Reading Tips
Below find a few suggestions we've found helpful for participation in the Community Bible Reading Project.
- Think of reading the Bible as a dialogue between you and God. Initiate the dialogue by praying that God would speak to you and reveal himself to you through your reading. After you read, respond to the Lord with honest prayer. If you are encouraged or you learned something new, tell him. If you are confused, tell him that too. Ask him to use what you have read to make sense of your life, both inner (heart, mind, soul) and outer (situations, friends, work, etc.). Ask him to change you for the better through your reading.
- The Bible was composed over the course of many years by many different authors who lived in many different places, so we should not be surprised if it doesn't read like a modern novel that was written by one author. God does speak to us through the Bible, but he does it through diverse voices who were shaped by their own troubles, successes, hopes, and fears. This makes the Bible more exciting to read, but it also means that there will be parts that are easy to understand as well as parts that might seem very foreign to us.
- Though it is composed of diverse voices, the Bible also has one divine voice, the voice of God himself, that gives unity to its whole. As you read the OT and NT side by side each day, pay attention to the ways God is communicating with us through the different human voices. Try to answer the following questions: How do the OT and NT readings augment each other? How do they collaborate? Were you surprised in any way?
