Hello, my friend! Welcome to my blog, and I hope you’re doing well. Today, since we don’t have an Imperishable Inheritance article, we’re going to talk about how to read God’s word without getting bored or sidetracked. To begin, we have a little story from me, let’s get into it!

A Story From Me

After finishing Imperishable Inheritance, I wasn’t sure what I would be writing next. My week began and I debated in my head what I should do.

On Tuesday, I had my online Spanish class. The lesson went well enough, but as we neared the last ten minutes of the class, my teacher asked me to read a story in Spanish. I don’t mean a little one-paragraph story with only dialogue; It was a full-on article, seven paragraphs long, and most of those paragraphs were pretty substantial.

I’d like to take a moment to say, don’t worry, I won’t write my articles in Spanish (For those of you who hoped I would, I’m sorry, no).

I began reading the story, and for the next ten minutes I read the article, mumbling words in a droning voice and not understanding what I was reading at all. I was just trying to survive (I feel like it may have been torture for my teacher too, my Spanish reading voice is not interesting).

The only thing I really got out of the article was that it was about lions and lionesses. I didn’t know anything about the percentages mentioned, what the lions did, or anything like that.

Why am I telling you about my Spanish struggles?

Well, my friend, keep reading.

How Do We Read God’s Word?

When you read the Bible, do you skim or skip? Do you get the main idea and leave the heavy parts that involve hard thinking behind?

The Bible is how we get to know and love God more. If you were trying to start a friendship with someone, would you avoid learning about them? Would you say “I don’t care” when they talk about their likes and dislikes? Probably not. In fact, you’d probably do quite the opposite. As you engage with conversations with your new friend, you would ask them questions, and get to know them and love them.

If Jesus is your friend, do you respond in the same way? Do you search God’s word to learn more about His character? Do you try to figure out what He likes and what He dislikes?

Part of loving God is loving with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. We need to be filling our minds with knowledge of Him, with thoughts about Him. We need to know what He says is right and what He says is wrong because it changes the focus of our lives.

I know, the Bible can be boring sometimes. I recently finished reading the book of Leviticus, and before reading it I had always said things like, “Leviticus is so long and boring” and, “No, not Leviticus.”

But then I started from the book of Genesis and worked my way down through the first books of the Bible, and I got to Leviticus and read through it. Guess what? I survived! 

It won’t kill you, I promise, and it can be very interesting at times too. What we need to do is realize that the Bible isn’t something far off or hard to comprehend. It’s not in a different language like my Spanish article, and we can understand it. But if we don’t put our minds to it and don’t put the effort in, we won’t get anywhere.

A tip I have can be reading it before your day gets chaotic, or after the day is over, or even when you have a break with free time. If you try to read it while the house is crazy and loud, you’re pressed for time, or anything like that, you won’t get a chance to think and meditate on it. You won’t get a chance to understand it.

And even after you’ve finished reading, keep it in the back of your mind! Remember the message you learned in the Bible and try to keep it in your thoughts for the rest of the day. The Bible shouldn’t be something on your to-do list that you check off once, it should be a wonderful time spent with God.

If you’re having a really bad day with reading the Bible, and you just can’t read or meditate on anything, turn to the Psalms. The Psalms are pure praises and pleas to God, and if you look and listen, you can feel real emotion flowing through the words of the psalmists. Their devotion to God is apparent and clear, and if you really meditate on the words you can see what they were getting at too.

Want to see what I mean? Turn to Psalm 148 and take a moment to read it.

A Piece Of The Bible

In this Psalm, there’s a lot of praise going on. And I mean a lot (I counted the number of times the psalmist says ‘praise,’ it’s twelve).

This is just one of many praises to God in the psalms, and this one is calling out to everything to praise the Lord. In just two verses, the psalmist uses the word ‘praise’ five times.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts!

Psalm 148:1-2

Indeed, we should praise Him. He created us and He loves us and He sent His son to die for us. And reading and thinking about this psalm is part of learning more about Him to love Him. We see His power, His majesty, His goodness for this praise, all in just fourteen verses.

So if you haven’t done so in a while, pick up your Bible and read. Don’t just read, but really think. Think about what the passage tells you about God and His character and think about ways to apply it. 

You can also challenge yourself! Try reading and studying a book you’ve never read before (or maybe even dreaded)! Don’t be afraid to try because of past failure in reading the book, you can do it!

Final Thoughts

I hope this article was helpful for you. Let me know in the comments or through the contact page what book of the Bible you’ve struggled to get through before, and if you’ll accept my challenge to try again!

If you haven’t already, please consider signing up for my email list to receive three exclusive articles about reading the Bible with a friend, notifications when I post, and my monthly newsletter!

Have a blessed day, 

~Caroline