“Another blogpost? Really?” And these are the words that I just thought in my head as I was praying through my Bible reading from today. I could almost tell that God was pointing me to write a blogpost about what I was thinking, and was confirmed when a second later I heard a man say “blogpost” on the radio. It really couldn’t be any more obvious. I just don’t want to become that girl who’s constantly posting stuff and annoying people all the time with my “wise Spiritual advice.” While I try my best to not annoy, I must also obey.
*Spoiler alert: Almost everything from this post is either inspired by or stolen from J.D Greear, the Summit church, or the book “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life,” which I highly recommend for everyone to read.
Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Matthew 4:4 “But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
When you read your Bible and just do a quick skim, based on these analogies, you aren’t going to get what you need out of it. If you are in the dark, to shine a light on your path means to not just flick the flashlight on quickly, see the path, and try to remember what you saw, you keep the flashlight on! And when you are eating each day, you don’t just put a bite of food in your mouth and swallow; you chew it first and probably savor the flavor as well. Plus, if you did that… you would probably choke.
You are probably wondering: 1.) “How do I shine a light on my path constantly? Do I just leave my Bible open and tape it to the front of my shirt all day?” No, that is not what I was pointing to. You see, God’s Word tends to leave an imprint if you really focus on it and let it seep into you. The best thing to do would be to memorize scripture weekly so that the Holy Spirit has something to give you when you don’t have your Bible. This way, the Holy Spirit can apply verses to any situation that comes up and “shine a light” on that situation.
2.) “How do I 'chew' and 'savor' God’s Word?” In my daily Bible Study, I “chew” up God’s Word when I get my notebook out and journal about what I read. When I focus on each verse, one at a time, I get so much more out of it! If you come to something that you don’t understand, look it up instead of “spitting it out”. I cannot even begin to tell you how cool it has been recently when I have actually started to look up words that I don’t fully understand, or verses that don’t make sense. My mind is blown every time! (One example is Psalm 42:7. I dare all of you to look that verse up, see how it doesn’t make sense, and then look up Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on that verse… It’s crazy!) “Savoring” is when I focus on one or a few main things that stood out to me from that day’s scripture reading throughout the rest of the day and meditate on those points. Then I am able to apply those things throughout the day. I will be honest though and admit that meditating has been so hard for me and I am definitely still working on that one! It’s already hard enough to commit enough time to “chew” and it’s hard to remember to “savor.” It’s definitely something that’s intentional and takes practice.
Another point that I would like to make, is that I have also learned that doing my Bible study in the morning is SO much better than when I do it in the evening. I am talking about the “chewing/savoring” stuff. To use those metaphors again, there isn’t really a point in shining a light into your life right before you are going to shut your eyes and go to sleep… the light won’t affect you that way! Especially for those of you who can fall asleep with an actual light on in the room and it doesn’t affect you. And most of the time you really won’t remember what you read in the morning. Also, when you eat right before you go to bed, you will still be hungry when you wake up, right? I do, however, encourage you guys to find a Psalm or something similar that is comforting and meaningful to you and read it each night. Mine is Psalm 4, and I occasionally read Psalm 139, Psalm 51, or Psalm 91.
Matthew 4:4 “But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
When you read your Bible and just do a quick skim, based on these analogies, you aren’t going to get what you need out of it. If you are in the dark, to shine a light on your path means to not just flick the flashlight on quickly, see the path, and try to remember what you saw, you keep the flashlight on! And when you are eating each day, you don’t just put a bite of food in your mouth and swallow; you chew it first and probably savor the flavor as well. Plus, if you did that… you would probably choke.
You are probably wondering: 1.) “How do I shine a light on my path constantly? Do I just leave my Bible open and tape it to the front of my shirt all day?” No, that is not what I was pointing to. You see, God’s Word tends to leave an imprint if you really focus on it and let it seep into you. The best thing to do would be to memorize scripture weekly so that the Holy Spirit has something to give you when you don’t have your Bible. This way, the Holy Spirit can apply verses to any situation that comes up and “shine a light” on that situation.
2.) “How do I 'chew' and 'savor' God’s Word?” In my daily Bible Study, I “chew” up God’s Word when I get my notebook out and journal about what I read. When I focus on each verse, one at a time, I get so much more out of it! If you come to something that you don’t understand, look it up instead of “spitting it out”. I cannot even begin to tell you how cool it has been recently when I have actually started to look up words that I don’t fully understand, or verses that don’t make sense. My mind is blown every time! (One example is Psalm 42:7. I dare all of you to look that verse up, see how it doesn’t make sense, and then look up Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on that verse… It’s crazy!) “Savoring” is when I focus on one or a few main things that stood out to me from that day’s scripture reading throughout the rest of the day and meditate on those points. Then I am able to apply those things throughout the day. I will be honest though and admit that meditating has been so hard for me and I am definitely still working on that one! It’s already hard enough to commit enough time to “chew” and it’s hard to remember to “savor.” It’s definitely something that’s intentional and takes practice.
Another point that I would like to make, is that I have also learned that doing my Bible study in the morning is SO much better than when I do it in the evening. I am talking about the “chewing/savoring” stuff. To use those metaphors again, there isn’t really a point in shining a light into your life right before you are going to shut your eyes and go to sleep… the light won’t affect you that way! Especially for those of you who can fall asleep with an actual light on in the room and it doesn’t affect you. And most of the time you really won’t remember what you read in the morning. Also, when you eat right before you go to bed, you will still be hungry when you wake up, right? I do, however, encourage you guys to find a Psalm or something similar that is comforting and meaningful to you and read it each night. Mine is Psalm 4, and I occasionally read Psalm 139, Psalm 51, or Psalm 91.
This is what I do each day (at least attempt to do):
1.) I start my day off reading Jesus Calling to put myself in the right mindset and wake up.
2.) I then read the Summit’s daily reading plan ( http://www.summitrdu.com/bible/ ) to read through the New Testament in a year. I first read the whole chapter, and then I get my notebook/pen/highlighter out and go through it again, but this time I dig into each verse.
3.) Each week I focus on one verse to memorize. I write that verse down every day in my notebook before I make my notes about that day’s chapter. This idea is from a booklet the Summit handed out challenging the church to pray and study scriptures.
(This is the format that I use in my journal each day. You can try this and see if it works for you, but I also encourage you to experiment with your journaling.)
4.) Something that I have learned from the book about spiritual disciplines is that it is always good to transition from Bible reading into prayer by praying through the applications you found in your Bible reading. I then pray through Psalm 5, which is a perfect morning passage, and prayer requests.5.) Then, throughout the day I attempt to meditate on various verses that stood out to me and/or my scripture memorization.
6.) Before I go to bed, I read Psalm 4 and then pray through it. The best thing to do is to bring all of my worries to God from that day so that when I wake up in the middle of the night stressing over something, I can remember that I already handed it over to God.
(I have also started collecting my favorite verses on the wall beside my bed)
I realize that some of you are probably terrified or very turned off from doing a daily Bible study after reading this simply because of the time it will take. You might be reading this and thinking: “I don’t even do a Bible study each day! How am I supposed to do all of that?” You aren’t SUPPOSED to do any of this. In fact, you could never touch a Bible again for the rest of your life. But I will warn you and say that this is something that you NEED to do in order to truly LIVE. God’s Word is God breathed, it is living water, and when we open up the Bible, we allow God to literally breathe life into our souls.
I started out doing my Bible study the “quick flick/swallow without chewing” way that I talked about earlier. Eventually, when I didn’t get ANYWHERE, I decided to commit to doing more for 30 days. So how about this: If you don’t normally do a Bible study at all, try focusing on just one specific verse each day and reading it until you get something out of it. If you normally do a Bible study but you are looking for more, I encourage you to commit to doing the things that I mentioned earlier to get the most out of your Bible reading and see what God does through that. All of this takes time and intentionality, but God also grows your desire to read His Word step by step. It’s a process. I am still in this process. At least give God room to work in your life. The more room you give Him, the more beautiful He can make you!
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