Episode #333 Bible Reading Plans 101: Where to Begin – Learning to Enjoy Life with God

Hey, friend. If you've ever started a Bible plan with good intentions, but then immediately started feeling behind this episode is for you. We're starting here because a lot of times we can fall into the habit of reading the Bible for God when he actually invites us into something much better and much more personal.

But let me back up for a second. God created us, right? He knows everything about us. God is intimately aware of us and involved in our lives. And he, being our Creator, knows how humans experience relationship.

Now, Christianity for a long time, especially here in the West, has coined the phrase that it's not just about religion, it's about relationship with God. But let's take a fresh look at what that actually means. Because I've been a believer for over 35 years, and I can still get that confused. I can still fall into habits of achieving for God and performing for him and doing all of these good activities for God, while missing the opportunity of doing them in relationship with him.

As humans, we develop healthy relationships two main ways: healthy communication and shared experiences. Think about that with the people that you're closest to in your life. When you go through bumps in your relationship, you resolve those through aiming for practicing healthy communication, right? You get to know one another. You share life stories, and you share experiences. It's not just all talk. It's not just all intellectual connection or thinking and knowing about each other. You experience things together. You go through hard things, and you come out the other side. You form fun memories. You have shared moments of laughter and enjoyment and silliness and perseverance as you go through life together.

So our good God, who knows us, who made us and knows how we experience relationship, wouldn't it make sense that he would connect with us in these same ways relationally? It does. That is how God invites us to experience relationship with him in healthy communication and in shared experiences. And one of the greatest ways that gets to grow for us is in the times that we have our Bible open.

We get to read our Bibles with God. God invites us to do that. We're walking in obedience and responding to this invitation to know him when we read the Word. But it's not just something we do for God. It's something that we get to do with him, and that changes literally everything about how we approach Scripture.

I wanna read for us, Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

I picture it like I'm holding up my physical Bible, like a lamp.
I'm on a journey by myself, and I'm holding up the Word to light my path. If I don't know where to go, the light of my physical Bible, I hold it up and by reading the Word, it tells me where to go.

I'm not discounting that picture, but I also want to offer us a different visual.

The word “word” here in the original language means word.
It also means spoken word. It's communication. And so if I think about this, back when it was written in Psalm 119, they didn't even have the New Testament yet. They had scrolls of the law. They had parts of God's written word. And so when I think about it this way, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” and if I take out that picture of my physical printed Bible being the word, the word could mean the scrolls of God's law, his decrees and his precepts. And I think it does, but it also means his spoken word.

God, the things that you say to me, they are a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

This reminds me of another passage, I think it's in Isaiah (Isaiah 30:21), where God is encouraging his people and he says, and you'll hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way walking it, whether you turn to the left or to the right.

And so maybe God's word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path could benefit from a different picture. What if instead of picturing ourselves on a road with a physical Bible, trying to navigate the darkness on our own, we picture it as us on a path with the Lord and His words to us. His communication with us on this shared journey, with him as a lamp to our feet. He lights our path by his communication with us.

It reminds me of Jeremiah 33:3, where the Lord is saying, "Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”

And so today as you start or continue whatever Bible reading plan you're on, God offers you a better way to experience the Bible more with him. You don't read the Bible to prove faithfulness. You read it to meet with God.

So here's a question you can take him to continue this conversation.

God, where have I tried to read the Bible for You and how can I read with You instead?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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