The term “mastering the Bible” is a hat tip to a very good little book by James Grey called “How to Master the English Bible”.  Which while it is a difficult book to purchase, it is a little book well worth purchasing.

This method of reading requires longer concerted periods of reading in many cases and is well suited to gaining a deep familiarization of a particular book of the Bible.

How?  Simply read the book (e.g. Ephesians) from start to end in one sitting – and then repeat.  If possible re-read the book several times in one sitting.  In some instances, this takes considerable time and concentration (e.g. Romans), but as you re-read you’ll find that you’ll see more of the meaning that the author intended and possibly more gaps (such as customs) that hide the intention.

Over time you’ll become very familiar with the book and have a deep understanding of the theme, intentions and characteristics of a book.

This is a great method to use to prepare to teach on a book of the Bible, or just to get a better understanding of a book or set of books.

There is only one better way of mastering a book than this method in my experience – and that is to memorize the book.

If you apply this method to (for instance) the entire new testament, you will indeed master the bits that you read over time and even the whole Bible.

Devotional reading is purposeful reading that is focused on allowing scripture to help us interact with the Lord.  This is well described by George Muller of  Bristol:

The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.  The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication;so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer…

Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts… (Cited in “Desiring God” by John Piper, pp155-157)

This is a great way to start your day.  Wayne Grudem also uses a method like this:

Usually I just “camp” on a phrase or verse, sometimes writing it out and pondering application to my own life. I also keep a blank notepad beside me because God often brings to my mind things that I need to do and I make a quick note.

Typically with this method you wouldn’t necessarily read as broadly as you might with the time otherwise.  Alternatively you might also be more selective in where you read from – for example spending more time in Psalms than in perhaps the first five books (the Pentateuch).

Slowly moving through the text allowing ourselves to soak in it and respond to what we find there is a great practice, however, it may not be for everyone.  Personally I’ve found this more effective the longer I’ve been a Christian.  If you are new believer, you might prefer the hunger based method for the moment.

There are several ways to read the Bible that I’ve used over the years and there may be others that you can think of, but in the next few posts I’m going to explore a few of thee and where and when I’ve used them – and where you might like to use them too.

The first of these I’m calling “hunger based” because it is not set on reading a specific amount of scripture or keeping a pace – it is based on filling a spiritual hunger.  This method is ideal for new believers and believers who have a hunger to know Christ and broadly understand the will of the Lord.

Simply put it means just reading. You might start in John 1 and end in John 5.  It really doesn’t matter how long you read for, the key thing is that you are engaged and taking in the word as you read. You might read lots and find it doesn’t really strike your heart or just read one verse and “camp” on it for 30 minutes.

This method is also a great way to familiarize yourself with scripture as you can take in whole books (e.g. Ephesians) or even large narrative passages (e.g. 1 Samuel) really easily which allows you to get a broad understanding of the sections, themes and focus of the Bible.

Now this might also seem to be a lazy approach to reading – and it may, however, lazily reading the Bible is better than no reading.  Hopefully in the next few posts you’ll get a few ideas for other ways to read the Bible which might help solve lazy reading from ignorance of alternative methods.

You probably know that more Christians are killed for their faith in Jesus today than ever before. There are many countries around the world where people who turn to Christ for salvation don’t live very long after doing so.

There are many countries where this is the case.  For instance North Korea, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, India, China, Pakistan and Iran are all at the top of the list of countries where Christians are being killed regularly (if not daily).  These countries along side Eritrea and Vietnam are the worlds 10 worst persecutors of Christians.

Take for example the following story from Somalia:

David Abdulwahab Mohamed Ali was born and raised in Somalia until he was forced to flee to Yemen following the political turmoil that engulfed his home country.

Like almost all Somalis, David was also a Muslim. He was exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ when he was living as refugee in Yemen. In 1995, he committed his life to Jesus Christ. But living as Christian in Yemen was difficult for him and he was forced once again to leave for another country. This time he headed to Ethiopia, where Christians make up the majority of the population.

After long years in exile, he traveled back to his native Somalia to visit his family and friends. His relatives must have observed the change that David had undergone. They wanted to know if he was still a Muslim.

On April 22, 2008, at 4:30 PM, one of David’s cousins led two other members of the Islamic extremist group Al-Shabab to David and asked him if he was a Muslim or an infidel. He answered, “Neither.”

They asked, “Then what are you?” He answered, “Waxaan ahay Masiixi,” which means, “I am a follower of the Messiah.”

At this, David’s cousin was enraged and humiliated. In Somalia’s strict Muslim society, David’s conversion to Christianity brought enormous shame on his family. His cousin’s response was to pull out a gun and shoot David. The other two extremists did the same, and the three continued shooting David until their Muslim “honor” had been avenged.

This and many other stories are chronicled in the International Christian Concern “Hall of Shame” for 2009.  The Hall of Shame reads a bit like a cross between a political summary and Foxes Book of Martyrs, but is well worth reading.

It is also worth subscribing to the Voice of the Martyrs newsletter or contacting a VOM representative at your church.  We who live safely in the west should be actively seeking to help our brothers and sisters in Christ who are subject to persecution.  We must start by understanding the situation they are in.  We also need to pray and give to help them out.

There are a number of organizations I would recommend.  One is the Voice of the Martyrs which is dedicated to helping persecuted believers and telling their stories.  The other is the Barnabas fund which is only focused on helping believers, but not restricted just to countries of persecution.

Take the time to find out more, and see what you can do to help – we can help!

One of the great things that the Internet does is unite people around the world.  There are very few communities that are really beneficial to building up believers, however, it seems that this is a gap that is slowly being filled.

One example of this gap being filled is with the Logos Global Bible Reader.  This is a product in development, currently late in the beta release cycle.  The idea of it is to read the Bible in a year on a schedule along with believers from around the world.

Given it is a new year and a great time to start reading the Bible in a year, I thought I’d give a quick plug for this free application. 

To get started, create a user account on logos.com (if you don’t already have one) and then download the application from here (Windows only).

Getting started

Once logged in, select a reading schedule by clicking the purple icon next to the "Bible in a Year" text – there is a reading program that starts on Jan 1, 2009 which would be a useful place to start.

I suspect that by the time you read this it will be a few days into the new year, but never fret, you can catch up by just selecting the first day that you missed from the date drop down list (labeled 1 in the image below).  If you are a bit behind, I recommend taking a few hours over a weekend to catch up. 

Community – a new dimension

One of the cool things about this program is the community aspect.  You can see how many people are following along the same reading as well as how many of them are on schedule with their reading.  If you fall behind you will become part of the "behind" statistic.

As you read through, you can post comments by clicking the comment tab.  This is one of the coolest parts of the application – not only can you share your thoughts, but so will others, which will likely both challenge, inform and inspire your thoughts as you read and reflect.  A nice touch is that as you mouse over the comments the glob above will expand and you’ll see the location of each reader on the planet as your read their thoughts.  I can already see a couple of readers in New Zealand in the comments.

You can read either the King James Version or the English Standard Version at the moment, and each days reading includes Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs – a good mix.

If achieving one of your goals could be done by reading through the bible in a year, this might be a great way to do it.  I’ve done the Bible in a year a few times now and it is a great way to get a general overview of the Bible and understand what the Lord is doing through the word and the world.