin in your life. If there is, confess it to God, because sin is one of the biggest obstacles to fellowship with Him. Ask for His forgiveness. Remember 1 John 1:8-9 – “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (NASB95).
Then, invite Jesus to be present during your Bible time. Remember Revelation 3:20, where Jesus said to his church: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (NASB95).
You can also remember Luke 11:13 – “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (NASB95).
Ask God to open your eyes while you read, as the psalmist said in Psalm 119:18 – “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law” (NASB95).
This prayer in step one is also the time to pray about any internal obstacles that are maybe making it hard for you to concentrate on the text when you start reading, like problems with focusing in general, or a particular worry you might have. There are about a dozen internal and external obstacles to reading the Bible and we’ll talk about them in several posts, but prayer before reading is a good time to deal with some of them.
2 Read the text
There are several possibilities here, I’ll talk briefly about four of them:
The first one is to read quietly, which is probably the most common way of reading.
The second possibility is to read aloud. That’s a very fruitful way of engaging with the Bible. If you’ve never tried it, I strongly encourage you to give it a try for a couple of days. It is good for several reasons.
It sharpens your focus. When reading aloud, you are not only using your eyes, but also your mouth – your lips and tongue – and your ears, so your mind is getting a stronger input, which improves your focus on the text.
It prevents you from jumping back and reading the same line more than once for no good reason.
It increases your attention span.
All of the above means you will probably remember more of what you have read.
It makes you practice pronouncing biblical words and names, a skill that is useful for serving in the church.
The third way is to listen to an audio Bible. The Bible was actually read aloud in ancient times and many Bible stories and prophecies were first heard before being written. This is excellent for people who are primarily audio learners. It also enables you to engage with the Bible on those days when you are not able to read because you are on the move.
Listen and read at the same time. This is similar in benefits to reading aloud because it engages both your eyes and your ears. Focusing more on listening than on pronouncing may help some people to be even more focused than they are when reading aloud.
Take a couple of days to experiment with these ways to engage with the Bible and see which one is most fruitful for you, especially in light of the next three steps.
3 Focus on information about God
You can do that while you’re reading (or listening) or you can come back to the text afterwards and search for information about God. Look for any piece of data about God the Father, about our Lord Jesus and about the Holy Spirit. Be on the look out for their attributes, their plans, their actions, their likes and dislikes, for things that make them joyful or angry or sad, or for anything else that is revealed about them in the text. You can write the main points down every day and take a look at the list after a few months. You’ll be amazed. There are literally thousands of truths you can discover about God in the Bible.
4 Focus on information about your life
As with step 3, you can do that while you’re reading, or you can go back through the text again afterwards. Look for sins to avoid or to repent of, warnings to heed, virtues to mirror and to pray for, blessings and promises to claim, commands to obey, encouragements to take to heart or to use to encourage someone, experiences to have or words of praise to use in worship right away. Write down everything that speaks to you that day.
While you are at steps 3 and 4 – exploring about God and about yourself – perform step 5 along with or after each.
5 Pray (about) the text you’ve read
You can pray about the Bible text you’ve read, but you can also use the biblical text itself as a prayer or as its basic ingredient.
Praying about the Bible text is connected to steps 3 and 4 and you can do it during or after them. Pray about what you’ve found out about God. Go through the list and pray point by point. Thank God for new things you’ve discovered, express your gratitude and loyalty, but also your questions and doubts. These will be the moments of closest connection with God, the climax of the whole process, so take your time.
Pray about yourself, about the feelings you’ve experienced while reading – about confidence or surprise, comfort or fear, joy or sadness. Pray about questions you have about the text. Pray about the list from step 4, point by point. Don’t rush, but give the Holy Spirit time to work in your heart.
At this point you can also pray the Bible itself – in other words, you can use the words of the Bible as your prayer. Praying the Bible can take many forms and it is best learned by doing, but I will give you an example just to give you the basic picture. If you take Psalm 23:1-3, you can turn it into a prayer like this:
1 Lord, thank you for being my shepherd. Thank you for providing for my needs. 2 Please take me to your green pastures and quiet waters. Thank you for doing that so many times. 3 Please restore my soul. Keep me firm on the path of righteousness. For your name’s sake. Amen.
6 Simple journaling
Journaling is listed as step 6 just to make it easier to explain the process, but it is best to perform it during steps 3 and 4 (and maybe 5). You can take notes about the following:
About God (during step 3).
About yourself and your life (during step 4).
About your prayers (during or after step 5).
About anything that stood out during your time with God and his Word.
About any unanswered questions from the text.
7 Closing Thanksgiving and Doxology
You can close your Bible time with thanksgiving and you can even add a short doxology at the end.
Give thanks to God for everything He revealed to you about Himself and about yourself. Thank Him for cleansing you, for giving you wisdom or courage, for warning you or making you stronger – for any experience you have had with Him that day, and then, if you wish, add a short doxology to the end of that prayer.
A doxology is a formal praise to God in one or two sentences. We find them in many places in the Bible. Let me give you an example from Revelation 1:5‑6 – “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (ESV). As you can see, a doxology starts by listing some truths about God and then closes with giving him glory.
You can read your closing doxology straight from the Bible or you can memorize some from the epistles or from the Psalms, but you can also make your own doxology, write it down in your journal and use it, not only on that day, but also on other occasions. It doesn’t have to be long. You already have all you need in your notes about God (from step 3), just take two or three main truths about him (some that touched you the most that day) and turn them into a sentence of praise. For example, you can say: “To you, Lord Jesus, who loves me and who gave your life for me, to you be the glory and honor forever. Amen.” You can pray that doxology during the day to stay connected to God, to praise Him and to remind yourself of the truths about God you have read about that day.
These were seven steps to avoiding the biggest mistake when reading the Bible. If you have any questions, you can write them in the comments below or send me an email to matej@pbsi.online.
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See you on the next post. Until then, dive into Scripture every day – observe thoroughly, interpret carefully and apply with all your heart in order to become more like our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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