[Music] it's really valuable to attempt to read the entire Bible in a given year we talked about that last time but we also need to go deep in particular passages to which leads to today's question from mark in New Brunswick Canada dear pastor John I've just finished reading your latest book reading the Bible supernaturally and while I found it delightful and challenging in some respects in other respects I found it overwhelming some of the deeper methods you mentioned in the book like sentence diagramming and arcing seem to be very time consuming and I'm wondering how
to incorporate some of these into my already very busy life working as an office professional for over 50 hours per week Plus having a family plus being involved in various leadership functions within my local church I wonder about my time constraints and do you ever just read the Bible devotionally without getting into all the sentence diagramming and digging and arcing you mentioned in the book is there a more common approach you take in your daily devotional reading each morning the answer is yes yes I do read the Bible devotionally like that I think I understand
what you mean like that every day without getting into the actual diagramming and arcing on paper or on line although once you've done enough analyzing of that sort over the decades it happens fairly automatically in your head and yes there is a way that I approach the Scriptures daily in this more devotional fashion in fact there's a five-minute video over at desiring God org called apt at a strategy for daily Bible reading I just saw it yesterday and so it'll be there probably whenever you listen to this and or if you just type in to
the search app that apt eighty a strategy for daily Bible reading so I'm not going to go into those details again here what I think will be more helpful here is to paint a biblical picture that might inspire a kind of radical engagement with the Bible for the purposes of radical living for Christ you know my goal in writing that book and in everything I've ever done with regard to the Bible my goal is not to produce a lot of Bible nerds but a kind of Christian or a kind of Christians who are so deep
and unshakable in their convictions about eternal reality that they are not blown over by the winds of trouble and don't simply float you know mindlessly along conforming to the currents of contemporary culture but use the Bible to become like oak trees that's one image you might use from Psalm 1 but strong trees planted by streams of water that stand in in the winds of adversity and and gives shade to people and bless people or another image would be one of my favorites like not a jellyfish floating in the occurrence of culture but like dolphins who
cut their own paths against the current and actually reach people who are stranded in in need those are my goals a kind of radical risk-taking sacrificial loving countercultural people who make Christ look magnificent in this world because they find so much joy in him and have broken free from the selfishness that is so endemic to all of us and to this world that that kind of Christian living in that kind of crazy countercultural uncomfortable way of serving the glory of Christ is not going to come into being by mere natural casual ordinary encounters with the
Bible something radically different has to happen in the presence of the Bible for this person to come into being and to be stained for 60 or 70 years of spiritual warfare so I'm I'm not looking for a way to say that the pathway into the precious and powerful riches of Christ is an easy path Webb's not trying to make it easy for anybody it's just not gonna do any good if we only take the easy way that there's a roaring lion supernatural roaring lion at every turn in this pathway and his aim is to keep
you from finding the glories of Christ in the scriptures so here's the picture I want to I want to create not to picture the tree standing the width the winds of adversity and that's a picture of the dolphin cutting through the currents of culture I love those pictures but here's the biblical picture that I want to create to inspire proverbs two three to six my son if you receive my words and treasure up my Commandments with you making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding yes if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding and here comes if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God or some 19:10 more to be desired are they than gold even much fine gold or psalm 119 72 the law of the Lord is better than thousands of gold and silver pieces or verse 21 27 your Commandments are above gold above fine gold so here's the picture suppose you discovered that a thousand years ago your backyard was a burial
ground for the greatest treasures of that bygone world huge chests of gold and silver are very likely buried not too far beneath the surface in your backyard and your city has laws on the books that says anything discovered in property that you own is your property and after a week's little poking around an exploration you had begun to find incredibly valuable treasures treasures that could put all your kids through college and treasures that could get you out of debt and treasures that could make you a benefactor of a hundred worthy causes treasures worth hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of dollars like gold and fine gold would would you say well I'm busy got lots to do I doubt it it really does come down to a matter of how desperate we are to get rich with true riches the riches of Christ and the wealth of his glory and his wisdom and his power for living the kind of radical Christian life this world so desperately needs so my very practical suggestion is this find a slot I'm just talking one now not seven find a slot in your week perhaps Saturday morning early before
you have to do lot of stuff for the kids or work in the yard Saturday morning early or Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening on the Lord's Day where you do once a week some serious digging in God's backyard but then on most mornings you just give yourself to a more devotional kind of meditation on the word it's never the one or the other never it's always both and in proportion to our our gifts and the situation we have in life and the burden and calling we feel by the Holy Spirit to be a strong uncompromising
compassionate persevering sacrificial risk-taking loving kind of Christian requires two kinds of encounter with the gold and the silver of God's Word one kind of encounter involves sweat dirty hands aching back from all the digging in the backyard and the other kind just as important is more tender when you're holding the gold piece and wiping it off carefully blowing the dirt off of it and finding it to be a thousand years old and worth thousands of dollars and you're lifting it up to the light and you're tilting it back and forth and you're saying Wow amazing
beautiful glorious awesome in your heart is feeling zeal and joy and contentment and eagerness over the beauty of this gold you just found that that meditative affectionate tender moment is just as important as all the backyard digging both of these are utterly important and and mark I will pray with you and all of us that God will show you show me the kind of combined tough study and tender cherishing that we're going to need to be the kind of Christians that this world so badly needs yeah amen thank you Pastor John for helping us carve
out time to study scripture in depth in the midst of the bustle of daily living I really appreciate that perspective and for the way you explain Bible study in its preciousness and what it should be to us and thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your week you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive even reaches by email with question of your own even questions that relate to how to how to study the Bible deeply in the middle of a busy life you can do all
that through online home at desiring God org forward slash ask Pastor John I am your host Tony ranky and we will see you back here on Friday you
