How to Want to Read the Bible

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I’ve been having trouble recently in trying to read the Bible daily. Usually I feel the obligation to read it as soon as I get home from school, but I don’t want it to be something I need to get out of the way. I want it to be enjoyable. What do you think I should do? Thank you and GOD Bless you!
 
Don’t read too much, or feel pressured to get through it cover to cover…Why not just start with the daily mass readings…you can find them at www.usccb.org.

My routine is to read and ponder the daily mass readings over my coffee in the morning. After reading the readings, I just sit back and let them go through my mind for a while, and then slowly read them again…then I focus on one or two verses from one of the reading and ponder it further…soon it leads me to another verse that I recall…so I might have to look it up…finally I pray on the experience, and ponder that verse(s), thoughts, associated passage, and my prayer throughout the day…hopefully having it guide my actions when something comes up related to the passage during my day.

I also keep a journal…

Here is an example of my journal entry today…it was the Psalm (Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14) that caught my attention, especially verse 13.

**Psalm 27

Psalm 27:13 (NABRE)**

*** I believe I shall see the LORD’s goodness in the land of the living. ***

Thoughts
After the fall of man, but before the passion of our Lord, death had the final word. The departed saintly and the sinful alike shared the land of the dead, until Christ brought them the good news of the gospel on those days between his death and resurrection, and the land of the living was opened to them. With it comes the promise and hope of spending eternity in the land of the living, with him.

**Luke 9:59-60 **
59 And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” 60 ***But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” ***

Prayer

Father,
Through the passion of your Son, the land of the dead has been forever transformed to the land of the living. Grant that the Holy Spirit give me the gifts to bolster my faith, so that I, too, will always believe that after my days on this earth, that I shall see your goodness in the land of the living.
Amen
 
Neofight said:
Don’t read too much, or feel pressured to get through it cover to cover…Why not just start with the daily mass readings…you can find them at www.usccb.org.

My routine is to read and ponder the daily mass readings over my coffee in the morning. After reading the readings, I just sit back and let them go through my mind for a while, and then slowly read them again…then I focus on one or two verses from one of the reading and ponder it further…soon it leads me to another verse that I recall…so I might have to look it up…finally I pray on the experience, and ponder that verse(s), thoughts, associated passage, and my prayer throughout the day…hopefully having it guide my actions when something comes up related to the passage during my day.

I also keep a journal…

Here is an example of my journal entry today…it was the Psalm (Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14) that caught my attention, especially verse 13.

**Psalm 27

Psalm 27:13 (NABRE)**

*** I believe I shall see the LORD’s goodness in the land of the living. ***

Thoughts
After the fall of man, but before the passion of our Lord, death had the final word. The departed saintly and the sinful alike shared the land of the dead, until Christ brought them the good news of the gospel on those days between his death and resurrection, and the land of the living was opened to them. With it comes the promise and hope of spending eternity in the land of the living, with him.

**Luke 9:59-60 **
59 And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” 60 ***But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” ***

Prayer

Father,
Through the passion of your Son, the land of the dead has been forever transformed to the land of the living. Grant that the Holy Spirit give me the gifts to bolster my faith, so that I, too, will always believe that after my days on this earth, that I shall see your goodness in the land of the living.
Amen
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Thank you for sharing your method with me, this really helps! This is certainly my current method of reading the Bible, which is trying to read a whole chapter , and possibly even a second one out of guilt. I admit, if I’m doing something other than schoolwork after school, I feel guilty because I think, “I could and should be reading the Bible right now.” I think I might have scrupulosity. But thanks for the help!
 
Best results for me is after some rosary time. My class also uses a website for the gospels wordmadeclear.net its easy to just read wghile the priest is talking . Great way to learn about the gospels.
 
A few years back someone suggested “The One Year Bible” and of course the Catholic Edition. Every day it includes readings from the Old Testament, then a reading either from the Psalms, Epistles, Acts of the Apostles, etc. then finishes with a reading from the New Testament. It is the last book I read before I turn out the light at night – of course, I also say the last decade of the rosary also. It’s a wonderful way to finish the day.
 
Hi Worlds,

I have received different Bibles as gifts over the years.

I decided that I would like to try reading the Bible broken up in easier to read, daily segments over a period of time, so I bought this Bible at our local Catholic book store several years ago. I like it a lot. It is easy to read. It is called “The Catholic One Year Bible.”

Here is a link to it, so you can see what it looks like, in case you might be interested in using something like it:

amazon.com/The-Catholic-One-Year-Bible/dp/0879732156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1415235374&sr=8-2&keywords=catholic+daily+bible

Editing my post to say that I see the post from Barb above me, mentions the same thing. 🙂 Barb and I must have been posting at the same time.
 
oldgraymare2 said:
Hi Worlds,

I have received different Bibles as gifts over the years.

I decided that I would like to try reading the Bible broken up in easier to read, daily segments over a period of time, so I bought this Bible at our local Catholic book store several years ago. I like it a lot. It is easy to read. It is called “The Catholic One Year Bible.”

Here is a link to it, so you can see what it looks like, in case you might be interested in using something like it:

amazon.com/The-Catholic-One-Year-Bible/dp/0879732156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1415235374&sr=8-2&keywords=catholic+daily+bible

Editing my post to say that I see the post from Barb above me, mentions the same thing. 🙂 Barb and I must have been posting at the same time.
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Both yours and @BarbG 's ideas seem great! I think I will look into the one year Bible.
 
I am bad about sticking with my reading tasks.

But it’s easy for me to launch an audio narration of the new testament and let it run – takes about 18 hours every time through. You can run it any time, even when you’re not paying attention or even taking a nap. Catch a little here, a little there, and it gives you kind of a feeling of flow.

I did have Kindle and audible editions of NABRE, but I can’t find the audible version on amazon for some reason. Oh well there are many options; I’m just suggesting let the machine do the work because it doesn’t get tired and doesn’t care how closely you are listening at any given time. 🙂
 
Worlds said:
I’ve been having trouble recently in trying to read the Bible daily. Usually I feel the obligation to read it as soon as I get home from school, but I don’t want it to be something I need to get out of the way. I want it to be enjoyable. What do you think I should do? Thank you and GOD Bless you!
Click to expand...
Years ago, when I was a new (Protestant) Christian, I thought I’d better read the Bible, so that I at least knew what it said.

So I just read so many chapters each day, if I had the time, and I finished it in a few months. I just had to persevere. I’ve read it a few times now, but I’m not a great memoriser of verses, unfortunately.

Mind you, some parts of it are just plain boring, especially the long lines of genealogies in the early books of the Old Testament. Who cares who belonged to what ancient Jewish tribe, or where they put their tent pegs? If these parts are divinely inspired, along with the rest of it, then I can only assume the Almighty actually meant for us to have lawyers.

I can’t think of anyone else find those bits riveting reading.

At the moment, I try to have a quiet time in the mornings, with some prayer, try to read 2 chapters of the Bible, and about 10 or so paragraphs of the catechism (I’m up to the 2300+ paragraph so far, so only 500 or so to go - it’s not riveting reading either). I’m not always successful, and I’d like to cover more ground, but I’m a bit short on time.

Of course it depends on what you’re trying to achieve - you can get daily readings from various sources, which incorporate Bible verses as part of their program.

So I suppose the first thing to decide is what you want to achieve by it - just read the whole thing through? Study various Biblical themes? Read the Gospels first? Understand how it’s constructed?

Once you’ve decided that, how you go about reading the Bible should fit a little more easily into your daily program.
 
oldgraymare2 said:
It is called “The Catholic One Year Bible.”
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The issue, of course, is that this Bible is really a paraphrase of at least one English translation.

If you want to have a basic idea of what the text of the Bible is communicating, and if you want it to be easy to read, then a paraphrase may not be such a bad thing. However, if you’re more interested in details, if you’d like something a bit better for study, then paraphrases should be avoided. It’s also important to look out for doctrinal biases creeping into paraphrases more often than into more literal translations.

For example, let’s just take James 2:17 for a point of comparison.

The RSV-CE renders it as*, So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.*

The Living Bible (TLB) paraphrases this as So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.

Or James 2:20:

RSV-CE, … faith apart from works is barren.

TLB, *Faith that does not result in good deeds is **not real faith.
Or James 2:22

RSV-CE You see that faith was active along with his works, and* faith was completed by works.

**TLB, **You see, he was **trusting **God [here this paraphrase confuses faith with hope] so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions, his good deeds.

*That’s just way too much insertion of unnecessary words, and also incorrect ideas and doctrines!

In these examples, The Living Bible is communicating the idea that, if intellectual assent to certain doctrines is not accompanied by good works, then intellectual assent does not really exist, it is dead and fake. It holds to the doctrinal idea that we are saved by faith (intellectual assent) alone, but if there are no good deeds in a Christian’s life, then such a Christian cannot know that they really have faith to begin with.

James is simply saying that intellectual assent *can *exist, and often does exist, but if it is not accompanied by good works, then it will not be enough for salvation. Why not? Because we are saved by supernatural faith, hope, and charity, AND NOT BY FAITH ALONE.

(You can find more information on Protestant and Catholic understandings of faith here: jimmyakin.com/library/justification-by-faith-alone)

Anyway, this is a sample of the sort of problems that paraphrases have.

If you’d like an alternative reading plan, I would simply suggest the following.

The Catholc Bible contains approximately 1,333 chapters. You can therefore read the whole Bible is one year if you read about 4 chapters per day. I think this is quite manageable, and you could finish the Bible through one time for a general overview, and then go back every year for more in-depth study. 🙂
 
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