Why Your Bible Reading Isn't Helping You
VideoTranscript
This is the video’s transcript, lightly formatted. Tap a time to jump to that moment.
You were taught to read the Bible the way you were taught to study in school, like you'd be tested on it later and you'd better pass. That's a real problem because it's not what the Bible was written for. It was written to read you. We're taught that the Bible's information about right doctrine and that how much of it and how often we read and can recall and repeat, that's the measure of how good a Christian we are. But Bible reading isn't a contest. It's an encounter. an encounter with a person who's sitting in the room with you right now, whether or not you've noticed that he's there.
And here's the thing, there's no method in the world that you can follow to understand the Bible until one specific thing happens. There's a Greek verb that gets used many times in the New Testament for what has to happen first, and it's paralleled in the Old Testament, too. Until that thing takes place, it doesn't matter how much you read the Bible. I'll cover that in this video. If you've ever read a chapter in the Bible and as you started on to the next one, you realize that you don't remember anything from the first, this video is for you. And if it's not even that, if it's worse than that, where you open the Bible and it's just dust to you, where you feel so little you just assume God talks to other people and not to you, stick around to the end. There's a part in this video that's meant specifically for you.
I'll also cover what Jesus said to the best Bible students who ever lived and a man in Bristol who spent 10 years praying on a cold floor and getting nowhere. And finally, the greatest Bible study ever taught that wasn't in a church or at a table, but on a sevenmile road trip made on foot. I was raised in the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I've said before that we had a formula for prayer and Bible study. There was a schedule with an assigned reading for every week. The church services had material that got read out loud with questions asked whose answers were already in the paragraphs of the material being covered. Studying for us was just paring the answers already supplied. And every so often we took a test, a Q&A about what we remembered from the past weeks of study.
It was timed and we graded ourselves based on the answers called out after we were done. If we did good, we felt good. If we did poorly, we felt like we were failing God by not being a good student of his word. Now, if you find that ridiculous, you should. But you also need to stop and realize that other churches run a softer version of the same thing. there's a chart or a plan with how many chapters a day the serious Christian will read in order to finish the Bible in a year or whatever. And when you fall behind, you feel the same way I did if I performed badly on that test, like you're not good enough at Christianity.
Now, I almost always did well on the test. I knew how to find the answers to quote the right verse or reference. I read the entire Bible cover to cover multiple times, but I couldn't tell you anything that God told me personally through all that Bible reading because I read it the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. Bible reading isn't a marathon. It's you sitting in a room with your beloved father and hearing him speak to you. Sometimes that's a short conversation. Sometimes it's a really long one.
But however long the talk, you walked away feeling fulfilled with your heart burning. My last video was about how we were taught to pray backwards, as if we're leaving voicemails for a distant God that we hope takes the time to listen to what we said. The Bible's also been taught to us backwards, as if it's a textbook about that same distant God. And we hope by reading enough of it, he'll see we're serious and maybe condescend to listen to our voicemail prayers or show up in our lives. Like we got to prove ourselves worthy of his attention. [snorts] When you look at the Bible like that, it becomes a subject you're trying to master. And with a subject you're trying to master, you can fall behind or fail completely.
You can't fail in a conversation with somebody who loves you dearly and who you dearly love. Look at what Jesus said to the men who were the best at Bible study in their time. Better than we will ever be, if you want to look at it that way. It's in John chapter 5. Jesus is arguing with the religious leaders in Jerusalem. These men ran the temple and memorized vast portions of the Hebrew scriptures. Now, we use the word Pharisee sometimes as an insult and sometimes as a label of what we don't want to be.
But whatever else we might say about the Pharisees, they were serious about scripture. They ordered their entire lives around the text. How they slept, how they dressed, how they spent their money. Whatever we might say about them, we can't say they were lazy about the way they read the Bible. Look at what Jesus tells these serious Bible students, though. You studied the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me.
Yet you refuse to come to me and have life. The King James version says, "Search the scriptures there instead of study the scriptures." But the last point is the same. Yet you refuse to come to me. Jesus didn't tell them that they studied too much. He didn't tell them to put down the text. He grants them that they're diligent in their Bible study, but he says that their goal is wrong.
They believed the text would save them. But Jesus says the text points to him as their savior. The text is a witness for Christ. And they had completely missed that despite their countless hours of being absorbed in Bible study. And seriously at that, they had the book in their hands that told them their savior was standing right in front of them, ready to give them the life that they wanted. And they completely missed it. Not because they didn't study enough, they studied plenty.
And not because the scriptures weren't clear, but because they turned the text into the purpose. And in doing that, they miss what the purpose really was. So when I say you're reading the Bible backwards, I'm not telling you to read less or study less. I'm saying to aim your reading at the actual purpose of why you should be reading. How much you can read and repeat back to somebody isn't that purpose.
Now, this is not a slam on anybody. I practice the Pharisee version of Bible study for most of my adult life. That's what I was taught. I could win arguments with almost anybody who dared question my doctrine because I was good at it. I knew the verses. I knew where to go. And that made me feel like a good Christian who is getting it right.
But all it got me was endless debate without the peace that comes from knowing the father is in the room with me and Christ lives in me. Now for that word I promised you in the Greek of the New Testament. It's dionoo. It means to open. It's used eight times in the whole New Testament and seven of those times it was used by Luke in his Gospel and in the book of Acts. Luke wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else, including Paul. So that's part of the reason why seven out of eight were from him, but it's not the whole reason.
Let's go through the list and you'll see what I mean. Start with the one that isn't Luke's. Mark 7. They bring Jesus a man who's deaf and can barely speak. Jesus takes him away from the crowd, puts his fingers in the man's ear, looks up, sigh, and says one word in Aramaic, ephafatha. But Mark is writing in Greek for people who don't speak Aramaic. So he translates it for them.
Diono, be opened. Keep in mind that the command there is singular. It's referring to one person being opened, not two ears being opened. And immediately after the man is opened, he can hear.
Now for Luke's use of the word in Acts 7, Steven just moments before being stoned to death looks up and says, "Look, I see heaven open." Again, Diono, this time it's the sky that gets opened. Then there's Acts 16 in Philippi. Lydia, a wealthy businesswoman who deals in purple cloth, very expensive at the time, is sitting by a river listening to Paul. The verse says, "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message." Diono, it doesn't say she opened her heart. The Lord did.
And here's the thing, she was already doing everything right if you view your faith as a checklist. But she needed the Lord to open her heart. Then one chapter later, Paul's in a synagogue in Thessalonica and the Bible says he was explaining and proving from the scriptures. But that word explaining, it's dono. He was opening the scriptures to them. So does God open scripture through people? Yes.
And often preachers, teachers, whoever explains a verse to you and you feel it reach your heart and fill you in a way that your daily study never did because your goal was wrong. But notice that again, the people didn't get opened on their own. Somebody else always does the opening. That is always the case with the word. We never do it ourselves. And here's one more thing. It's a strange one.
In Luke chapter 2, the law is quoted. Every firstborn male who opens the womb is holy to the Lord. That's the very first opening we all go through. And we don't do that to ourselves either. The first time Luke uses the word, it's about a baby being born. And the last time it's a mind opening to see Christ. I don't think that's an accident.
So, we've got a womb, a deaf man, the sky, a heart, and the scriptures. All of them opened. And not once is it ever us doing the opening ourselves. What does that tell you about opening the Bible? It tells you that it's not a technique that you can master. It's something that's done to you. It means that the better plan, the schedule, the discipline you feel that you got to get right when you read the Bible.
All of that is like the Pharisees studying the text and completely missing the one it was pointing them to. They read and they studied, but the scriptures weren't open to them because they had it backwards. You can't be shamed into being open. So, if your Bible reading has been based on trying to keep up with your Christian checklist, you're missing the point. If the opening is something that's done to you by a person, then the Bible isn't a report card. It's a request waiting to be made. The psalmist echoes the same idea in Psalm 119, which is a love song about God's word.
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. There it is again. Open. He asked God to open his eyes so he can see the wonderful things in the law. The psalmist knows where the opening comes from. So that same concept from the Greek is also reflected in the Hebrew scriptures. Scripture gets opened the same way the deaf man was opened by a person, not a method.
Now, real quick, if this is helping you, hit subscribe because there are other things we were all taught backwards that I'm going to be covering on this channel. And let me know in the comments how you viewed the Bible up till now as a rule book, a scheduled task, ammunition for arguments about right doctrine, a test you were afraid to fail, or did you never really think about it at all? And if you want the daily version of how to live from the Christ that's already in you from the time you wake up till your head hits a pillow again at night, I cover all of that in my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. In chapter 22, I cover reading scripture slowly enough to be found by it. It's not about you dissecting the text. It's about letting the text dissect you.
One reviewer wrote that anyone of any flavor of Christianity would get something from this. The link is in the pin comment and the video description. Now, stay with me because that verb open, it shows up three more times in a single chapter on a single afternoon. It's the greatest Bible study ever taught. And the people being taught didn't even realize who their teacher actually was. But first, one man in one morning. If you're new to this channel, here's how I do this.
I start off with a big claim. Then, after walking you through it, I show you somebody who did the same, but who lived long enough ago that I can't be accused of chasing the latest fad or Christian trend. This man's name is George Mueller. He lived in Bristol, England in the 1800s. He trained in divinity to be a state church clergyman in Prussia, but he never took ordination. Instead, he pastored a chapel in Bristol for 66 years. He gave up his salary and he got rid of the rented pews that the wealthy would buy so they could have the best seats in church.
He also built orphan houses on a hill outside town. Never once asking a human being for money. No, he asked God and God always came through. Over Mueller's life, the houses took in more than 10,000 children. Now, I tell you all that so you realize this isn't some weak Christian. This man had a strong devotional life. But for the first four years after he came to Christ, he says he barely read the Bible at all.
He read about it. Tracks, sermons, biographies of godly people. And in his own words, he practically preferred for the first four years of my divine life the works of uninspired men to the oracles of the living God. I can relate to that. That was very much the cult I came out of. Then he started reading it and for at least the next decade he kept a morning routine that 99 out of a 100red pastors would tell you is the right one to imitate. He got up, he got dressed, went straight into prayer first thing right through till breakfast.
Did that result in great enlightenment or peace in Christ? Actually, no. Here's what he says it did. I often spend a quarter of an hour or half an hour or even an hour on my knees before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouraging, humbling of soul. His mind wandered often, he said, and maybe after about a half an hour of that, he only then began really to pray. And he did that for 10 years. In the spring of 1841, he changed one thing about his routine and it made such a huge difference that he repeated the account for the rest of his life.
He changed why he was reading the Bible. The point he says was not for the sake of the public ministry of the word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. He stopped reading for the output and started reading for the input. It was food for his soul. Mueller didn't find a better method of reading. This wasn't some technique. He changed what he was coming to the table for.
So [snorts] he stopped starting off the morning with prayer and instead started with scripture a verse at a time, letting it turn into prayer as he went. When he did those mind wandering half hours before the real prayer began, those all disappeared. It's not that he was praying worse for 10 years. It's that he was praying while hungry. I don't think anybody would have faulted him for reading for the output. I mean, he had sermons to preach, a ministry to run, hundreds of children that were counting on him. But he said, "No, the soul eats first."
And then he says this, "It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see the point, and no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. Nobody taught him what he was supposed to do. He found it at 35 on his own after 10 years on a cold floor waiting to feel something. The path to enlightenment is often through suffering. That's not the best path, but it definitely gets the job done.
It certainly did for Mueller. Now, back to that word open. The last three occurrences I wanted to talk about are in Luke 24. It's the day of resurrection and two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem. It's a 7m journey to a village called Emmas. They weren't walking towards anything though. They were walking away.
their teacher was executed. They were confused because there's reports from some women about a tomb being empty and they're not sure what to make of all that. Luke says they were talking the whole way, going over it and over it the way you do when something's come apart and you're desperately trying to figure out what happened and make sense of it. Well, a stranger walks up beside them and asks what they're talking about. They stop walking. Luke says that. And one of them basically asks the stranger if he's been living under a rock.
They tell him about what happened. And the saddest sentence in the gospels is in those words. We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. We had hoped. Past tense like they'd lost it. The stranger listens and he doesn't tell them who he is. Instead, he just walks with them.
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Explained is the word that Luke used there on purpose. He's about to swap that out, and you'll see why in a second. Every promise ever made, every shadow that ever fell, the entire Hebrew Bible walked through by the one it was written about as they traveled together on foot for countless hours. and they had no idea. Luke says they were prevented from recognizing who the teacher was. It was the greatest exposition of scripture in human history and they had no idea who was given it.
When they finally reached the village, the stranger acts as if he's going to keep going further. But the two disciples beg him to stay. After all, it's nearly evening. And at the table, he takes the bread and gives thanks and breaks it and hands it to him. And Luke writes, "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight." There it is again, that word. Their eyes were opened.
It was done to them at the table over bread and prayer by somebody else. Then the two turn to each other and say, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?" You see what happened there? Luke said as they walked that the stranger explained the scriptures to them. But then they say he opened the scriptures to them. The first word is what he did explained. And the second is what it did to them.
Opened their eyes. The Greek tense here matters and it's something most English Bibles gloss over. It doesn't say he opened it in one clean final act. It's continuous. He was opening it for the whole seven miles. So their eyes were opened and so were the scriptures. Luke uses the same verb for both because it was one event.
The opening of the book and the opening of the reader were the same act by the same person. And here's the thing, and it's enormous. Their hearts were burning on the road before they even realized who the stranger was that was teaching them. They didn't know what was happening in the moment. So, if you've ever had days or moments, and I know you have, I certainly have, where you're reading and something moves you in a way that you can't explain, that wasn't nothing. You are on the road with the teacher in those moments. Well, after that happened, the two disciples got up at night after walking for seven miles and went all the way back to Jerusalem.
That's how much it affected them. They had to go back. And it still isn't finished. Later, Jesus stands among all of them and eats a piece of broiled fish to prove he isn't a ghost. And Luke says, "Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures." All three times eyes and scriptures and minds were opened. Dono, do every time he's the one doing it.
The greatest Bible study in history wasn't from some curriculum the students would be tested on. There weren't any handouts or a pop quiz at the end. The walk to Emmas was two men walking in the wrong direction and the teacher meeting them where they were and walking with them, opening it all up to them as they went. He opened the book and he opened the reader at the same time. And the whole time they had no idea who he was. There's a lesson there. Sometimes we're heading in the wrong direction and we open up the Bible or somebody has a conversation with us and our hearts burn and we realize we need to change course.
But do we stop and realize who's doing the opening? In Acts 17, Paul is at the Aropagus and he says to his audience, "God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not far from any one of us." Those two disciples had the teacher beside them for seven miles and they never knew it. He was right there the whole time. And he's right here now with you, never far off. Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's what the scripture says.
All right, let me handle the objections I heard being typed into the comments as I spoke. Here's the first one. Are you telling me to stop studying? Throw out all the commentaries. Don't bother with the Greek. just feel things. No, I'm not saying that at all.
There's a lazy version of what I'm saying, but it's not what I'm endorsing here. Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of the Lord and to teaching his decrees and laws in Israel. Study that ends in a life and in other people. Paul in a cold cell at the end of his life asks for his cloak and then for the scrolls and especially the parchments. A dying man wants his books. So, absolutely study hard. Learn the history.
Learn what the words meant to the people who first heard them. That's why I started this channel to try and do just that. But study is the road, not the destination. Diligence aimed at the text produces a scholar. Diligence aimed at the person, at God, that produces a disciple. The best teachers are both of those things. You can't skip the second one, otherwise you're just a Pharisee.
Now, the second objection. It sounds like you're saying that whatever the verse means to me is right. Again, no, I'm not saying that it means whatever you feel like it means. There's a real meaning put there on purpose. What I'm saying is that without the opening, you'll never see the real meaning. It's the difference between reading the words, "He is not here. He has risen and having them explode in your chest.
The information was already true. The opening is what makes it yours. And the spirit never opens a meaning that's not aligned with the text.
Third objection. You keep talking about their burning hearts. I don't feel that. Am I doing something wrong? Remember Mueller here? He would read regardless of whether the feeling came. Food is still food even if you're not hungry.
The nourishment is in the meal, not your enthusiasm about it. Your body still gets fed even if you're not excited about the food. And also remember the two disciples on the road to Emmas. They felt the burning in their hearts, but had no idea who was teaching them. So feeling was never the test either. And finally, one that's not really an objection, but a wound. I've tried, John.
I've read it and it's dust to me. Nothing happens. God talks to other people, but apparently not to me. I promised earlier on to address that. So, here we go. I'm going to be raw in my honesty with you about this because I've sat where you sit and I know how it feels and how you don't want to say it out loud because you're afraid to. Right now, your Bible's sitting on the shelf or the nightstand or in a drawer under a stack of bills, wherever.
It's been there for a while. You look at it sometimes, maybe often, and every now and again, you open it up, you read a page, and you put it back having felt nothing at all. Somewhere along the way, you decided that it works for other people, but apparently not for you. Some Christians get the burning heart, but all you get is a page names that you have no idea how to pronounce. You feel that, but you don't want to say it out loud because you're afraid it's offensive to God to be that openly honest about it. But here's what I want you to realize. Every time that verb is used, dano, open, it was used about somebody who feels exactly what you're feeling.
Those people didn't open themselves. They couldn't. That's the whole point. But all of them, all of them got opened anyway. A closed book isn't a verdict about your faith or proof that God doesn't want to talk to you. It's the ordinary starting position. The solution isn't to try harder or read more or just muscle through it.
You got to ask like the psalmist asked, "Lord, open my eyes." [snorts] You're not complaining to God when you do that. You're asking for the one thing the entire Bible says God is in the business of doing. If it doesn't come today, ask again tomorrow. What did Jesus say? Keep asking and you will receive. Asking isn't a test.
It's what you do until God sees a perfect time, opens your eyes, and leaves your heart burning so that you'll never be the same again. So, how does doing all this impact your average Tuesday? Well, first, don't view having a plan as a bad thing. If a reading plan is what gets you into the Bible, that's great. Go ahead and do that. Read a lot. Read the whole thing.
The schedule was never the problem here. The problem was why you were following that schedule. and the idea that you're going to be graded on it and that there's a certain score you got to have or you failed God. But God's not standing there with a clipboard checking your work. What it means is if you start to read and three verses in something strikes you, you can stop right there and not read another word. Just be absorbed in that part of the text. Those few verses that really hit home.
It's not you falling behind. That's you letting the text read you. And that brings me to the second point. When you stop reading the Bible backwards, you realize that you're not examining the text. Hebrews says that the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, and that it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. You're not reading, you're being read. And that's really good news because the one reading you already knows what's there and loves you for who you are.
He's just helping you see it more clearly so you know what to do. If you never open the book, it will never open you. So open it up and let the conversation guide you. And third, this is where it all goes. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 describes people reading the scriptures with a veil over their minds. And he says, "Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away." Notice that wording.
That wording is very important that he used there. You turn to the Lord. That's what I've been covering in the last few videos. You don't travel to God because he's not far off from you. So, you don't need to travel anywhere. You simply turn and there he is. Once you make that turn, look what Paul says.
We all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with everinccreasing glory. The word Paul uses for contemplate is built on the Greek word for a mirror. Thus the title of my book, the broken mirror. Now translators are split on how it should be rendered. Some hear beholding is in a mirror whereas others hear reflecting as if a mirror. The Greek doesn't settle it either way. But it doesn't matter because with uncovered faces we turn toward glory.
And when we do, we are the ones who are changed. Whether you're looking into the mirror or you are the mirror, the transformation happens all the same. When you do that, Bible reading stops being study and becomes beholding. And you become what you look at. Turn a mirror toward the light and it reflects what it beholds. So do you. That's what the Bible was always for.
So, here's your practice for the week. I call it open it. Before you read anything this week, before that Bible's ever cracked open, say this out loud or in your heart. Open it, Lord, and open me. Then do your reading. That's not a technique. That's a request.
It's you admitting you don't have a technique and asking God to open you up in the way that only he can. The Bible never asked you to open the scriptures by yourself because you can't do that. But what you can do is make the request. Go to the page and let God open your eyes and make your heart burn. He will. I promise. And read slowly, out loud if you can.
Did you know that reading out loud was the normal way most people in history have read the Bible? Part of the reason for doing that is that your mouth slows you down. You can read silently much faster than you can read out loud. When you slow down, you're more likely to notice when something lands rather than just skipping past it. And when it lands, stop there. Don't finish your reading just for the sake of getting it done. Stop and sit with what the spirit just told you to notice that phrase or verse or passage that caused your heart to burn.
That's the text opening you up. And if you finish your reading for the day and that doesn't happen, we'll close the Bible and come back again to it tomorrow, asking again to be opened. Keep on asking. Keep on knocking. Open it, Lord, and open me.
Now, here's where we're going next. Because prayer and the Bible are only two things that we were taught to do backwards. And there's more than just that. The next subject I'll cover is our worship and how it was never for God's ego. Somewhere we got the idea that God demands praise the same way an insecure ruler demands flattery and accolades. And if he doesn't get them, look out. That's not what worship is or what it's for.
And I'll show you from the Psalms what's actually going on when you worship. Remember, you become what you behold. And if this video helped you, if you feel a small flinch of guilt every time you walk past the Bible on the shelf, watch it again when you need to. And remember those six words tomorrow morning. Open it, Lord, and open me. And if that person isn't you, but somebody you love, send this to them. The one who gave up reading the Bible because the only thing it made them feel was that they were a failure.
You know who they are. Share this with them. Not to make them feel guilty, but for them to know they're not a failure. Because to fail requires a test, and that's not what the Bible's for. We have tests of faith to be sure, but Bible reading was never supposed to be one of them. And let this be our prayer. Aba, Father, thank you that your word was never an assignment.
Thank you that you were always in the room with us, waiting patiently for us to turn toward you and remember where the text was always meant to point. Forgive us for thinking that studying hard enough or long enough would give us life when what it was meant to do was point us to the one who can, your son. Forgive us for the years we treated it like a test we had to pass and heal us of the guilt we carried when we fell behind on a schedule that you never asked us to keep. Open it, Aba, and open us. Make our hearts burn on the road and help us to realize who's speaking in that moment. Let your word work on the parts of us nobody else can see until what we read becomes what we are. We love you.
We reflect you. We are yours in Jesus' name. Amen.
