Escaping the Mundanity: Building a Healthy View of Daily Bible Reading

Each new year it happens: Inevitably, we all take up a grand Bible-reading plan. We start off fast out the gates, usually in Matthew or Genesis, but then, the all-to-often interruption occurs and we stop. The stop has many reasons, but I want to try to diagnose one today. 

We stop reading the Bible because we start merely reading the Bible. 

Now the wagons are circling and some are ready to write me off. But before you do, consider this with me: Year after year, we try to start reading the Bible as a mere habit. We hope, much like a new diet or budget plan, that daily Bible reading will become a habit, an integral part of our daily routine. In many ways, habit formation is good and healthy whenever habits are pushing us toward good and healthy goals. As much as we can, we should pursue good habits that evolve into mundanity; good habits for healthy people ought to be normal and part of our life.

However, I want in this piece to create some separation from the mundanity of everyday habits and the daily Bible-reading that I am convinced every Christian ought to be doing.

When we approach the Bible each day, we are engaging in more than a habit, more than a mere routine. When you read Scripture as a Christian, you are engaging in supernatural activity of the highest order. This isn’t some cheesy scene from a movie where a kid opens a long-lost book and the pages glow with wonder. No. It’s far greater: The God of the Universe is actively speaking to you.

Truly, if we simply view reading the Bible as opening an ancient book of wisdom and helps or as a commanded practice, the act will quickly become mundane. You might be a habitual reader of Scripture, but you might miss beholding glories and finding treasure. In this post, I want to submit to you three ways of taking your daily Bible-reading to the next level by viewing Bible-reading as supernatural activity.

1. The Bible is not a human book

Of course, I affirm the verbal plenary theory of biblical inspiration. Verbal plenary inspiration posits that the Bible was verbally breathed out by God and that the full text of Scripture was equally inspired by God. The mode of this inspiration was that God gave the exact words of Scripture to the human authors who recorded them in their own distinct styles. But the source of the words of Scripture was not the implicit wisdom of the authors or their own stories. Rather, the source of the words of Scripture is the very breath of God. So all the ideals, doctrines, and words found in Scripture are from God himself. 

When I say that the Bible is not a human book, I am wanting to awaken in you and me that when we open the Bible, we are not encountering a book of human wisdom. Rather, we are encountering the Divine Word. The Bible is not like any other book. The Bible is not a result of research and peer review. The Bible is not platitudes and human self-help. It’s infinitely greater and more glorious. Encountering the Divine Word is anything but mundane, for it is like nothing else we’ll ever read, since everything else we’ll ever read finds its source in humanity. In the Bible, unlike any human book, we find the way to life and life eternal: The gospel of Jesus Christ.

2. The Bible is living and active

Not only is the Bible not a human book, but it is also living and active. God did not inspire the Bible for one time and space and people. Rather, he gave the Bible as his word for all time. In other words, the Bible did not lose its relevancy simply because the canon was closed in the first century AD. Age is not a factor in relevancy. A common objection to Bible reading is that the Bible can seem old and outdated; this objection can quickly bog down a once-hopeful Bible reader. However, if we go into our Bible reading understanding that it is a supernatural book inspired by the very God of the Universe, we’ll see that the everlasting authority of God is stamped on every word. 

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12)

Books authored by humans might make a difference in our life. They might present a new way of living. But those human books can never actually change us. Those books could never discern the intentions of our hearts. They might diagnose and show new practices. But the living and active Bible is actually able to cut us down, build us up, pierce our souls, and discern our hearts. The Bible is the only efficacious, authoritative, inspired Word of God. When we approach such a book, nothing is mundane. 

3. The Bible is the voice of God

Several times in this piece already, I’ve used the phrase word of God to describe the Bible. In so doing, I want us to recapture the thought that Bible reading is hearing the voice of God. When we read Scripture, we are hearing from God. This isn’t the still, small voice or the dream or the vision. This is daily opening the Bible, reading it prayerfully as a Christian, and hearing the voice of God. This rids us of any mundanity. Bible reading is encountering the very voice of God. This is the same voice that spoke the earth into motion. This voice is the voice of the Creator of the Universe. Nothing is mundane in his presence. It’s never merely routine to hear his voice. 

Conclusion

Are you in a rut? Are you reading Scripture simply to check off that box in your daily to-do list? Are you reading it simply because you feel like you have to? We have all been in that boat. Often. But let’s step back for a minute and think about why we’re waking up early or staying up late to read the Bible. What’s going on? We’re encountering the supernatural, living and active, very voice of God. Walk yourself through those three things next time you open your Bible and I believe the mundanity will be nowhere in sight.

So yes. Read your Bible every day. But remember that you are not simply building a new habit or part of your routine when you do so. You are jumping head-first into a supernatural activity, and you are encountering the voice of God.