Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.
Psalm 119:18
You know you should do it, but you don’t. You make resolutions, but give up in January. You feel guilty because you feel like reading your Bible should come naturally for someone who loves God, but even the guilt can’t make you do it. How do we make time for Bible study?
We make time for things that are important to us. We make time for our priorities. So we have to decide, “Is reading the Bible important to me?” Do you want to read your Bible or do you just feel like you should want to read your Bible?
I could’ve named this blog post “How to Find Time for Bible Study,” but we don’t just happen upon some extra time we have laying around that we’re not using. We have to make time. We will not accidentally read our Bibles everyday, we have to be intentional.
I love the book Think Good: How to Get Rid of Anxiety, Guilt, Despair & the Like to Finally Find Peace of Mind by JL Gerhardt. In chapter four, she writes about “feeding the Spirit” by reading God’s Word. The following words have stuck with me since reading the book, and renewed a desire in me to read and understand Scripture.
“Almost every day I find an opportunity to tell somebody to “Read your Bible and pray.” Struggling with worry? Read and pray. Feeling guilty? Read and pray. Judgmental? Afraid? Narcissistic? Read and pray. It’s the most basic, most boring advice. But it’s the best advice. The reason we’re so sick of hearing this advice isn’t that we’ve tried it and found it wanting; it’s that we’ve ignored it, looking for something glitzy, something that you don’t have to do every day, something with quicker results. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who committed to reading the Bible faithfully and then actually read the Bible faithfully, swears by it. They love it. They tell me how much it’s changed the way they see and live and talk and do. Almost nobody walks away from a month of devoted Bible reading thinking,
“Well, that was a waste of time.” (p. 59)
I agree with Gerhardt: The more I read my Bible, the more I want to read my Bible. What is stopping you from taking advantage of God’s own words sitting right there on your night stand?
Let’s talk about time. We have more “time” today than any other generation before us. I know we have the same amount of hours in a day, but think about how much time it took to cook, to clean, to travel, and now we can do so many of those things with just a push of a button. But it seems with every bit of technology that comes out, we are more than happy to fill in our newly available time with something else.
The car, for example. Now that we don’t have to walk everywhere, we can live farther away from our jobs, our stores, and our families. Instead of spending less time traveling, we’ve spread ourselves out so there are still daily hour long commutes for many in the US today.
Another example of us making more work for ourselves: laundry. Mothers everywhere used to hand wash everything outside in buckets of water, and then let the clothes dry outside. Now, we have the most amazing washing machines and dryers (thank you, Lord). But yet we are inundated every day with piles of laundry to wash, dry, fold, and put away. I bet we spend just as much if not more time doing laundry than moms of the past. And it’s because we have more clothes now to take care of. Can you imagine being a mom in the 19th century washing by hand as many clothes as we wash today?
Email is another example of technology making our lives easier, but harder. Communication that used to take days to happen now happens in a matter of seconds. What a blessed convenience for us! Except now, how many of us are on call 24/7 with jobs that expect you to answer right away, even if you’re home with your family? You can’t leave your work at work!
We have done this to ourselves, packing our newly available free time with more work. We must ask ourselves: “What is taking up space in my life that is pushing out God?” Is it your phone and everything that is on it, TV, sports, social life, or family? All of those are good things, but not if they fill up the time we should be spending with God. Praying, personal Bible studying, and worshiping are about spending time with our one and only creator, not about checking it off our to do list or don’t want to do list.
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,
redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:15-16 (NKJV)
“Redeem” means to buy back. The days are filled with evil, so we must buy back our time. Buying implies that we are giving something, or giving up something. What are you willing to give up to spend more time in God’s Word? Could you spend less time on your phone? Can you read less fiction books and more of God’s true book? Could you cut back your Netflix time by one show and spend 30 minutes in Scripture?
Here are some ideas to help you get started. These worked for me, and hopefully will help you too!
1. Pick a time and use that same time everyday. When do you have some available time? Is it first thing in the morning before everyone else is awake? Your children’s nap time? Maybe you can take advantage of a lunch break to fill up spiritually while you fill up physically. Can you read after dinner, before everyone gets ready for bed, and have a family Bible time? Or maybe you’ll have to wait until every one in your family is in bed and you have some time to yourself. I used to try to read the Bible at night, but it was really hard to do that when I was already tired. If you’ve tried to read the Bible right before you go to bed and you’ve been unsuccessful, I would suggest choosing another time of day. Keeping it at the same time everyday helps it to become a habit.
2. Give yourself a reminder. Whatever time of day you choose, make sure to leave some kind of reminder to remember what you’re supposed to be doing. Are you going to read your Bible first thing in the morning? Then set your Bible where you’ll see it when you wake up. If you want to read during mealtimes, have your Bible on the table ready to be opened. When I was a dental hygienist, I used to tell my patients to put the floss where they would see it everyday. When you see the floss, pick it up and floss your teeth and then you’ll develop a habit that over time you won’t even have to think about doing.
3. Have an accountability partner or group. Have some friends who would like to read the Bible with you? Set a time to meet once a week or a couple times a month to discuss each other’s thoughts on what you’re reading. Don’t have time to meet in person? Discuss it on Facebook or Voxer. You can set up a group page or a group message where each person can share what she is learning.
4. Start with a short bible study. The best way to start a habit is to start small. The Lazy Genius shared on this podcast episode about doing one yoga pose a day in order to build up to a full yoga routine. I wouldn’t necessarily start with just one verse a day. That always leaves me scratching my head more, wondering what in the world it means. But reading one psalm a day from the book of Psalms is totally doable. Psalm one is only six verses. Psalm two is 12 verses. Psalm 119 is 176 verses, but it is broken down into 22 smaller sections that you could read over that many days. Want to read a little bit more in a day? Proverbs is 31 chapters long. Read one chapter a day and you will have finished the book in a month.
5. Give yourself a reward and some grace. My reward when I first started reading the Bible every day was my baby was napping (that’s a reward by itself), and a cup of coffee. I could not wait to turn on some soothing music, put my baby in her swing, drink some coffee and read. Maybe a reward to you looks like a piece of chocolate after lunch on the days you read your Bible. When starting a new habit, it can feel like a chore. Give yourself something to look forward to at least until Bible reading becomes its own reward for you. The time of day I read my Bible has changed, but I still want my coffee while I’m reading! And remember to give yourself some grace on days you mess up. Just because you miss one day (or ten) doesn’t mean you should give up. Just pick up where you left off. I read one psalm a day for several months (there’s 150!), and to be honest, I never finished. I didn’t stop reading my Bible, but I moved on to a different book. And that’s ok. Currently I’m reading through the Bible and eventually I’ll get to the Psalms I didn’t read.
Look back at your day and think on how you have spent your minutes. Did you spend more time on social media than you did in God’s Word? Then we do have the time, we’re just spending it in the wrong places.
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