Reading the Bible Better - Lesson 4

St. Paul’s Cathedral, built by Sir Christopher Wren and consecrated in 1708, sits majestically in the heart of the city of London. It’s not far from the River Thames. Following the curve at the base of the cathedral’s imposing dome, you have the so-called Whispering Gallery. It’s a walkway designed for viewing the cathedral floor some 100 feet below. But the gallery has an auditory quirk, which has made it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Wren did not have acoustics in mind when he built this viewing space. And yet in a quiet moment when background noise is at a minimum, those who have made the journey of 257 steps up the stairs to the gallery find that a whisper spoken at any point on the wall can be heard anywhere along the wall, even on the other side of the circular walkway 108 feet away. The finely tuned acoustics, though accidental, propel a faint whisper far beyond the distance normally achieved by a spoken voice. Such detailed crafting of St. Paul’s Dome has made the Hearing of Whispers part of a memorable cathedral experience for many people in the world. 

Now, as we begin this third session of our video series together, I want you to think about your spiritual acoustics. Do your spiritual abilities to hear well need to be adjusted in some way so that God’s Word is having the full impact on your life? And I am asking myself the same question at this point in life. How do we need to tune our ears for good listening, in other words? Now, thus far we’ve talked about the importance as we read the Bible with the right heart, to grasp the value of God’s Word. That’s what we saw in the last session. 

In this session, we’re going to talk about checking the receptivity of our hearts, looking at Jesus’ parable of the sower, and then the relational orientation of our reading. So I kind of want to cover those two points in this session. 

So let’s take a look at Jesus’s parable of the sower and the word picture that he gives at that point. Listen to the parable of the sower. “Again he began to teach by the sea and a very large crowd gathered around him. So he got into a boat on the sea and sat down while the whole crowd was by the sea on the shore. He taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching, he said to them, ‘Listen.’” There’s an emphasis on those words again, ‘listen.’ “Consider the sower who went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn’t have much soil, and it grew up quickly since the soil wasn’t deep. And when the sun came up, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it didn’t produce fruit. Still, other seed fell on good ground and it grew up producing fruit that increased 30, 60 and a 100 times. And then he said, ‘Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen.’” 

And then his disciples say, “Lord, can you kind of unpack this for us a bit because we don’t really understand what you’re talking about.” “When he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables and he answered them, ‘The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you.’” And then he kind of gives a passage from Isaiah that talks about the importance of spiritual listening. But if we sit down to verse 13, he begins to explain the parable. Then he said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables?” In other words, in some ways this parable is the key that unlocks the ability to hear God’s Word in terms of the other teaching of Jesus. “The sower sows the Word.” So the Word is the seed in this parable. “Some are like the words sown on the path. When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the Word sown in them. And others are like seeds sown on rocky ground. And when they hear the Word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root. They are short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the Word, and they immediately fall away. Others are like seed sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the Word but the worries of the age, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the Word and it becomes unfruitful. And those like seed sown on good ground hear the Word, welcome it, and produce fruit 30, 60 and a 100 times what was sown.” 

Now, Jesus is using a word picture here based on agriculture during his day. And I want you to notice that the central idea in this word picture has to do with receptivity of our hearts to the Word of God. Now, this is a farmer in ancient Israel who’s going out to sow a field, and this is the way it worked in the ancient world. A farmer would take a bag full of seeds. It was probably a leather bag of some kind that was slung over his shoulder. And he would take handfuls of seeds and broadcast that seed over a field, and then come behind it with a plow, and the soil would be turned under so those seeds were buried in the field. 

If you’ve ever broadcast seed, you know that this is not an exact science. If you’re broadcasting seed in your yard, you’re going to throw the seed, and it’s some of it’s going to fall right up to the edge of the yard, and some of it will go over the edge of the yard into the surrounding weeds or a path or something like that. And that’s exactly what’s happening in this parable. Jesus describes the farmer broadcasting those seeds, and he’s trying to throw them right up to the edge of the field. But some of the seeds are falling on the path that runs along beside the field. Some fall in kind of stony, rocky, shallow soil. Some fall in weeds, and then some of the seed is falling on the good soil in the field. 

So notice how Jesus describes each of the four types of soil. The first is what I would call the thud of a hard-packed heart. Do you have a place in your yard where you’ve walked around the house in a certain way so much that the grass doesn’t grow very well in that spot? It’s the path has become hard-packed so that nothing much grows there. This is describing a person who is hard-hearted. In fact, that’s an image that is used in Scripture of someone who has said no to God many times. And it’s like the Word of God will not penetrate their hearts. It’s like seed that comes and sits on the top of the soil without penetrating, and therefore the evil one is able to come and just snatch the Word of God away because there’s no penetration of the seed into a person’s life. 

So one of the things we need to consider as we think about this word picture that Jesus gives is how do we respond when the Word of God is coming to us? If we’re reading it, if we ever take time to read it, or if we hear somebody preaching it or teaching it, are we just basically closed off to the Word of God? Now, some of us may have had a long period of time where we just have been spiritually disinterested, and that’s caused kind of a crust to come over our hearts. Some of us may have gone through very hard experiences in life. You know, life is not easy. And it may be that emotionally we have gotten to a place where we just don’t trust God the way that we used to because we’ve experienced a lot that’s hard and difficult, and if we’re not careful, we can get to a place where we just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to listen. But that can also cause kind of a crust over our hearts, which is not good. 

I know when our daughter Anna was young, very small child, my wife used to do a little thing with her. Anna, at times, could be pretty stubborn, as a lot of children are. And when we were trying to instruct her on something, you could even tell by her posture at points that she was being a bit hard-hearted. She would close her arms like this, and she wouldn’t even look us in the face. She would kind of look down, you know, and her whole posture just said, “I’m not open to what you’re saying to me at this point.” And Pat would take a rock in her hand and a piece of Play-Doh in her hand. And she said, “Anna, now, at this point, is your heart more like the rock or is it more like the Play-Doh, that’s soft and kind of receptive to what Mommy’s talking to you about?” And she would use that word picture. And that often would help Anna kind of begin to think through the condition of her own heart. 

I know there were moments at which I would be talking to her, and I would get down on my knees in front of her. And if she was kind of closed off to me like that, I would just gently take her chin and raise her chin to where she was looking in my eyes. And often at that point, big puddles would come into her eyes. And it was like that broke open that crust around her heart, and she became more receptive. It may be that for some of us, we’re in a place right now in our reading of God’s Word that we need to just kind of lift our eyes in a fresh way to the Father and just pray to the Father and say, “Father, I do want to soften my heart and hear what you want to say to me.” That might be a beginning place for some of us that would be very, very practical. 

Now, the second part of the word picture that he describes here is soil, where the seed has fallen into rocky soil, where there’s just not much topsoil. The plant comes up. It actually does sprout and come up. But because there’s no root, when the sun hits it, it withers. So I would call this the “withering of a shallow heart.” So this is an approach to reading the Bible or interfacing with the Bible in a way that we’re not taking it very seriously. We may slap at it a bit by trying to read a little bit here and there, or going to listen to somebody preach or teach on the Scriptures, but there’s no depth to what we’re doing. We haven’t come to a place of a deeper commitment to listening to God’s Word. And what happens as we approach the Word in that way is there is a shallowness in our lives where the Word is not taking firm root in us because we’re simply not giving it the space to do so. We have just a shallow approach to reading it or to listening to it. So Jesus says, for those kind of people, what happens is, especially when things get difficult, then they just fall away in terms of their intentions on being people of the Word, because there’s nothing that is kind of hanging on to the production of the Word in that person’s life. 

The third part of the word picture here I would call the “languishing of a congested heart.” And boy, I can identify with this on somewhat of a regular basis. This is the picture of the seed falling in the weeds and the plant does sprout. There is soil there where the plant is trying to take root. But there’s so much else going on in the bed at that point. The weeds choke out the life of the Word at that point. And I find myself at times in life, to be very honest with you, I have my kind of Scripture reading plan that I’m doing. I have somewhat of a rhythm going. But if I find myself beginning to really struggle with focus, where I’m having difficulty settling into the Word. Often if I stop and think about it, it’s because either the pleasures or the pressures of the world are choking out the Word at that point. Let me tell you what I mean by that. By pleasures I mean often things that I’m really excited about or interested in, like hobbies. 

I mentioned earlier that I love fly fishing, and if I’m making a decision about a new fly rod that I want to buy or something like that, I can get caught up even in my time of reading the Bible with my mind wandering to those other things that I’m thinking about purchasing, and those thoughts, I’ve suddenly come to myself and realized that I’ve gotten off track. I’m not even reading the Scripture. I’m getting distracted. Or the pressures of life can do the same kind of thing. Maybe I’m going through a real difficult time with a situation at work, and I’m preoccupied with that so that my mind keeps going from the reading of the Word into the problems that are going on in the office at that point. So what I have to do at that moment is, in a sense, pull myself back to a place where I’m focusing on the Word. Praying, even beginning to pray through the Scripture that I’m reading is helpful to me at that point. But I find this part of the word picture Jesus is giving, is being very relevant to me, because if I allow that to go on for too long, I get in a rhythm of actually thinking about things other than the Scripture that I’m reading. 

And so that’s something that maybe some of you deal with as well. You know, if you’re dealing with a clogged drain in your house, like in your bathtub or your sink or something like that, you’ve got to get the clog out in order for the water to flow freely again. And it’s the same way…if our emotional life is becoming gummed up, if you will, with other kinds of things, then we need to think carefully about how do I pull my focus into my attention back so that the Word can be a foundation in dealing with these other issues that I’m dealing with in life. So how are you doing in terms of the congestion of your heart in your life? 

And that brings us to the last part of the word picture that Jesus gives here, and that is the flourishing of a heart that is well-cultivated. This is a heart that is very receptive. I, actually, am a gardener. A number of years ago, I started doing what is called “square foot gardening,” and it’s a way of laying out a garden bed that is designed according to square feet. And you plant so many things in the squares depending on what you’re dealing with. But the first part of that book is something that spends a lot of time with the preparation of the soil. And frankly, that’s why we’re spending so much time in this series dealing with kind of issues of our perspective and the heart before we ever get into the practicalities. Because the way that the soil is in a garden bed is going to determine how the plants grow and thrive. Jesus says that there are people who are like well-cultivated soil in their lives. They’re so receptive that when the Word comes into their lives, it sprouts, it grows, it thrives, and it bears fruit in life. In my heart, and really my desire for you and me, is that we get to a place where we are like that well-cultivated soil, where we’re receptive to the Word of God. 

The Word of God is flourishing in our lives, and it’s actually being very, very productive so that good things are happening. This past week, I received a very encouraging note from the wife of one of the pastors in our church. She wanted to let me know that a sermon that I had preached recently at the church had had a big impact on one particular couple. This couple had been struggling, and the husband realized in the process of a sermon that I was preaching on the Book of Hebrews, that his words that he was using with his wife were damaging. And this pastor’s wife told me that the wife reported to her that his pattern of behavior changed after that sermon, that he mentioned to her that he was convicted that he had been using his words in a way that were actually hurting her. And he changed and went into a process that was having a ripple effect in their relationship because he had listened to the Word of God. He had been receptive to it; it had changed a pattern in his life; and it was having very positive fruit in his marriage, in his relationship with his wife. So I want you to think about the fact with this word picture that Jesus is giving, the type of soil that we want to be as this final kind of soil that is open and it’s well-cultivated, and it’s really receptive to the Word of God. 

The problem with the first three soils, if you think about it, is a problem of space. And this is the fact that with each one of those soils, whether it was lack of penetration, shallowness or congestion, the problem with the Word really penetrating and thriving and bearing fruit was the problem of space. One of the most practical things that you and I are going to have to deal with in our reading of the Bible is we have got to give life-space and heart-space to the reading of the Word of God if we’re going to be able to thrive in that reading. And this is absolutely one of the most practical things I’m going to say to you. You’re never going to thrive in your reading of the Word of God until you get to a place that you set aside space in your schedule to give attention to it, and you work out the space in your heart, so that spiritually and emotionally you can listen and hear what God is saying to you. I find in my own life that I have got to have that rhythm where I am hearing God’s Word on a regular basis. I know what I’m going to be reading. I’m open to it, but I have set aside that time as vital for my own spiritual life and condition. And when I get to a place where I can commit that, and I process kind of what’s going on in my heart so that I’m open to the Word of God, I find that it’s much easier for me to have joy in my reading of Scripture. 

In fact, what I find is that when I go to bed at night, I anticipate getting up in the next morning. I can’t wait to get up and read my Bible because I anticipate that God is going to speak to me, and it’s going to shape my life in good ways. So I want you to begin thinking about that rhythm of life. What is the pattern that you have that is set aside for the reading of God’s Word? And what is the heart-space in your life like at this point? Are you so distracted with other things that you really can’t listen very effectively? Or do you really have an openness to what God would say to you as you process the different things that are going on in your life? 

Now this brings me to a final point that I want to make today as we think about reading God’s Word, and that is that we want to read from a relational standpoint. We want to think about the relational orientation of our reading. Any relationship is only going to thrive if there’s room and space in that relationship for real communication to take place. It’s interesting that when Jesus wraps up his parable of the Sower, he says, “Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen.” So he goes back to this image that we’ve talked about so much already in this series of the importance of the words of God being spoken into the world, and our posture of listening as being critical for our relationship with God. 

So if you remember, I’ve already said that when we think about a heart attitude and posture and reading, we want to grasp the value of God’s Word. That’s where we saw the different word pictures of rock, and honey, and sword, and lamp. We want to check the receptivity of our hearts. That’s Jesus’ parable of the sower. Are our hearts really open and receptive to the Word in a way that we’re thriving? And then finally, we come to this idea of the relational orientation of our hearts. This theme of listening is just so vital when we think about our relationship with God. And as I said, it is the key to any relationship that we are good listeners. 

I remember when I was in seminary, I was at our church one day and I was talking to this sister named Sue. And as I was talking to her, I obviously was distracted and kind of looking around the room, and she kind of called me on that. She said, “I just want to talk to you about something.” She said, “You need to learn to give people the gift of your presence and the gift of your attention.” And she described a missionary that she had worked with who was so busy in life, in ministry, and yet she said, “Every time I was with him, he always looked me in the eye and I could tell I had his full attention.” She said, “George, you need to learn to do that.” And boy, it was just like someone took that sword of the Word that we were talking about and just…it went right to the heart. But do you know, to this day, 40 years later almost, when I’m talking to one of my students, for instance, the little voice in my mind goes off and says, “Give them your full attention, focus, focus on their eyes,” because listening is so important. It says something about the relationship with that person, and if we’re distracted, then it also says something that’s not positive about the condition of my relationship with that person. 

So we want to read relationally. As you approach the Bible, are you approaching the Bible like you would a textbook, for information, or are you approaching it from the standpoint of relationship for transformation, the growth in your relationship with God? Now understand me. We do need to grow in skills. Reading the Bible does take work and instruction. But I want to say that if the healthy relational foundation is not there, it’s going to hurt our ability to read and hear God’s Word. 

One of the most important passages in the Old Testament is called the ‘Shema,’ and it’s called that because the first word in this passage in Hebrew is the word Shema, which means, listen. If a Hebrew parent was talking to a child in the Old Testament world, they might say to that child, “Shema, listen to me, listen to me.” And God uses that language at the beginning of this passage where he says, “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Notice the importance of listening. Notice the relational dynamic of love, and notice the centrality of the heart; all these things that we’ve been talking about so far in this series. 

But how are we to do that? How are we to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul and strength? Well, he goes on in the passage to tell us, “These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.” 

In other words, the way that we live out our relationship with God in a way that is relational is we make the words of God central to our hearts. So the words from God and the relationship are all part of the same package. It’s not just reading the words for information. It’s reading the words from the standpoint of relationship. Notice the relational context of reading the Word.  

About a dozen years ago, I participated with Lifeway publishers in an initiative called “Read the Bible for Life” in the United States. And we were doing the studies at our church, going through the video sessions. And after the video session we would have small group time, much as you’re going to do with this Biblical Training series. And in that small group time, in one of the first weeks, there was a young woman in my group named Jill. And Jill was dynamic. She was very outgoing, very vivacious personality, and she had a great love for God. And yet I noticed that in our discussion time, Jill was not participating. She was very, very quiet. She was not giving answers in terms of kind of the homework people had done during that week. And so after the session, I approached her and I said, “Jill, are you doing okay, because normally you would be participating and very involved?” And she said, “George,” she said, “I really have been struggling with settling into my Bible reading and kind of doing the basic assignments that we had to kind of process this past week.” She said, “I have small children. I’m having a hard time focusing.” And she said, “Frankly, I’m not a reader.” She said, “I don’t think I’ve read a whole book since I got out of college.” So she said, “I’m really, really struggling with the process.” 

And I said, “Well, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to set aside just 10 to 15 minutes in the morning, and just do what you can, but approach it from a relational standpoint. As you’re reading the Scripture that you’ve been asked to read, don’t do it as an assignment, but do it bringing it before the living God of the universe and saying, ‘Lord, would you speak to me through this passage? And would you show me the things that you’re wanting me to see?’” She left and she went and did that that week. The next week, when she came back, it was like she had been transformed. She was participating, answering questions. It was wonderful just to watch her thrive because the Word had become relational rather than just informational. 

So we want to approach the Word of God in a way that we’re making the space of grace in our lives to hear it. But that space of grace is a relational space. It’s where we’re meeting with God, like we’re meeting with a friend or someone that we love. I love that passage in Exodus 33:11, where it says, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face like a man speaks to his friend.” We want to have the type of rhythmic relationship with God where we are hearing God speak to us. We are receiving it face to face. Our hearts are open, cultivated in a way that we’re able to be receptive to what God would say to us. And we’re then acting on the Word in a way that is changing us and changing the world. 

Now, we’ve spent a lot of time in this series thus far laying the foundations. With our next session, we’re going to start getting into the practicalities. We’re going to look at reading the Bible in context as a vitally important step to hearing the Word accurately. So we’re not just kind of reading our understanding into the Scriptures. We’re letting the Scriptures speak to us out of what God intended to say in its original context. So we’ll talk about that in our next session of reading the Bible Better. 

Student: Dr. Guthrie, you mentioned the problem of space in the parable of the sower with the first three soils, and the first one was because of the hardness of the soil, and that some of us have trouble with reading the Bible and relating to God because of something that’s difficult in our life, and that makes that hard to get through. How do you process that? What are some suggestions that you would have for people that are in that situation? 

Dr. Guthrie: Right. Just so you remember, we were talking about the seed that is sown on the path, the hard path. And the problem was that the Word Jesus said that the seed represents the Word falls on this hard packed surface and there’s no penetration. So it was a problem of a lack of space in the sense that the seed couldn’t even penetrate. And if you remember, I said that the hard heart is an image that’s used in the Bible for someone who is constantly turned away from God. There’s kind of a crust over the heart. And as I said, you know, sometimes we’ve gone through different kinds of things spiritually that bring us to that place where basically our hearts are hard towards God, and therefore it’s really hard to open the Bible and read it at all. So let me respond to that in just a few ways. 

First of all, the fact that you’re even asking that question is a great sign because it means that you are taking a step of investigating, opening yourself to the possibility that God might deal with you and deal with the hardness of your heart so that you can have a soft heart toward him. None of us wake up one morning and say, “Oh, I think I’m going to have a hard heart toward God now.” That normally is something that precipitated that in life. It may be that you’ve gone through a situation with a church that was disillusioning, or maybe you had a very hard situation in life come up like you lost someone to cancer, or you went through a tremendous emotional breakdown because of financial difficulties in your own life. 

So the first thing I would say is really pray and think through. When did this start? Was there a time when I really had an open heart toward God? Maybe my relationship with God was doing well. I was thriving. But then I started moving away from God and making small choices to turn away. What precipitated that? Because that might give you a part of the answer of what you need to do in response. You might need to go back and think through your trust of the Lord in those difficult moments. Maybe some of the bad decisions that you made at points in relationship with people or with the Lord himself. And that brings me to a second point. So kind of identify where it started. 

The second point would be, get some help from the community of faith. If you have somebody who is a counselor or a pastor who you’re close to, maybe even just a close friend, where you could talk to them and say, “Here’s what’s going on with me. Do you have some thoughts for me? Do you have Scripture that might help me think about opening my heart to God?” Sometimes to have someone else walk with us, they can put their finger on patterns in our lives that are not healthy. And when we begin to identify those, we see that we need to kind of change some of those patterns in the process of opening up our heart toward the Lord. 

And that brings me to a third point. And that would be sometimes in my life I just get to a place where I need to repent. Now, that’s a biblical term. That means I’m going in one direction, and I’m making a choice to change my mind. The word just kind of in its basic meaning means to change the way that I’m thinking about something. So I’m on one path and I make a conscious decision to turn to get on another path. And when I’m on a path that is sinful, I need to choose to turn away from that rather than turning away from the Lord. So we might come to a place of repentance where we cry out to God and say, ’Lord, I know that my heart shouldn’t be hard toward you. I don’t want to keep choosing to turn my back on you. Would you please help me?’

And that’s really the fourth point, is that this often is something that we can’t do ourselves. We’ve got to cry out to God and say, “Spirit of God, would you please soften my heart? Would you open me back up to your Word in a way that I can change and embrace it?” I love the image in Acts 16 with Lydia. Now, Lydia didn’t have a hard heart toward God, but it does say that the Spirit of God opened her heart to the Gospel. And I think that there are times in my life that I just need the Spirit of God to open my heart in a fresh way. And so I would challenge you to pray or get with a friend and pray, and just cry out to God and say, “Lord, I want to be open. So would you please help me by softening my heart and bringing me back to a place where I have joy in you and your Word?”

In our last session, we talked a little bit about needing to make heart space and life space if we're going to be readers of God's word. So I want to talk practically about that. We're going to push the pause button on our sessions just for a few moments and think practically about how do we do that? One of the people who has had the biggest influence on me in terms of establishing a rhythm of reading God's word in life is actually my wife.

So this is Pat. Pat Guthrie is my wife. We've been married now for almost 35 years. Yeah. So a long time she's put up with me. And she really is very, I would say you're very rhythmic in your time with the Lord and that kind of thing. So I want us to talk a little bit about three things, about just examples of time and place and a plan or a pattern. And I'm going to fill some of these out a little bit more as we go on in the sessions. But I thought it might be fun just for a minute to take some time so talk to me first of all about timing. Have you always had your time with the Lord and Bible reading at kind of the same time or have you tried it at different times and what are you doing now? 

Pat: Well, I found that I like to have it at the same time and I like to have it in the morning. Okay. So consistently you're not just kind of bouncing around different days. You're really trying to have it at the same time every day. So the reason I like to have it in the morning is I feel like it grounds me for my day and it gives me a sense of I've started my day in the right way. Okay. And it hasn't always been successful. I mean, when we had little bitty children, it doesn't always work that well. So I'd have to have it at different times.

George: Yeah. So when you were a mom of small kids, sometimes you might have it during their nap time, perhaps that kind of thing. 

Pat: But also I did get up earlier than once we pass that in the nighttime feeding thing, then I could set my alarm a little bit early because it was so important to me to have a quiet space and that's not always easy to have with children.

George:Yeah. I know for me, I also have my time in the morning. I know that some of you are thinking I'm not a morning person, you know, but I am a morning person. So for me, the time in the morning works really well because it's normally before other people are calling on me for things. 

Pat: Again, just that consistency. So it's not like you're kind of randomly picking a time, but it's generally at the same time.

George:Yeah. I know I have friends who have their time of Bible reading during lunch at work. That's really the time that works for them. I've also talked to people who they do their Bible reading at night right before they go to bed. I tend to fall asleep if I try to do that. But what you need to find, I think the first thing we're saying is you need a time and you need to set apart that space for reading the Bible on a consistent basis. I remember hearing a story about Billy Graham years ago where the president of the United States called him one morning and the person that was answering the phone in his house came and told him and he said, tell the president, I'll call him back in a few minutes. And so he did call him. He called him back after a few minutes and the president said, Mr. Graham, I'll have, you know, I'm not used to waiting on anyone. And he said, well, sir, I was having my time with God. And when I heard it was you, I knew it was going to be that much more important than I was in touch with him today. So I think he put the president in his place, gave him perspective there. But the point is that we want to have a priority. So you almost have to kind of carve out that time and say this is something that I'm going to do and I'm not going to allow other things to kind of interrupt that. Right.

Pat: And I think the more you have that, you build up this anticipation like you can't imagine not having it. 

George: Yeah, it's kind of like eating a regular meal where you start anticipating. I anticipate all of my meals. And so I have the same thing that when I'm in a good rhythm of my Bible reading, when I go to bed at night, it's almost like I can't wait to get up the next morning because it's just a renewing time to have the time. So we have time. What about place? 

Pat: Yeah. So place is very important. I have a chair and I have a place to put my teacup and I have my Bible and whatever materials I normally would use. And so that's always there. I don't have to clear off a space for it. I don't have to wonder where am I going to go today. I just always go to that place.

George: Okay. So having a place set aside also is a part of the rhythm because you kind of anticipate that. I know I also have a chair, you know, but some people may want to have their Bible reading time at the kitchen table. There are various things you can do. Maybe you have a very snug, kind of comfortable place in your bedroom. But the point is that we want to have some spot set aside where we're not going to be interrupted. If you're in an office context trying to have your Bible reading during lunch, do it in a place where people aren't going to keep walking up and interrupting you. Because practically speaking, again, we're wanting to give focal attention. You can imagine if we went out on a date and we were sitting at a table having a romantic meal and people just kept coming up and talking to us, it would kind of interrupt the dynamic of our face-to-face, heart-to-heart conversation. So you want a place that is kind of set aside, right? That can really be dedicated to focus and you focused attention on the Lord. 

And then the third thing would be plans. Now we're going to talk about some specific plans later in our sessions together related to kind of the story of the Bible. But there are all kinds of plans out there that people can use. So what are you doing right now? 

Pat: Well, and I think the plan is probably the biggest factor because if I don't have a plan, it's easy to kind of just feel like, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do. And then I end up skipping that day.

George: Yeah. So you get up and you all of a sudden are thrown into a decision rather than just naturally moving into making a choice to be involved with reading. 

Pat: So for me, what I've done for the last, I don't know, 10 years or so is I'll have a Bible reading plan. The chronological Bible reading plan is what I love to use. 

George: And let me just explain chronological plan. We're going to talk about that. But what that does is it follows a reading of the Bible that's laid out chronologically, kind of step by step through the story of Scripture. The way that our Bible is set up now in the canon, we call it the collection of books that we have in the Bible is not chronological. It is something that is organized in other ways. And we're going to talk a bit more about that. But you follow a chronological plan because it helps you get that sense of the big picture story. Right.

Pat: And I just always know what I'm going to do. And then if there is a year that I decide to take a little break from that reading plan and maybe use a different journal or devotional book, I might do that. But it's already decided because I find when I haven't got a plan, like I'm just going to randomly read a book in the Bible and then I end that book. Then I don't know what I'm going to read. And so I having that plan is very important. 

George: The other thing for me that helps with having a plan is there are a lot of mornings that I wake up and I'm not emotionally into anything yet. I'm kind of struggling with even getting awake. So I'll normally have a cup of coffee. And but if I have a plan, I know what I'm going to and I settle into that. And that actually draws me into the reading of Scripture. Now, there are a lot of different plans out there. YouVersion, for instance, is a site you can go on online. They have tons of plans, including a couple that I developed in relation to read the Bible for life, a chronological plan, but then also a four plus one plan where you read four different places in the Scripture every day plus a psalm. So there are different kinds of plans that that you can use. But those plans help you with that dynamic of rhythm.

So these are some real practical things that people can think about as you start to make space in your life. And for me, in addition to kind of the heart issues that we've talked about in our sessions together, this is the most practical aspect of reading the Bible on a consistent basis because it allows you to get in the flow of hearing from God on a regular basis. So give this a try, and we're going to give you a few more pointers as we go through our sessions together.