Reading Scripture: A Spiritual Discipline by Connie McNeill
You have probably heard pastors talk about spiritual disciplines. Unfortunately, those words—spiritual disciplines—sound a little intimidating.
When we say “spiritual disciplines,” we are talking about tools to help us:
grow in our relationship with God,
become more like Christ,
listen to the Spirit, and
to help give our lives direction and meaning.
The disciplines themselves are never the end goal. We don’t practice disciplines to get them perfect or to demand an audience with God. Rather, spiritual disciplines are how we achieve the end goal—to live an abundant life in Christ.
Someone has compared spiritual disciplines to those who are sailing on a boat. We set the sail on our boat, but we can’t control when the wind blows. Once it does, we can maneuver the sail to maximize the wind and get us where we want to go. However, we never control the wind.
One of the spiritual disciplines we can and should practice as followers of Christ is reading the scripture. There are three general ways most people read scripture.
1. Most of us begin by simply reading scripture, occasionally, or when we feel the need for comfort or guidance.
2. Next, we develop a plan to read and study scripture regularly.
3. As we mature in our discipleship, we move to the next relationship we should have with scripture—engaging with it. The engagement of scripture is transformative. Eugene Peterson wrote that engaging the Scriptures is our primary and normative access to God as God is revealed to us.
Reading scripture is important. Studying scripture is deeply meaningful.
Engaging scripture is essential to our discipleship.
Engaging scripture means you analyze and apply the Bible to your daily living. It is one thing to know a text. However, to realize a personal insight about that text and its relevance to our lives is transformative. Some have called this discovery learning, and it has four steps.
1. Read – First, we become familiar with scripture by reading it.
2. Study - Next, we study the scripture to learn what it means in its original context and now in ours.
3. Reflect - The next step is to ask the Holy Spirit to help you reflect on the meaning of your own life and in the context of the scripture being studied.
4. Apply - Inevitably, reflection and application will lead to questions and the need for more study.
Do you see the cycle? Read. Study. Reflect. Apply. The result is not just more Bible knowledge, memorized verses, or historical facts about a passage but a transformed disciple’s life living abundantly in Christ.
The best that a community group, Bible study, service project, retreat, or mission trip has to offer is engagement in a Christ-lived abundant life. We will certainly experience many good things—friendship, companionship, comfort, celebration, empathy, reward, fulfillment, blessing—from all these experiences, but none of them are the end game. They are pieces of the abundant life we can know, which leads to living in Christ, and this living in Christ is the end game for disciples.