Read the Bible on a daily basis

Just as it is important to eat regular meals for your physical health, it is important to have a consistent intake of the truth of God's Word. Some people think that as long as they go to church on Sundays, they will be healthy spiritually. But imagine how weak you would become if you only ate one meal per week.

Set aside some time every day to read the Bible. You don't need to read for hours or read whole books of the Bible every day. I would suggest that you begin by making a commitment to 15 minutes per day.

Take the first minute to pray, asking God to quiet your heart and to speak to you through what you are going to read.

Then take the next 10 minutes to read a passage from God's Word. Here are some helps to know what and how much to read:

Choose a book of the Bible to read through. Some people try to bounce all over the Bible and read from a different place every day, but that makes it very hard to understand the "flow" of what a book is all about.

I would suggest that you begin with the book of John (the fourth book in the New Testament). This book is called a gospel because it is the story of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. After you finish reading John, go to a book like Ephesians or Colossians, both of which contain very practical teaching about principles of the Christian life.

Read a "manageable" passage. There is so much to be learned from God's Word that we can miss a lot if we try to read too much at one time. Some people try to read a chapter of the Bible each day, but as a new Christian, that is probably too much.

Do you remember the definition of a paragraph from your days in school? A paragraph is a group of sentences that express one main point. I would suggest that you read one or two paragraphs each day (maybe a little bit more if there are several one sentence paragraphs).

Try to find the main point of what you read. Ask yourself some questions about what you are reading. What is the most important truth in the passage? Is there a command that you need to obey? A promise that you can claim in your life? It is very important that you think about what you read.

Take two minutes to write down what you learn. If we want to remember something for longer than just a few hours, it is a big, big help to write it down. Keep a notebook with your Bible and write down the date, the passage that you read and what you learned from the passage.

Take the last two minutes to pray. Spend the first minute praying about what God just taught you from His Word. Then spend the last minute praying about any requests you may have for God (see the section on prayer for helps on what you can pray about). It would be a great idea to use several pages from that notebook that you are keeping with your Bible to write down some of the things that you are praying about (and how God answers those prayers).

>> Choose a Bible translation that you can understand

>> Tell someone about what you learn