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FAITH FUEL

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Tips To Better Bible Reading


Here are a few ways to better motivate your bible study as you constantly refine your strategy to your bible reading.

  1. Try Listening to the Bible: You can listen to the bible on audio instead of reading it to engage your brain differently and learn audibly instead of just visually. This also offers the advantage of being able to consume the bible in environments you might not otherwise be able to read it, like while driving or working out at the gym or going for a jog. It can be fun to listen to dramatized version with the like of Samuel L. Jackson and L.L. Cool J, but I have liked listening to the NIV Listener's Bible with Max McLean. You can also find free audio versions from Faith Comes From Hearing.

  2. Try Reading Books of the Bible In One Sitting: The writer's of each book contained in the Bible meant for their writings to be read (or listened to) in one sitting. Many times as modern readers we tend to not read the Bible in this way but instead consume it in fragments, reading one or two chapters at a time for example. The disadvantage with this is that we miss out on the larger themes and general motif of the writer's intentions when we only read it small bits at a time. I liken this to trying to figure out what a puzzle picture looks like when we only have a few pieces put together on the table. Below is a graph showing the approximate times that it would take to read each book of the bible in one sitting.


  1. Read Without Chapter and Verse References: The chapter and verse numbers in our modern Bibles were added to the text to try to add reader reference conveniences in order to find passages more easily around the 12th and 15th century (respectfully). And while this does add some convenience, unfortunately it tends to add unnecessary breaks to the writing and can cause the flow and intent of the writing to be disrupted. This can cause people to tend to look at the Bible as "bullet-pointed verse-nuggets" -- rather than the literature that it really is. This type of interpretation of the bible can have dire consequences. You can get useful printed arrangement of the bible for this purpose from Zondervan's "The Books of The Bible".


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