am really struggling with this Bible reading
A member of the 55hours.org Bible reading group writes:
Subject: am really struggling with this Bible reading
Allan: last week barrelled thru Genesis and Exodus to get a feel for if this is something I want to make a year-long commitment to. I think not.
When I announced to a friend I was doing this, she went and bought me a printed Bible. She was excited for me. But I am not excited for me. As a first-time Bible reader it is just an interesting story. No feelings of being closer to God, no feelings at all.
I am going to start on the New Testament and see how I feel.
Also Psalms has been recommended.
But I keep thinking there are other programs on health and marketing and my physical therapy exercise program that I should be spending my time on now.
Your thoughts?
Thanks for this. Please allow me a few minutes to give these genuine concerns the thorough answer they deserve.
First of all, I think you are being pretty hard on yourself. Unless you are a spring chicken, perhaps 6 or 7 years old, there's probably a little bit of rust and neglect around that relationship with God. It is so beautiful that you have made the time and the commitment to read the Bible like this and to deepen your relationship with Him. Please keep doing that. You are building a foundation in your life for many more amazing things. And, please consider adding a little something else, as well, on top of that foundation.
My short answer, something I would personally do, is to pray to God asking for whatever it is that is absent. If stopped reading here, I think you would now have enough to address everything you've brought up. I'm going to keep going though, in case more color on this topic would be helpful.
Though I was raised to pray, I was not raised to understand that statement above. I was not raised to understand that I can turn to God for everything that I need. I do not just need to shout out prayers to God as a last minute desperate final hope before all is lost effort. But He can be turned to as a first resort even.
I'm going to share with you the prayer that I would give in the situation you have described, a situation I have found myself in many times before. I had a lot of rust that needed working off (perhaps I still do), but I can tell you that these days, my relationship with God is rock steady in a way that I have never my whole life known. The more hopeless things seemed, the more my reliance on God through them made that relationship stronger. I could tell some pretty miserable stories that God pulled me through, but I'll leave those alone. It is your situation that is primary right now.
You write: "No feelings of being closer to God, no feelings at all."
If connection to Him is lacking say:
"God, I am reading this Bible to feel more connected to you. Help me to humble myself to you. Help me to have a teachable heart. Help me to push aside anything blocking me from you. Help me to feel that connection, that intimacy."
Some days, I might literally pray something like that ten times in one single ten minute Bible reading. I have distracted days. If I am distracted and can't get into the Bible, and can't feel myself nuzzling up close to God, I will stop the reading, and ask God to help me focus my mind. But that is not usual anymore. God and I have dealt with lots of those issues. I've grown in my relationship with Him. So, when I bring this up, I'm not saying to just pray your prayer one or two days and to give up, but I'm saying to keep it up. Keep it up with a faith that God is going to give you any godly thing you ask for. And sometimes that means that I muscle through even when I'm not feelings totally up for something, but on my best days, I do it with prayer and with faith that it will come together.
And if you have turned away from God for a time (like most of us in the world, me included have done) start that prayer above with some acknowledgment of that
"God, I have run from you for a long time. I have done x, y, and z. I don't want to do that ever again Lord. I know you have given me that forgiveness. I know I don't need to beat myself up about the past. Thank you God for that goodness. Thank you for bringing me to this place where I can see how much I do not want to live that way again. Help me to never go back. Help me to know what it is like to be intimate with you."
Those are the kind of prayers that would come from my mouth on this topic.
You see, I LOVE asking questions.
I LOVE debating ideas.
I LOVE asking the next question that is at once obtuse, seemingly obvious, a step too far, and instructive to all.
Because I love doing that, it is my tendency to treat the person that I am talking to like the most important and most interesting person in the world. I like that part of me. I like that part of my behavior.
But it can be so easy to cross a line and look at that person or any person as an authority on something that they probably don't deserve to be considered an authority on. That's okay when they know more than me about something. But it is not too great of an idea when it comes to God.
Because while that other person may have a pointer or two here or there, that person is not able to counsel you on your specific relationship with God thoroughly enough for you to avoid having to do the heavy lifting. For that, I find, that you have to be ready to go to God quite often -- in thanks for when good happens, ready to learn more, in thanks even when bad happens, ready to learn more.
Some days, I walk through my entire day asking God questions and waiting for answers. On such days, I don't just go to God often, I walk next to Him the whole day and acknowledge Him there the whole day. That wasn't always something I was open to doing. I had too many important things to tend to to waste my day on such frivolity.
Eventually I learned that walking through the day that way removes almost all frivolity, almost all busy-ness, and reveals what the things that matter are. That is too much of an idea for me to fully unpack here, but I know this much -- no matter how busy I think a day is, I should never be too busy for time spent with God, because that time makes the rest of the time so much better than what it otherwise would have been.
I say all this to express that I was in a very different place not long ago and getting out of that place is probably a lot easier than you realize, though things may seem so very hopeless.
Also you write, "I am going to start on the New Testament and see how I feel. Also Psalms has been recommended."
A wise person I know said to me not long ago, "Your feelings do not matter," when I said something similar. It felt a bit harsh when it hit me, but I didn't let that distract me. I knew there was a whole lot of truth in what he was saying, and if I could stick with it for a few minutes then I would grow from it. And that is a place where I could alternately allow a spirit of offense to distract me. Being offended is one of the greatest evils of our day, can be so effective of a distraction from the things that matter, and is so very popular. His statement was enough to get me to pause and to remind myself that I am able to take control of those feelings, to take them captive, rather than only ever being at the whim of my feelings.
I know that there are easier to pierce books in the Bible than Genesis or Exodus. I know how easy it is to say that they have nothing to say about our time. I know that there are things that feel so alien. But I think, with an open heart and some prayer that even the most dense and unpleasant scripture might reveal wisdom. In such moments, I start with something like this:
"God, thank you for this Bible you put in my hands. Thank you for the loving friend of mine who brought it over. Thank you for the excitement that others around me have for this book. God, I am not feeling much excitement for this yet. Help me to feel excitement for this. Help direct me to get a new revelation in my life from the words I am about to read. Help me to focus on the words. Help me to focus on you. Help me to draw closer to you."
There are books of the Bible that I have not cared for in the past. As I read through them this time around, I will certainly be saying that kind of prayer. I will not just be muscling through them. I will be turning to God to help me find fresh knowledge in those parts. I know there is tremendous learning and benefit to be had in every chapter of this book. My experience has been, that if I turn to myself or to man to help me through all of it, that effort will fall flat. If I am willing to turn to God and to rely on Him, that such an effort bears so much more fruit.
And that is a place where I could alternately allow a spirit of perfectionism to distract me. There are different ways of organizing the Bible, different translations, different size fonts, different notes in the margins. I have had no shortage of recommendations along those lines over the past few months -- most people who made those recommendations are not reading the Bible in 2023.
They gave me recommendations on how to make everything just perfect, or exactly how they believed it needed to be. I am convinced that all of that can work out for you just fine if you take whatever problem you are having to God.
But you have started reading the Bible front to back and have ostensibly done that for 16 or 17 days now. That's about the amount of time it takes a person to form a new habit. I would not recommend that you change course at this point. I would like to recommend that you add to what you are doing.
It takes about 15 minutes a day to do the reading plan we are doing. That is a very small commitment, especially in an era in which people can easily spend 15 minutes standing in line or 15 minutes down an internet rabbit hole (more like 3 hours for most people).
So why abandon that pursuit that you have already committed to?
Why not add to that foundation.
Why not add ten minutes a day of a Psalm or ten minutes a day of a Proverb?
There are 31 chapters in Proverbs, one for each day of the month. Or why not add ten minutes a day from the New Testament?
If you have 15 minutes a day, do you not also have 25 minutes a day?
In the context of the New Testament and the coming of the Messiah, does the Old Testament really get good. Your inclination to have more of the New Testament in your day is a good one. But I'd like to ask you to make it additive, something you build on top of your foundation, rather than replacing one for another.
Making a daily discipline of reading the Bible front to back in 2023 is going to change your life. I know that much. So you can imagine that I might be hesitant when you tell me you are going to skip around with no plan according to your feelings. I believe, following this plan as a foundation, as a no questions asked commitment, each and every day as diligently as you can, and then each day also adding a little on top of that according to your feelings, is going to give you a very good and meaningful year.
I don't say that as a theologian.
I don’t say that as a pastor.
I am neither of those things.
I say that as someone who knows how to get seemingly impossible things done.
You call the play, then you run the play. It's that simple. I'd like to ask you to run the play that you already called the day that you signed up for the Bible project. And if that's not working, I'd like to ask you to add a little prayer to it. And give it some time.
Thank you for taking the time to write me about this. I am going to post this to realstevo.substack.com and inside our Bible project community, in either place there may be some other folks with other encouraging words and other wise words. Perhaps some will even feel that I have addressed your question incorrectly. I have given you what I know from my experience, and from knowing what it felt like to be in a place similar to what you describe.
What I know is this -- you have taken such an important first step by committing to do this. But you are seeing that something is missing. If you keep sincerely asking God to help you deal with that missing thing (or almost anything in my experience), then God will help you deal with that.
How does that answer sound?
Please keep doing the daily readings. Do them in faith, certain that a deeper relationship with God can come through them.
I believe you are on the right path.
I believe you are going to have an amazing year ahead.
Allan
If you’ve enjoyed this, and if you like the idea of a challenge in the year ahead, I have a neat one for you and a neat community of people rising to quite a challenge together. Join us at 55hours.org.