You Can Improve Your Bible Reading

Carole spent some time each morning reading the Bible and saying a prayer. She was faithful in meeting these goals, but half the time she didn't know what she was reading and her prayers were empty. "I hadn't been meeting God. I had been meeting a habit," she admitted.

Then the Holy Spirit taught her to come expectantly in the spirit of Psalm 119:18: "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law."  "Now when I study the Bible and pray, I come before the Lord expecting that He will have something to teach me. I spend more time listening for His voice instead of getting caught up in my own meaningless words."

She began to ask the Lord to show her her WT (Wonderful Thing) for the day. Instead of reading a set number of chapters each day, she reads a verse or a paragraph, but she reads it meditatively, purposefully, with open ears so God can speak to me.

In Luke 1, Mary exclaimed, "He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty" (vs. 53). I have come to believe that this can apply to our Bible reading. When we come to the Word hungry to hear a Word from God, He fills us. But if we come thinking we already know all it says, that we're rich with truth, we find nothing.

Most of all, profitable Bible reading requires the inspiration of the Spirit. D. L. Moody remarked, "The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sun-dial by moonlight."

Thank You, Father, for sending the Holy Spirit to teach me when I read.

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven" (Matthew 16:17).