Friday, January 08, 2010

Read Your Bible

“Begin reading your Bible this very day. The way to do a thing is to do it, and the way to read the Bible is actually to read it. It is not meaning, or wishing, or resolving, or intending, or thinking about it; that will not advance you one step. You must positively read. There is no royal road in this matter, any more than in the matter of prayer. If you cannot read yourself, you must persuade somebody else to read to you. But one way or another, through eyes or ears, the words of Scripture must actually pass before your mind.”~ J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion, “Bible Reading”, 131.

3 comments:

Brandon B. said...

Dear Dr. Groothuis,

Since I cannot find an email address to contact you at, I figure this blog post would be a good place to tell you I follow your blog on a weekly basis and have read several of your books, my favorite being Truth Decay. I am a 21 year old student at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton and will be transferring to Metro State within a year. I have a major interest in philosophy and Christian apologetics and am considering postgraduate work in Philosophy once I have acquired my B.A. I have taken much interest into the Philosophy of Religion masters degree offered at Denver Seminary. My question for you is, would this degree be a helpful step toward eventually pursing a doctorate in Philosophy? Or should I pursue a plain masters in philosophy from some other institution?

As for reading the Bible, your post illuminates something that I and I'm sure many others ought to spend more time doing.

Thank you sir for reading, your work is a major inspiration to a young recently converted evangelical Christian such as myself.

Brandon B. (Littleton, Colorado)

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

You can email me at DougGroothuis@gmail.com. I'd like to set up a meeting.

Anonymous said...

For what its worth ...

Many years ago now a friend, who is now a department head in a Canadian seminary, and I were challenged after hearing a talk Earl Radmacher did about Johnston Cheney (The Life of Christ in Stereo) and determined to spend a summer memorizing scripture. We had no one to tell us how we were supposed to go this so we simply chose an epistle, not too long, and began. Ed and I were working together that summer so we quizzed and encouraged each other every day.

By summer's end we had committed the book of Titus to memory, a task that was much easier than we had thought.

The surprising aspect of this endeavor, however, was not that we had performed this feat but rather having done so how often the Holy Spirit was able to being those memorized verses to mind on fitting occasions. It was a near eerie example of the Spirit's ministry in the life of the believer through the use of the Word.

Ed ad I often wondered at the power available to believer's who had memorized vast tracts of scripture. While reading the Bible and being conversant with its content is valuable, scripture memorization is an invaluable tool in the life of the believer.

I often ask Christians who claim to be devout followers of Jesus how much time they spend in the word and how much scripture they have memorized. The answers are surprisingly dismal.

Many Jews are known to have memorized the entire Torah and more as well as memorizing the entire Talmud. Devout Muslims memorize the entire Quran, often in a language that they do not even know in thr case of non-Arab Muslims.

Christians claim Jesus as their Lord. Why are they so cavalier towards his Word?