So we all want a real relationship with God – or at least we feel we should want one. As your pastor and friend, I know I want this for you, and for us together as God’s church. I hope you trust me to walk with you in this journey.
Like any real relationship, there are seasons, and growth. It’s complicated! And it takes time. I hope you’ll put in the time to work on this with God. I’m still exploring, learning and hopefully growing myself! I am sure that the two most crucial dimensions of pursuing a real relationship with God are Bible reading and prayer. I’m wagering that many of us who love Church and yearn to be close to and serve God feel a bit inept when it comes to Bible reading and prayer. Let’s work on that and get a little more agile, comfortable, even skillful at both.
If I say “Read your Bible,” it feels a bit like “Take your medicine” or “Get some exercise.” It’s like both actually; it is both! But it can and will become more like a delightful journey to an exotic place, full of sights and sounds and pleasures and discoveries. How good of God to give us a book, a roadmap, so our spirituality isn’t sheer fantasy or self-fabricated vanity. There’s a reliable way to God. Ours is to pick it up and read.
But where to begin? It’s longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and doesn’t read straight through like a novel. There are long, dull sections. We’re closer in time and worldview to Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Beowulf than we are to the Bible, from the other side of the earth 2000+ years ago, with bizarre customs and flat out strange happenings. And yet, how impressive, yet believable, are my grandparents and other impressive people I’ve known who’ve read such a Bible constantly and deeply over their lifetimes, digging into it, digging it, and cherishing its people, stories and words in their hearts, like a gyroscope keeping them pointed toward their true North.
How do we grow up to be like them? Stick with me, we’ll try to get there together – not just you listening to me talking about the Bible as if I’m the expert. God wants us to read, and for ourselves, by ourselves, and with others. In this “first semester” of 2026 – we’ll do just that together, some tips on how to go at it, with examples and suggestions.
You’ll need a Bible. I recommend something like the NIV Study Bible, with great little footnotes, maps, and charts that can help. Or maybe you have (like I do) your grandparents’ Bible. You can read with them even now! But any Bible will do.
We will not be poking around to lift out a few verses to help you in this or that situation – like little bandaids. To have some Bible verses etched deep in your gut is fantastic. But we want to get immersed in the Bible’s world of thought, not wondering how it fits into my life story, but how I find my place in the Bible’s story.
In fact, as far as possible, you’ll want to shed any expectations or wishes, or even questions you have of the Bible. If I go at any relationship with a set of things I intend to get out of it, frustration is the result. We read, and let the Bible say what it wants to say to us. We let the Bible have its way with us. Open yourself to it. Let it surprise, befuddle, twist and turn you around until you’re off balance from your perch at the center of your own life – and you begin to realize what it feels like for God to be the center of everything.
Book in the time, and commit. It’s like learning French. Day 1 is hopeless, week 1 is dizzying, month 1 is a challenge, but by the end of year 1 you’re getting the hang of things. Bible’s actually faster than French. Day 1 you can know that, if nothing else, God is delighted and honored that you’ve take the time to read from God’s precious gift.