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I recently came across a statistic claiming that only about 10% of professing Christians have read the entire Bible. I’m not sure if that claim is correct, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that only a minority of believers have read the Bible in its entirety, for a variety reasons.

I would guess that most active Christians have read or been exposed to most of the New Testament (and maybe the “famous” Old Testament books, like Genesis and Psalms) in the course of their churchgoing and personal devotions; but once you start getting into the lesser-known Old Testament books (Leviticus and Numbers, I’m looking at you), I’d expect to see a dropoff in reading.

Does that 10% include you? Have you read the entire Bible? If not, what stopped you, and do you plan to do so in the future?

Share your thoughts!

Should Christians really be self-sufficient? In today’s devotional from Our Daily Bread, Joe Stowell challenges us with the message that being a Christian means relying on Christ, not on ourselves:

The city of Laodicea had a water problem. One nearby town had fabulous hot springs and another had cold, clear water. Laodicea, however, was stuck with tepid, mineral-laden water that tasted like sulphur. Not hot. Not cold. Just gross.

Given those facts, the words of Jesus to the Laodicean believers in Revelation 3 must have stung. Jesus rebuked them for being “neither cold nor hot” (v.15). And when He thought of them, He felt like vomiting (v.16)—like the effect of their drinking water.

What was their problem? It was the sin of self-sufficiency. The Laodiceans had become so affluent that they had forgotten how much they needed Jesus (v.17).

When we say we have everything we need, but Jesus isn’t at the top of the list, He is deeply offended. Self-sufficiency distracts us from pursuing the things we really need that only He can give. If you’d rather have cash than character, if your credit cards are maximized and your righteousness is minimized, if you’ve become smart but aren’t wise, then you’ve been shopping in all the wrong places. Jesus offers commodities that are far better (v.18).

He’s knocking at your heart’s door (v.20). Let Him in. He will give you all you really need! — Joe Stowell

We must be careful to avoid
All self-sufficiency;
If sinful pride gets in the way,
God’s hand we will not see. —Sper

We always have enough when God is our supply

How do you seek to put Christ first in your life?

Does God really still speak to us today in the twentieth century? That’s the question addressed by today’s devotional, from Woodrow Kroll’s Early in the Morning devotional series. Kroll describes what it must have been like to hear Jesus’ teaching in person—and explains why we can hear his voice just as clearly today:

Today, in the twentieth century, Jesus does not speak to us and teach us as He did early in the morning in the temple, but He still speaks to us through His Word, God’s Word the Holy Bible. We have the benefit of hearing the very same teaching that these heard who came at the dawning of the day to the temple. We can sit at the feet of Jesus today by reading His Word.

H. A. Ironside told of a godly man named Andrew Frazer, who had come to southern California to recover from a serious illness. Though this Irishman was quite weak, he opened his worn Bible and began expounding the truths of God’s Word in a way that Ironside had never heard before. So moved by Frazer’s words was Ironside, that his curiosity drove him to ask, “Where did you learn these things? Did you learn them in some college or seminary?” The sickly man said, “My dear young man, I learned these things on my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland. There, with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul and to open the Word to my heart. He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I ever could have learned in all the seminaries or colleges in the world.”

To spend time in the Word of God yields a much richer understanding of the deep things of theology than to spend time in a classroom. For the person denied a formal education in Bible and theology there is no shame if we spend time at the feet of Jesus. From early in the morning, throughout the day, and into the evening hours the great scholars of the Word become so because of time spent in God’s Book and on their knees. Each of us has the same opportunity to do that. Let’s take that opportunity today.

Read the full devotional at Back to the Bible.

What’s the state of your Bible study and reading today? Do you hear Jesus’ voice of teaching and encouragement when you read the Bible? Do you need to spend more time learning at Jesus’ feet by reading God’s Word?

We all have problems, and we want solutions. That’s why it’s so tempting to treat the Bible like a big book of answers. We just want to find the right verses and passages, because if we can find them then we’d never screw up and get embarrassingly drunk again, or we could win that argument about women in the church, or we could finally have a clear conscience about whether to get the couch or donate the money to charity.

In the Dark Side of Bible Reading Jeremy Berg writes of his concern for this approach. He’s worried that the self-absorption we bring to the study of Bible could be harmful.

Here’s an excerpt:

I am concerned about those who approach the text with their own issues and preoccupations already in mind and ask the Word to magically speak to those issues. I am irritated with an attitude (usually well-meaning and unintentional, by the way) that sounds like: “That’s a nice story Jesus, but can you please address my problem with __________?”…And a thousand other variations.

The hidden dark side of this posture toward God’s Word is that it reveals a deep-seated self-absorption that keeps us at the center of our universe and insists that God and His Word orbit our needs and serve our interests.

He goes on to offer what he calls a “different posture toward God’s Word”:

1. First, let’s humbly approach God’s Word as we would approach God himself. Let’s reverently bow in awe and listen intently to what he is actually saying to us.

2. Instead of “applying the Bible to our lives” (which again assumes we are the fixed center point and the Word is just a holy ointment to be applied to our souls) let’s instead try to “apply ourselves to the Bible.” Put narratively, let’s not let give God a convenient place within our own story; but rather find ourselves swept up in God’s much larger Story!

3. Instead of bringing all of our concerns to the text and forcing it to speak to them, let’s instead let God’s concerns invite us out of our (relatively) petty preoccupations and into the realm of heavenly realities. “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things” (Col 3:2)…

4. Finally, personal application must come only AFTER one has given God’s Word a fair hearing. Let God lead the conversation where He so desires. When we’re done letting God’s Word speak then we can ask the Spirit to give us a personal assignment in response to God’s challenge.

Read the entire Dark Side of Bible Reading post.

What do you think? Do you agree with Mr. Berg’s posture toward the Bible?

Do you have a favorite devotional? It might be a classic of Christian literature or a fresh-from-the-printer modern work, but many Christians have a favorite devotional that they turn to each day to complement their prayer and Bible reading.

Do you have a favorite? What is it, and why do you like it?

Share your answer!

A few weeks ago, I pointed out an article on the Koinonia blog about common Bible study mistakes and the usefulness of inductive Bible study. But what exactly is inductive Bible study? How’s it different from “normal” Bible study, and is it something you need a seminary degree to undertake?

It turns out that inductive Bible study is actually a very simple concept, something that anyone can do while reading through the Bible. It’s a very personalized way of reading through the Bible, and lets you walk thoughtfully through the Bible at your own pace. The good folks at Intervarsity have a short step-by-step guide to inductive Bible study that has helped me grasp the concept.

If your Bible reading feels directionless or lacking, I encourage you to try out the inductive study method on a few chapters. It’ll get you interacting with the Bible text in a way that you may never have done before. If you do try it out (or if you’ve been doing inductive Bible study for a while now), stop by the comment section below and share your experience!

What would it be like if God called you up on your cellphone? Back to the Bible has an interesting ministry called 411God that provides an idea of how that might work: you sign up for an account, and then you get a daily call to your cellphone with one minute of Scripture.

The service is free to use; and if you’re curious what the daily calls sound like, you can listen to past ones online at their archives. (There’s also a free album from the band Vota available for download.)

411God’s an intriguing idea, and I wonder if we’ll see the concept spread to other forms of daily spiritual engagement, like devotionals or prayer. How many of us don’t spend enough time each day in Bible reading or praying because we just can’t seem to find the time? This program sidesteps that excuse by bringing the Bible to you instead of waiting for you to find time to come to the Bible. If you give it a try, leave a comment below to let us know your impressions.

Do you struggle with any bad Bible reading habits?

I’m not talking about the bad habit of not actually reading the Bible (a battle every Christian I know has fought at least a few times in the course of their life). Rather, have you ever caught yourself reading the Bible in a misleading or counterproductive way?

Andy Le Peau talks about bad Bible reading habits and suggests that inductive Bible study is a good way to re-train yourself to get the most out of your Bible reading. He points out one example of bad Bible reading, described by Ajith Fernando at Koinonia: the habit of scanning through a large passage and picking out the handful of familiar, inspiring verses—ignoring the rest of the text, which may provide critical context for those inspiring bits.

I’ve certainly seen that bad habit in action, and have fallen victim to it a few times myself. Another bad habit lots of us commit is proof-texting—singling out a verse or two that appears to support an idea we like, without bothering to ask whether the verse, put in the full context of the complete passage, is really saying what we want it to.

What about you? Have you noticed any bad Bible habits taking root in (or even worse, being promoted by) the church today? How did you break out of your own bad reading habits?

Looking for a good Bible study curriculum for this fall? Officers’ Christian Fellowship has just posted a series of free Bible study guides on the book of James that would be perfect for a small group that wants to tackle one of the Bible’s shorter but more interesting books.

The book of James focuses on growing in maturity in the Christian faith; there’s a lot packed into its five chapters. In addition to the OCF study guides linked above, you can find some additional useful background and thematic information on James at Biblica’s outline of James and Into Thy Word’s two-part introduction to James. Between those three resources, you should have plenty to kickstart a great Bible study.

Sunday’s Words of Hope Radio Program walked through the book of Jonah, asking a question: do we care about people like God does?

Here are a few excerpts from the transcript of Jonah and the Whale:

You probably can remember Jonah’s story. God called him to be a prophet, to proclaim his word and call people to repentance. But unlike the other biblical prophets, the Lord didn’t send Jonah to preach to the people of Israel. He sent him to Nineveh. Now there were two very large reasons why Jonah didn’t want to go there at all. One was that the people of Nineveh were foreigners, gentiles, pagans. Why should they listen to the word of Israel’s God? The other reason was that those people were the enemy. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was the big bad bully living on Israel’s block. [...]

God’s heart of love is moved with pity for people who don’t really know what they are doing, who, like those Ninevites, “do not know their right hand from their left.” God cares about the countless people in the world who live from day to day without a thought about eternity, or the state of their souls, or even about God himself; people who live like dumb beasts, with never a concern about anything higher than their own physical comfort or pleasure; people who don’t even know that they don’t know the only one in whom there is life and hope — the Lord Jesus Christ. God has compassion for all such. He pities them. And he wants to break through to them, to reach them with the message of his love and mercy.

Read the entire transcript, or listen to the broadcast.