Reading the Bible is like compounding interest: invest in reading consistently and your understanding will grow exponentially. On one level, the Bible is very simple—a child can understand it. At the same time, it’s infinitely complex. One can read it for a lifetime and never plumb its depths.
My biggest regret in life is not devouring the Bible sooner. I’ve been in full-time ministry for 25 years, and only in the last eight have I read through the whole Bible each year. Sometimes I imagine how different I’d be if I’d been doing so for 25 years.
Putting in the Work
The Bible is kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Without any prior knowledge of the MCU, you can watch Avengers: Endgame and enjoy it. But if you watched all 21 Marvel movies leading up to Endgame—investing over 50 hours of your life—the end hits differently. After years of learning about the MCU, you would understand and enjoy the final battle on a deeper level.
That’s how the Bible works, but compounded a thousand times over. It features multiple themes pulled together with barely visible threads, woven into an unimaginable tapestry over the course of 6,000 years.
For example, the more time you’ve invested in reading Scripture, the more meaningful it is to hear Jesus say, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11). In Ezekiel 34, 600 years before Jesus’s words, God proclaimed he would come down to save his lost sheep: “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep. . . . And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David.” In fact, God is presented as a shepherd in Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah, and Zechariah. Jesus’s claim to be the Good Shepherd, therefore, takes on incredible depth of meaning.
The New Testament makes more sense after you’ve read the Old a few times. To understand the words of Jesus and Luke and Paul and Peter, you need to understand the Scriptures they grew up with. Only then will the New Testament’s big themes crystallize in their full glory.
To understand the words of Jesus and Luke and Paul and Peter, you need to understand the Scriptures they grew up with.
Wealth doesn’t accumulate all at once. Warren Buffett is worth $107 billion—$106.7 billion of which was accumulated after his 50th birthday, and $103 billion after age 65. Buffett’s secret is time, since interest compounds over time. The key to building wealth is to start early.
The same is true for the Bible’s treasure. Want to build wisdom? Start reading early in life. I wish someone had told me to invest in regular Bible reading when I was younger. But just like investing your money, you can’t go back and do things differently. What you can do is start reading—and enjoying—the Bible today.
5 Reasons You’ll Grow to Enjoy Regular Bible Reading
1. Your brain will get better at reading.
If you’re like most people, you don’t read much at all. Thanks to years of device use, your brain has been programmed to be skittish and distracted. You’re not going to undo 10 years of fragmentation in a week or two. But as you read, your brain will rewire itself and you’ll be able to focus and think deeper. Don’t be surprised if you start to enjoy reading the Bible more as you go.
2. Connecting dots is thrilling.
As you read, doors of wisdom and knowledge will open. Avid reader Patrick O’Shaughnessy explains how this happens: “When you start out reading, you are collecting distant dots in a constellation with no apparent connection. . . . Ten years in, I now have an incomplete but dense set of interconnected dots. . . . Reading gets more and more enjoyable the more you do it.”
For many of us, the Bible can feel like a collection of dots with no apparent connection. And we don’t like feeling confused. But just keep going. My 12-year-old just started reading Scripture this summer. As he reads, he writes questions in the wide margins of his Bible: What does this mean? Where is that country? Why does he say that?
As you read, your brain will rewire itself and you’ll be able to focus and think deeper.
Recently he came across Psalm 66:5–6 (“Come and see what God has done. . . . He turned the sea into dry land”) and wrote in the margin, “Is this good or bad?” Great question! Usually dry land is a curse and punishment. If you’ve read through your Bible a few times, though, you’ll recognize the psalmist is referring to God’s mercy in the exodus, when the Israelites walked right through the Red Sea. Connections like these pop up all over the place as you grow more familiar with God’s Word.
3. Your knowledge base will expand.
“The wise lay up knowledge” (Prov. 10:14); stored-up knowledge and wisdom go hand-in-hand. As Maryanne Wolf explains in Reader Come Home, “Over the life span, everything we read adds to a reservoir of knowledge that is the basis of our ability to comprehend . . . whatever we read.” Whenever we read, we make deposits in our knowledge bank. The great truths of the Bible will shine as you withdraw riches you’ve stored up over the years.
4. Reading is an acquired skill.
Deep reading produces deep thinking, which produces deeper reading—a beautiful virtuous cycle. Don’t give two minutes a day to reading the Bible and expect much (although two minutes is certainly better than nothing!). Consistently reading hard things will make reading hard things easier and easier. Don’t grow discouraged if it’s difficult wrapping your brain around the Word. Give time to reading and watch the Word open up to you.
5. Scripture is the living and active Word of God.
The Bible isn’t any old book; it’s the very word of God. God wants to be known, and he wrote a book to make himself knowable. If you belong to Christ, his Spirit will help you understand the greatest wisdom in the universe (John 16:13). That’s solid encouragement as you form the habit of regular Bible reading.
Don’t worry if you haven’t read through the Bible before. Why not make 2023 the year you do? Your future self will thank you.
The Gospel Coalition