I’ve heard many reasons why people struggle to read their Bibles. My co-blogger Ryan has written about many of them:
- I’m not smart enough to read the Bible.
- I don’t have enough time to read the Bible.
- The Bible is boring.
- Bible study is complicated.
- I don’t need to read the Bible.
- I’m not motivated to read the Bible.
Of course, in our most lucid moments, we’ll acknowledge these reasons are lame. But they continue to ensnare us on almost a daily basis.
So I appreciated Brandon Smith’s recent article, “The Real Reason We Don’t Read Our Bibles.” Smith suggests that the underlying excuse behind all the other excuses is that we forget that God’s word is living and active. That the living God is still speaking to us today and meeting with us in the pages of his word.
Want to know what God thinks? Not just what he thought, but what he thinks? Open your Bible. The Spirit lives within you to help you understand God’s will and character, to help you taste and see something fresh and new that you’ve never seen before. A passage you read five years ago might speak to you differently today, because the living God speaks to you through his living Word, right here and right now.
If only this truth would get under our skin, the rest of our excuses might evaporate into the vaporous void of nothingness they are.
Smith gets this just right. Check it out!
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