What you really should be saying to me about regular Bible reading

I’m not quite sure why Ian Carmichael picked on me in particular in his article about poor Dave who gets asked about what he’s learnt from his Bible reading recently. As it happens, I enjoy reading, both my Bible and other books.  I suspect “Dave” is being used as the typical church member.  There after all was a TV channel named Dave because “everyone knows a Dave”. That was a while back though actually my name has long since dropped down the popularity charts.  Your typical church member is actually very unlikely to be called Dave.

Now, if Dave is interested in reading more regularly and getting something out of his reading, then Ian’s advice is fair enough. However, as someone who loves reading and loves reading the Bible particularly, I want to question the helpfulness of Ian’s suggested advice to Dave.  If we want to talk to Dave about regular Bible reading, then we need to talk to him about what the Bible actually says about regular Bible reading. 

So, what does it say about the need to read your Bible every day or at least regularly?  The answer is … wait for it … nothing.  It may surprise us as Evangelicals to hear this but we are not told in Scripture to be Bible readers.  We are told to mediate on God’s Word, to hear and obey, to let it dwell in our hearts richly but none of this specifically requires that you need to be a reader.  It certainly doesn’t require daily reading.

In fact, the whole starting question is a peculiar one for a pastor to be asking

““Hey, Dave, what’s God been teaching you in your personal Bible reading recently?”

What a strikingly odd and out of place question.  You have just gathered together as God’s people, with God’s Word central.  You as an elder in the church have just shared with the whole church what God wants to say to them through his word together.  You should not need to ask him what God has been teaching him, you should know, because God has hopefully been using you as one, competent to teach, to teach him.  What we have here, is a question that distracts away from what God is saying and doing with his church together and the practical outcomes to polite, semi awkward conversation about a personal intellectual hobby.

What about using the time to ask Dave what he found difficult about God’s Word this morning, , where God disagreed with him and challenged him, how he has been  encouraged and most of all, what obeying God will look like this week.