Read the Right Way

Billy Sunday, who became one of the greatest evangelists of his generation, received this advice as a young man: Spend fifteen minutes a day talking to God in prayer. Spend fifteen minutes a day letting God talk to you through the Bible. And spend fifteen minutes a day talking to someone else about Jesus. If you do these things, you never will be called a backslider.

That was good advice. I’ve never met a Christian who was failing spiritually and at the same time was studying the Bible diligently. You see, the Bible doesn’t just contain truth; the Bible is truth. It is the standard by which we measure all other so-called truth.

Psalm 1 tells us, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1–2 NKJV). The word meditate means to ponder, to think it over. Sometimes we read the Bible with no comprehension. We see it as a religious duty.

You may read three chapters a day, but if that doesn’t affect your life, if you don’t understand what you’re reading, then you’d be better off reading three verses. It’s possible to read the Bible out of pure duty and not remember anything. Or maybe you read the Bible like a self-help book. The Bible is much more than that. It is the very Word of God, and we should read it that way.

Success or failure in the Christian life is dependent on how much of the Bible we get into our hearts and minds on a daily basis and how obedient we are to it.