Read Your Bible Every Day: A Feast For Your Soul

Show of hands, how many of you eat every day? I’m waving my hand wildly right now because not only can I not imagine eating at least three meals every day (and usually more), but I love food. Can’t live without it, right?

So how many of you read your Bible every day? 

I think a lot of hands just went back down.

Satan loves this tactic. He wants us to believe it’s more important to eat than it is to feed the soul, which leads a lot of souls hungering—starving, even. When it comes to daily Bible reading, Christians tend to fall into one of four categories:

1. Pracitcally starving
2. Emotional eater
3. Malabsorption
4. Full diet

A) Practically Starving, Barely Alive

The Christian in this category is eating just enough to stay alive, but barely. Her time with the Bible is restricted to church only. That’s like eating one meal a week and expecting it to sustain you! Just as the body grows weak without food, the soul grows weak without a daily diet of God’s Word.

The Solution: Up your intake of food for the soul. Make it a priority to fit daily Bible reading into you schedule just like you leave room for eating.

B) Emotional Eater: Binge-Reading When Trouble Comes Knocking

Tell me if you’ve ever seen this on a chick flick before: The poor damsel gets dumped by her boyfriend and reaches for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to ease her heartache.

Of course, right?

Lots of Christians treat the Bible like a pint of Chocolate Caramel Cookie Dough and only reach for it when life throws them a curveball.

Lots of Christians treat the Bible like a pint of Chocolate Caramel Cookie Dough and only reach for it when life throws them a curveball. And then they binge-read looking for answers. It’s not wrong to go to your Bible when you’re going through a rough patch, but a consistent diet of Scripture will make you stronger so you can handle the rough patches as they come.

The Solution: In addtion to carving out time for daily Bible reading, check out my posts How to Build Rock Solid Faith When God Stirs the Coals and Indestructible Faith: Toughen Up When the Waters Rise. Prepare yourself for when the hard times come!

C) Malabsorption: Eating, But Not Digesting Properly

Malabsorption is a condition where you can eat all the food you want, but your body doesn’t absorb the nutrients. (Sometimes I wish mine would do that with the fats and carbs.)

If you fall into this category, you read your Bible every day, but you’re not getting much out of it.

If you fall into this category with your Bible reading, you’re reading it every day, or nearly every day—which is already a tremendous feat, so good for you!—but for whatever reason, you’re not getting much out of it. You might have trouble staying focused because you’re tired, or you’re getting distracted by your dog who wants to go for a walk, or your phone keeps ringing. Maybe maintaining focus isn’t the problem, but you just don’t understand what you’re reading.

The Solution: Don’t give up! You’ve almost made it to the next category. Check out these posts to help you get there:

• Trouble Navigating the Bible? Try These Helpful Tricks!
• Trouble Understanding the Bible? Get Help!

D) Full Diet

This is where you want to be, the ultimate sweet spot for the Christian diet. You read your Bible every day without the hindrances that prevent you from absorbing it, and you grow through what you read. The Bible would refer to you as “good soil.” (See the Parable of the Sower.)

No solution is needed here. But you might want to check out my post Wrong Ways to Read the Bible (That You Might Be Doing!).

Read Your Bible Every Day and Give Your Soul a Feast

You can’t meet with Jesus and not be changed.

I HATE cold water. Whenever I go swimming, I will ease myself in, first to the knees, then the thighs, then the hips. Then I get stuck because even after all of that, the worst is yet to come. Meanwhile, my sons have raced past me and are now splashing around and enjoying the water and it’s almost time to go and I haven’t even swam one lap!

Sometimes, it’s smarter to just dive right in.

If you can dive right into a cold lake, you can dive right into daily Bible reading (which, in my opinion, is far less of a shock to the system than cold water). Just do it! Put it into your schedule, start reading every day, and see how he blesses you. You can’t meet with Jesus and not be changed.

Make Daily Bible Reading a Habit

Don’t try to plow through the whole Bible in a short time like you might a Harry Potter book. You will absorb more if you read in small sections and take time to think about it and absorb it. If you like action, try reading Joshua. If poetry is more your thing, start with the Psalms. For history, start in Genesis. And if you want to really get close to Jesus, choose one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). 

Other suggestions:

• 6 Bible Stories That Show the Astonishing Love of Jesus
• 5 Bible Stories That Show the Awesome Power of God
• Where to Look In Scripture During Your Darkest Nights

The YouVersion Bible app lets you download Bible reading plans and will send you notifications if you haven’t read in a few days—sort of like a good best friend. 

It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that you need to get rid of all distractions when you read. In other words, turn off your phone! Handle your time with God with the same dedication you would use for an appointment with a friend you haven’t seen for a long time.

Dive right in and let the word of God change you!