Devote Yourself to Bible Reading

I want to be a doer of the Word, not just a hearer (James 1:22).

Let’s DO 1 Timothy 4:13!

There are many ways one might put 1 Timothy 4:13 into practice. In 2018 I want to put it into practice by reading through the Bible together with other Christians.  While there’s nothing at all wrong with the “old fashioned” ways of doing this, I want to put social media to some good use.  I’ve set up a Facebook group for people who want to read through the Bible together in 2018. We’ll be using the same Bible reading plan.

So, while we won’t be hearing each other read, we’ll be reading the same passages (one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament) each day. Of course, some may get a little ahead or a little behind, but we’ll still be going through the Bible together.  You don’t need Facebook to read through the Bible using the same reading plan as other Christians, but being part of the Facebook group is one way to do the rest of 1 Timothy 4:13:

As we’re reading through the Bible together, we will be exhorting one another.  This means we will be encouraging each other.  We will do this in several ways:

1.  Being part of a group encourages us to not give up on our reading plan.

2.  We can share insights and applications we get from the Bible passages we read each day.  There’s no obligation to ever share an insight, but by God’s grace I’m hopeful that we will see lots of Bible inspired ideas being shared.

3.  We can share testimonies about how Bible passages encourage us and help us with the struggles we face.

In this dark world there is a lot of evil and suffering.  The world, the flesh, and the Devil are all fighting against us.  God can give us strength as we speak His truth to each other.

In addition to “exhortation”, we can also teach one another (Colossians 3:16).

There is not a plan for any type of formal teaching each day.  I am confident that God will speak to us through His Word.  At the same time, the Facebook group will allow opportunities to ask questions. Anyone can ask a question and anyone can offer an answer. We can also provide links to teachings and explanations of passages when we feel it is helpful.  I’ll probably occasionally include links to blog posts which are relevant to passages which have been read.

This teaching element can be helpful, but the goal is not to turn this into a massive Bible study.  There is no expectation that you make or read any “teaching” comments except as you yourself feel they are helpful.  In this way, the Facebook group can function like a family having a Bible reading time before a meal and then discussing it over the meal (many Christian families did this at one time).

Whether or not you participate a lot in the discussions, you will be prayerfully reading God’s Word each day. Through His Word, He will strengthen you, encourage you, guide you, correct you, equip you, empower you, and transform you into the image of Christ.

In the rest of this post, I include my own testimony, a testimony from a friend, and some Bible passages which I pray will all encourage you to be devoted to reading the Bible. You don’t have to join our Facebook page to be devoted to Bible reading, but for those who want to join, here’s a link to the Facebook group:

Open My Eyes 2018

My Own Testimony about Bible Reading

I’m so thankful that I grew up in a family and in churches where I learned to value God’s Word.  By the time I was in Middle School, I had developed a habit of reading the Bible on my own.  The habit grew to the point that most days I read at least a little in the Bible.

The more I read the Bible, the more I wanted to read it. And the more I read it, the more I get out of it.

I have wasted so much time in so many ways throughout my lifetime.  It’s painful to think about it.  But I have never once felt that any time I spent reading the Bible was a waste.  Of the many thousands of times I’ve opened up the Bible and read, I can honestly say I don’t think there was even one time that I was not glad that I did so afterwards.

I’m convinced that reading the Bible as a child, youth, and adult was one of the most important ways God prepared me for future ministry. God calls us all to serve Him in different ways.  He called me to serve Him while living among Muslim unreached people groups for 14 years.  That was a tough ministry. During the time we lived there, hundreds of Christians were killed for being Christian.  Many times radical groups set up road blocks in our city and looked for Christians, beating any that they found.  And yet, some of the most difficult trials of those years involved conflicts in ministry with other Christians and “normal trials” like health problems.  Reading the Bible both prepared me for that ministry and helped me persevere through it.  For seven years now years I’ve served as I pastor in the US. These years have included some trials which have been every bit as challenging as those I faced overseas!  Time after time, God has helped me through Bible reading.  That help doesn’t come magically by having a Bible (or many Bibles) on my shelf.  We have to open the Bible and prayerfully read it.

The Testimony of a Friend

Back in 2013 I was looking for a church to serve in.  I applied to many churches, and some had questionnaires for me to fill out. Occasionally they would ask me to share about someone who I looked up to as a good example, role model, and inspiration.  One couple always came to my mind.  The husband occasionally uses a bit of an unusual pseudonym, Mordecai Monslieber.  I’m using his pseudonym because he continues to serve in a dangerous and sensitive ministry.

Mordecai has several major areas of ministry.  First, he is serving the Lord among unreached people groups where there is often intense opposition to Christianity and the gospel.  His service in difficult places is measured in decades, not years. Second, he produces Biblical study tools which are used by pastors, teachers, professors, and ordinary Christians all around the world. Third, Mordecai is a prayer warrior.  He prays a lot. 

Mordecai and his wife (she has been involved in all three of the ministries mentioned above, plus she has significant ministry to the poor and in prayer counseling) are an amazing example to me of God-given strength, courage, and perseverance in ministry. How is Mordecai able to do it?  He’ll be the first to admit that it is not his own strength.  It comes from God.  God’s power for ministry comes through His appointed means.  I have long known that prayer was an important way that God empowered Mordecai and his wife.  When I recently shared about my plans for this Bible reading group, Mordecai sent me an encouraging email.  In the email, Mordecai shared a letter he once sent to a teaching elder in a church.  In that letter, Mordecai shared his own Bible reading practices throughout his life.  No wonder God is using him so powerfully! With his permission, I’ll quote excerpts from the letter here:

Our culture used to be Bible-honoring. Especially with the anti-Bible

reading and prayer decisions of the Supreme Court more than fifty years

ago, it moved to being Bible-tolerant. Now it is Bible-hateful. Our

children are going to pick up on that cultural stance quite

unconsciously, even if they are home-schooled. It's the milieu we live

in. I am quite convinced that Bible studies in the home, though important,

are not enough, especially that they are not basic enough a foundation. Bible

reading is.

When I was growing up, my parents had family devotions twice a day, at

breakfast and supper with lunch being excused, I suppose, because we

were at different locations at that time. That was actually a widely

practiced experience in many families I knew.

Or, in another family I knew, they didn't enjoy a single meal

together--no matter how few were present or how rushed the

occasion--before they had first read together a biblical pericope (more

usually known as sections with titles in modern publishing), prayed over

it (with thanksgiving also for the meal), and then gone on to discuss

it, as appropriate, during the meal. The idea is to make the Bible

indispensable to living, indeed the background music of life. It is like

learning to be a native speaker of English--you are hardly conscious of

the process.

And of course no one model should be forced on anyone. But the idea is

to be listening to, even more basically, hearing the Word of God until

we imbibe it and it becomes part of us.

. . . .

I remember my first early attempts at reading the Bible for myself. And

before long I was reading it regularly. I remember one Christmas

vacation during which I read the Bible through from Genesis 1.1 to

Revelation 22.21 in the sixteen days of the holiday. My mother wondered

why I was spending so much time in my room. That was probably sixth

grade of primary school or seventh grade of junior high. Sometime

later I remember reading the same Word from cover to cover during the

nine days of Easter vacation. More recently I listened to an audio

version of the entire Scriptures in fifty-six hours, but admittedly

spread over three weeks.

More usually there were regular daily personal Bible readings that

became the habit of life. Sometimes I read it at the rate of twenty

chapters a day; at others it was more usually three to five. Right now

it is six daily, Sundays excepted. But it was always regular and applied.

And now after forty-seven plus years of marriage [my wife] and I have read

through the Bible together--in many different versions--probably

twenty-five times. Personally I am sure I have read the Old Testament

over a hundred times and the New over two hundred times. And

memorization? It was stressed in family and in church such that I (and

my brother) have memorized vast tracts of the Scriptures over the years.

My point in this is not to boast, but to indicate that it was an easy

norm to walk through over the years. It wasn't a burden; it wasn't

enforced on me from the outside. It became and continues to be my daily

normal. After all, we are enjoined to tithe of our income. If we might

extend that to tithing our time, it is a significant two hours and

twenty-four minutes--every day of our lives. It is a small offering to

give up to the Giver and Sustainer of Life.

The Scriptures are full of enjoining the faithful to read the Word or

have it read to us.

. . .

I have known many people through my life that were cut from the fabric

of Scripture, as it were. Most were exceptional among their peer

disciples, because for whatever reason they made the main thing the main

thing from their earliest responsible action and before that because of

the responsible action of their parents.

But for all of Christendom I have experienced, I have never met a

congregation (as a gathering of responsible disciples) where the

individual experience I tout is also that of the whole. Not even of the

many chapels and assemblies I have known.

Why shouldn't a congregation like yours be urging its parents to raise up

their children in the fear and nurture of the Lord through constant

exposure to the written Word of God? Add all the Bible studies you want.

Even biblically based sermons are so much frosting on the cake. But from

my lifelong experience and observation, alone they are not enough. We

must rather create and maintain a milieu of hearing the Word of God.

Perhaps you feel like you cannot fully follow Mordecai’s example.  That’s ok.  Don’t focus on what you can’t do, focus on what you can do. You can read through the Bible in 2018.  If that is too much, you can at least read through the New Testament.  If you just don’t like to read, I have a link on the Facebook page to an online Bible reading program which will read the Bible passages each day to you.  There’s nothing wrong with listening instead of reading.

As inspiring as Mordecai’s testimony is to me, God’s Word is even more important. So I want to share . . .

Some Scriptures which Encourage Us to Read the Scriptures

Deuteronomy 11:18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates,

 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Deuteronomy 17: 18 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests.

 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees

 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

ESV Joshua 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

NIV Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

 2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.

 3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither-- whatever they do prospers.

NIV Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (note:  We have the apostles’ teaching recorded in the Bible!)

ESV 1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

What to Do

Here are four things you can do in response to the ideas in this blog post:

1.  Say a prayer asking God to bless this Bible reading effort.

2.  I hope that some of you will choose to join our Bible reading group.

3.  I also pray that God will prompt at least one person reading this to start another Bible reading group.  Not because there is anything wrong with the one I’m starting, but because a group that you start might more readily encourage your friends, church members, and neighbors to join in.  Feel free to look at the Open My Eyes 2018 group for ideas and feel free to copy any ideas that would help your own group. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a Facebook message (or contact me another way if you have my contact information).

4.  Finally, consider sharing this blog post with your friends.  I admit, I often don’t like it when people ask me to share something, but every now and then it feels appropriate.  At least, consider it. You’ll be exhorting others to be devoted to reading the Bible.

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .