As I have said before, after years of negligence The Lord decided to draw me back to a close relationship with him. The very first area that was highlighted change under the spotlight of the Holy Spirit was my lack of discipline in regards to Bible study.
I decided to approach my time in the Word using the John MacArthur Bible Study Method of reading the same section of scripture repetitiously each day for a month. His point seemed valid when he said, “I trust you’re going to read your Bible every day for the next two and a half years anyway, so you might as well come out on the other side knowing what’s in it.”
Being that my schedule, as is the case with most people, is stuffed full I quickly realized that I needed to start getting up at a significantly earlier hour in the day. There just was no getting around it. The day is overloaded, I have three kids so there’s not a moments peace in the house when I’m home, and by 8 o’clock when I sit down on the couch after putting kids to bed it’s a 50/50 chance that I’m going to pass out.
Also, I remember hearing preachers at difference Christian events talking about how God needs to be “first” in your life and your day and that the first stop in the morning after the bathroom needs to be to sit down and engross yourself in The Word. Seemed to make sense to me.
At the same time I was getting up earlier to do at least 30-40 minutes of yoga each day to stimulate the body give me some low-impact strength training. So I was getting up double-early.
I quickly learned that the “first thing in the morning” approach wasn’t going to work well. I was so groggy in the morning that the words on the page would fuzz in and out as I read. I would have to read entire chapters over more than once. A through reoccurred to me that somewhere I had heard that you should read the Holy Bible aloud during your time with God, so I even started doing that…but it didn’t work.
Further research unearthed the idea that you should be giving God your “best time” of the day, whatever that may be. Initially I thought that this was a cop-out for people that want to say that 8 pm was the best time of the day and then they never actually do their Bible reading because of distraction or fatigue but a quick review of my own situation showed that there might be some truth to the concept.
See, I would do my Bible study first and then my yoga second. However, when I thought about it, I was always much more alert, sharp, and awake immediately after my mini-yoga session. It stood out then that this time immediately after my yoga session was my “best” time of the day. So I switched up my early morning schedule to do the yoga first, take a quick shower, make some tea and then sit down awake and refreshed for my quite time with The Lord. It usually works our that I have about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes before my kids wake up, so I’m distraction free as well.
This worked wonders. Those first three days were tough with the schedule wrong, but now I thought everything would be smooth sailing from then on out.
WRONG!
About day 20 I ran into another “wall” when reading. The problem seemed to be that my mind was drifting CONSIDERABLY while I was reading God’s Word! Not necessarily to “evil” things, but just “stuff” that had nothing to do with whatever I was reading. My mind had somehow developed a wayward heart. I was getting to bed earlier, I was drinking a full 26 oz of water first while letting the dogs out, had taken my vitamin C, taken my vitamin D, was doing yoga and getting the blood flowing, took a quick shower so I was feeling clean and good…all this before I set down at the kitchen table. Oh, and I was praying before studying and I always was asking God to keep my mind sharp on His Word as I read it. All this to no avail.
The only thing I could determined would be the case for this unexplained breakdown of discipline in my Bible study time was that over 20 days I had become rather familiar with the passage to the point where I could “read” the words aloud while thinking of something completely different. Then an idea stuck me.
Super Bible Study
This worked like gang-busters!
I soon discovered that not only were all of John MacArthur’s sermons and messages available for free download on his website, but numerous others were as well. I started downloading these and loading them up on my iPod. On the way to school and work I would listen to these messages, while on my lunch break I would listen, while walking around during my day I would listen. Each day everything I read began to be far, FAR more interesting. It was like my Bible became richer and fuller overnight. Amazing.
I’m going to publish my Top 10 Super Bible Study tips over the next few days. You can find them here:
