Mar. 20 Devotion: Read vs. Study

Read vs. Study

2 Timothy 2:15

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

I saw someone talk this week that they had set out this year to read the Bible all the way through. This is a great goal for sure. You can never go wrong by putting the Bible in you.

The problem they were having was that as they would read, they kept coming across things they really wanted to study more and learn more about. This was putting them well behind in their plan to make it through in a year. I had a simple suggestion that I thought I’d share here as well.

The Bible instructs us here to study. We should have a desire to study God’s Word. What you study is up to you. We will never exhaust things to study from the Bible. That’s why each time we read it, God can reveal something new to us that can cause us to want to dive a bit deeper and learn more about a word, person, or a subject.

My suggestion then to them was just to have strictly a reading time. Set aside however much time you decide to do nothing but read your daily reading. If something really sticks out to you that you want to study or maybe even understand better, then write it down and go back to it later. That way, if you have a plan you’re wanting to follow, you can stay on track.

Never stop studying, but I would encourage you to spend some time reading. It obviously depends on how fast you read, but on average, it only takes 12-15 minutes a day, and you can read the Bible all the way through in a year. We have the discipline to stick to a specific regiment for other things; we should be able to stick to a plan and read the Bible through in a year as well. It’s never too late to start!

God bless you,

Bro. Josh Richardson