Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11132. Study Bible reading and devotional reading are not competitors, though the way some people talk about them you would think you had to pick a side for life and defend it against the other camp. I hold both together, and I want to show you why that combination, rather than either one alone,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11131. Devotional Bible reading gets a bad name in some circles, as if reading Scripture for nourishment rather than for analysis is somehow the lightweight cousin of proper study, the spiritual equivalent of skimming instead of really working. I want to push back on that a little. Devotional Bible reading, done well, is not…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11067. Awareness of the Spirit’s presence is something many believers want and few know how to pursue without feeling they are either faking an experience or drifting into something Scripture would not sanction. The fear is reasonable. There is a great deal of nonsense about, and some of it is loud. But the answer…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11053. Praying aloud feels natural to some believers and excruciating to others, and I have met plenty of Christians who quietly assume they are doing it wrong whichever way they lean. Somebody who was raised in a tradition of audible prayer can feel that silent prayer is half hearted, while somebody who prays best…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11051. The length of prayer is one of those questions that makes people squirm before they even ask it. Somewhere in the back of most Christian minds sits a suspicion that real believers pray for an hour before breakfast and we are all quietly failing an exam nobody set. I want to take the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4189. There is a world of difference between reading the Bible and meeting God in it, and that difference is the whole point when we ask how the Spirit makes Scripture come alive during devotional reading. You can sit down with the same chapter on two mornings running. One day the words lie flat…