How Do I Read My Bible When It Feels Dry?

Question 1123.

Bible reading dryness is something every Christian I have ever pastored has experienced at some point, myself very much included. The pages seem flat. The words don’t come alive the way they used to, or the way you keep hearing they should. You know you are meant to want this, and yet most days you would rather do almost anything else. If that is where you are, you are not alone, and it does not mean something has gone badly wrong with your soul.

It does mean we need to think honestly about why Bible reading dryness happens and what, practically, we can do about it. Some of the causes are ordinary and fixable. Some point to something deeper that God wants to use. Let’s take both kinds seriously.

Why Bible Reading Dryness Happens

There are several common roots to Bible reading dryness, and it helps to work out which one describes your situation. Sometimes it is simple fatigue. We live busy, distracted lives, pulled in a dozen directions before breakfast, and we come to Scripture running on empty and wonder why nothing lands. The problem is not the Bible. We are bringing an empty jug to a full well and expecting the jug to fill itself.

Sometimes it is genuine spiritual dryness of the kind the saints have described for centuries as a dark night of the soul, when God feels distant and his Word feels silent. This can be a season of testing, a call to deeper dependence, or occasionally a symptom of unconfessed sin working quietly underneath the surface. David knew this experience and did not pretend otherwise: “Why do you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14). The psalms of lament tell us that feeling distant from God is a normal part of the spiritual life, not proof that we have failed him.

Sometimes it is plain familiarity. We have read the same passages so many times that we no longer really see them. We know what is coming, so our minds wander ahead of the words. The shock of the gospel and the drama of the narrative have worn smooth through overuse, the way a stone in a riverbed loses its edges.

Ask What Kind of Dryness This Is

Before reaching for a solution, ask yourself a few honest questions. Have I been sleeping properly? Am I carrying an unconfessed sin I have been avoiding? Have I been treating Scripture as a box to tick rather than a person to meet? Am I simply exhausted from a season of life that has nothing directly to do with my walk with God? The answer changes what you do next, and there is real wisdom in not applying a spiritual fix to what is really a physical or circumstantial problem.

I have sat with church members who assumed their Bible reading dryness meant they were backsliding, when in fact they were new parents surviving on four hours of broken sleep. Grace, not guilt, is the right first response in that situation. Rest, and the dryness often lifts on its own once the underlying tiredness does.

Change the Rhythm, Not Just the Willpower

Bible reading dryness often responds better to a change of rhythm than to gritted teeth. If you always read in the same format, the same translation, the same time of day, try changing one variable. Read the ESV aloud instead of silently. Try the Psalms for a fortnight instead of wherever your plan has left you. Walk while you listen to an audio Bible rather than sitting at a desk. The content has not changed, but a different rhythm can wake up ears that had gone numb to the familiar.

Journalling can help too, even a single sentence: what struck me today, what confused me, what I want to ask God about. You might find meditating on Scripture slowly, turning a single verse over across a whole day, does more for a dry season than trying to cover more ground faster.

Remember This Is Not Unique to You

It is worth saying plainly that Bible reading dryness is not a modern problem born of short attention spans and constant notifications, though those certainly do not help. Believers across every century have described seasons when the Word felt distant. Even the psalmists cried out for God to open their eyes to see wonderful things in his law (Psalm 119:18), which only makes sense if the law did not always feel wonderful to look at without help.

You are in good company. The saints who wrote our hymns and our great devotional classics were not immune to dryness. Many of their best writing came directly out of those seasons, not out of constant spiritual highs.

Ask the Spirit to Do What Only He Can Do

Ultimately, Scripture coming alive is not something we can manufacture through better technique alone, though technique helps. It is the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, opening our eyes to see what is already there (1 Corinthians 2:14). So pray before you read, not as a ritual formula but as an honest request. Ask him plainly to meet you in the text today, because he is the one who ultimately overcomes Bible reading dryness, not our discipline by itself.

This does not mean discipline is unimportant. Faithfulness in a dry season, showing up at the text even when it feels like nothing is happening, is itself an act of worship and trust. God notices the showing up. But hold your technique with an open hand and your prayer with a full heart.

When Dryness Points to Something You Need to Deal With

Occasionally Bible reading dryness is a mercy in disguise, God’s way of getting your attention about something you have been avoiding. If dryness has coincided with a pattern of unconfessed sin, unresolved conflict with someone, or a decision you know you are dodging, be honest with yourself about that connection. Scripture can feel closed to us not because God has hidden it but because we have stopped listening in that particular area of life.

This is not meant to pile on guilt. It is meant as an invitation. Confession and repentance often do more to restore the sweetness of Scripture than any change of reading plan ever could, because the barrier was never really about the words on the page.

Practical Habits That Help Over Time

A few small, sustainable habits tend to shorten seasons of Bible reading dryness, even if they cannot banish them entirely. Reading a smaller portion more slowly usually beats reading a larger portion quickly when dryness has set in; a single paragraph turned over carefully will often yield more than three chapters skimmed on autopilot. Reading aloud, even quietly to yourself, engages a different part of your attention than silent reading does, and can wake up words that had started to blur together on the page.

Keeping a short list of questions to bring to the text can also help: what does this show me about God’s character, what does it ask of me, what would change if I actually believed this today. You do not need elaborate journalling to benefit from this. Three or four honest questions, asked consistently, do more over months than an occasional burst of enthusiasm followed by weeks of nothing.

Community helps too. Bible reading dryness is often easier to push through when you are reading alongside someone else, even loosely, comparing notes over coffee or a phone call rather than facing the dry patch entirely alone. Isolation tends to deepen spiritual dryness; fellowship tends to soften it, even when neither of you has any particularly profound insight to offer that week.

A Word for the Long Haul

Bible reading dryness will very likely visit you again, more than once, across a lifetime of following Jesus, and that is worth saying plainly rather than pretending a single article can inoculate you permanently against it. Spiritual seasons move in cycles of nearness and distance, much like the weather, and mature believers learn to weather the dry spells without concluding that summer has ended for good.

What changes with maturity is not the absence of dryness but your response to it. A young believer facing dryness for the first time can feel that their whole faith is collapsing. A believer who has walked with God for decades recognises the pattern, keeps showing up anyway, and trusts that the God who has proved faithful across every previous dry season will prove faithful in this one too.

So, now what?

So, now what? If you are in a season of Bible reading dryness this week, do not panic and do not assume the worst about yourself. Check the ordinary causes first: sleep, stress, unconfessed sin, sheer familiarity. Change one small thing about how you approach the text. Pray honestly before you open it. And keep showing up, because faithfulness through the dry season is exactly the kind of trust God delights to honour.

You might also find it helpful to read what I have written on choosing a Bible reading plan and on how the Spirit works in devotional reading, both of which touch on this same struggle from a slightly different angle.

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

Psalm 119:18 (ESV)