Hey, Bible readers. I'm Tara Lee, Cabal, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. As we get ready to launch into Genesis, I thought it might be helpful to walk you through some really practical steps for how to read the Bible. I'll give you a bit of a sneak peek into my process in case any of the things I do might be helpful for you. But that's not to say that what works for me is what will work for you. I want you to find what works best for you. It may be trial and error for a while. Be patient with yourself. When you start something new, it rarely goes perfectly right out of the gate. Give yourself a chance to adjust and adapt. First, let's talk about time. When are you going to read the Bible? Set a time for it. Put it in your calendar so you treat it with respect. For most of my life, I read my Bible at the end of the day because I'm a night owl and it's when I feel most alert. I also would tell myself a convenient lie that it's better for me to read at night because unlike in the morning, I have nowhere to be in the middle of the night so I can stay up as long as I want reading the Bible.

That sounds nice, but that never happened. I just rushed through it, half-focused, while my mind went back to whatever had happened that day. Then I'd go right back to checking social media and replying to emails. No matter how much I learned during my time in the Word that night, I never remembered it the next day. Today, it would serve me for about 20 minutes until I fell asleep. It wasn't impacting my thoughts or the way I lived, and I can't speak for anybody else who prefers to read their Bible at night. But personally, I never ever meditated on God's word in my dreams. If only I were that holy. So I decided to move my Bible reading to the first part of my day just for a week to see if it made a difference. It wasn't an easy shift since I'd made a pretty solid habit of doing it at night, but I kept at it. I started to see how fruitful it was. And since I'm a results-driven person, that was enough to make me want to build my schedule around that change. So find the time that works best for you. If it's been no time, then any time will be better.

There's no shame in the nighttime, quiet time game. But if there is any way at all that your time can be within the first hour or so of waking up, all the better. I also feel like I need to say this. Some of the people I know who don't read their Bible are some of the most compassionate people I know. They feel like they can't make time for God because there are so many pressing needs around them and they want to enter in and help the people in all those spaces. So they give themselves away all the time. And while that's a beautiful way to live, it's also mostly foolish. You will hit a wall. You will come to the end of yourself. You cannot pour out of something that is empty. You can't serve others well if you don't recognize your own frailty and need for God first. Get filled before you pour out. You are meant to serve people out of an overflow, not out of a vacuum. So please, for your own spiritual and emotional and relational health, come to scripture and get your own needs for God met first. Then you'll have something more life giving to offer others and you won't feel as depleted on the other side of it.

I know it feels unnatural to you, but I'm asking you to give this a try. Trust God when he says you need him. Okay, now let's talk about location. Try to find a spot that is just for you and God, even if it's the floor of your closet underneath the winter coats. Maybe it's in your car, in your driveway before you leave for work or in the parking lot at work. Maybe it's when the kids are down for a nap right before you crash too. If at all possible, find a place where you can get alone with him. For some of you, this won't be possible. I realize that. You're never alone because you have two kids under three and they need you constantly. Listen, I do not get it. I don't understand what your life is like, but he does. And since I know for a fact that hes the one who wants time with you, I'm asking him to carve out time for himself and your schedule and to help you make the most of the space he's put you in. I'm asking him to help you focus on himself beyond the distractions that might call for your attention in this season of your life.

We're all in different spots, so there's no shame in this either. You just do the best you can and know that it's huge that you're prioritizing this in your life. What really matters here is that you're setting your heart to learn more about God to pursue time with Him. Don't expect it to look like anyone else's time with God. Now that we've got our time and our location, let's talk about our process. Here's what I do. I have the Bible app on the home screen of my phone. It's in the top right corner. I don't want it to get lost on my screen. I've also set up a notification in the app itself that reminds me every morning to read my Bible. I've set that notification to arrive in the middle of the night so that it's on my screen when I wake up. Since I use my phone as my alarm, that reminder is the first thing I see when I wake up. All I have to do is click on the notification and it takes me to the day's reading. At that point, I'm still in bed. I might be tempted to check my emails or the weather or Instagram, but I resist the urge.

Those things will all still be there after my priority time, which is, by the way, what I call my time with God in the morning. Lots of people call it by other names, quiet time, Jesus time, Bible time, but I had to call it something that reminded me of its position in my life. Above and beyond anything else in this world, this is my priority. God is my first and foremost. He gets the first fruits of my life and my day. When I open that day's reading plan, I push the Play button to have the app read that day's chapters to me aloud. I do this before my feet hit the ground. That's my rule. I want God's words in my ears before my feet are on the floor. As I make my coffee and wash my face, I've got scripture rolling through my ears. At this point, I'm still waking up, so I'm not necessarily catching everything I've heard, but overall, I'm trying to listen well and wake my mind up to the word. I'm primarily an auditory learner, so doing this helps me engage with themes and repeated phrases that I might not notice when I read with my eyes.

I'm taking mental notes as I listen through it all. On most days, you'll find that our chronological reading plan takes about 12 minutes to listen through. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's a solid average. The app automatically moves through each of the chapters assigned to that day. It's usually around three chapters. After it plays through all of them for that day, I turn my phone on silent, once again, resisting the urge to check my text messages, and I leave it in my kitchen. That's when I go out to my balcony, which is my priority time spot. I only take my Bible, my journal, and my pen, and my coffee. If you want to get fancy with highlighters, you totally can, but you don't need anything other than the basics. As I mentioned in episode one, I use the ESV translation, and I walked you through my reasons for choosing that particular translation. If you don't have any idea which translation you want to read, you can use the Bible app to compare and contrast readability. Then once you've decided on a translation, I strongly encourage you to get a print Bible. It's easy to forget the Bible exists if you don't see it.

We've linked to some of our favorite Bibles and study Bibles in the show notes. So I'm on my balcony with my coffee and I open up my Bible to the chapters for the day. If you're using the printable plan from our website or our customized journal, each day's chapters will be listed for you. If you're not using either of those, you may want to take note of the chapters before you set your phone aside. When I sit down with my Bible, I read those same chapters with my eyes that I just finished reading with my ears. Even though I'm mostly an auditory learner, this gives me the opportunity to take it in at my own pace to reread, to ask God questions about what I'm reading. And despite preferring audio in almost every other area of my life, reading with my eyes is always my best trip through those chapters. Sometimes, not always, I'll make a third trip through, where I listen to the Bible app while I read the chapters to make sure I'm seeing everything clearly. I'm probably not going to do this on a genealogy day, but if I feel especially confused or even especially in awe, I'll do that.

Okay, so we've covered time, location, and process, but I don't want to forget about one of the most important things of all. Let's talk about your mindset. This may sound weird, but at the very least, let's aim to treat this with the same level of importance as we would any other relationship in our lives. Even though he's God and he's more important than our other relationships, our temptation is to treat him as though he's not even a person. So when I say treat it like other relationships, for most of us, this is not a downgrade, but an upgrade from the way we've been treating him. We don't always honor him well because he's so available to us and probably because he's so invisible. That's one reason we fail to schedule time with him. We just do it whenever is convenient for us, which often turns out to be never. I once heard John Piper say that he treats his time with God like he'd treat a meeting with any other person. If he's reading the Bible and someone rings his doorbell, he asks God for permission to be excused. What? Listen, when you meet with God, you're engaging with a real person who has a real personality and real desires and takes real action.

If you have a hard time remembering this, maybe you need to sit across from an empty chair and let that be the place you imagine him coming to meet with you when you read your Bible and pray. Begin by recognizing that he is real and you are in a real relationship with him. As with any real relationship, it needs time to grow. It may be a little awkward at first when you're moving through the small talk, getting to know each other. You may jump to some conclusions that you later find out are wrong when you have more information. That's okay. And just like in any relationship, it's important to ask good questions and pay attention to what the other person is saying. When something stands out to you is really awesome or encouraging, take note about it in your journal. Put a star by it and circle the star. I love looking back through my journals and seeing what jumped out at me, being able to identify what day I learned it and what passage of scripture it came from. When you're confused about something you read, write down a question about it in your journal.

I like to put a question mark beside it and circle the question mark because that helps me remember to research it later so that hopefully I don't still have the same questions again next year or even next week. If I have time, I'll do my research right away. But other times I save all my research for one day each week, usually my Sabbath. By the way, if you're interested in knowing more about how and where to look for answers, we'll be releasing an exclusive episode for our patron supporters in January with more info on how to actually study the Bible instead of just read it. We'll even link to lots of free tools to use in your research. If you want access to that episode, just swipe up and click the link to our patron page for more info. My journal is filled with stars and question marks, and it serves as evidence that my time with God is not boring. I've now made 10-plus trips through the Bible, and I still expect to learn new things about God that I've never seen before every single day. I love that God's word is living and active because I'm going to be reading it every day for the rest of my life and I never want it to get boring.

I want to keep learning new things about Him. Bible readers, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. If you haven't subscribed the Bible recap on your podcast app of Choice and you haven't subscribed to the Bible recaps reading plan on the YouVersion/Bible app, do that now. I also want to invite you to join our patron family. It is a win-win for everyone. Not only does it help us keep this podcast running and ad-free, but it also connects you with some extra access and goodies that you wouldn't have otherwise, like bonus episodes and online community, Q&R hangouts. So if you want to join our patron family, check the link in the show notes or visit thebiblerecap. Com and click the patron link. I'm not kidding when I say I believe this is going to be the best year of your life. I believe you're going to learn things about God that you'll be shocked you never knew. I believe you're going to find yourself starting to want to read His word instead of just wanting to want to read His word. I believe you're going to trust him in a way you never have because your intimacy with him and your relationship with Him is going to be so deep and rich.

And I can't wait to jump in because He's where the joy is. The Bible recap is brought to you by D Group, discipleship and Bible study groups that meet in homes and churches around the world each week. For more information on D Group, visit mydgroup. Org.