Theocast
The Burden of Bible Reading
January 31, 2024
Summary
For many people, reading the Bible can feel like a burden. It seems that the whole conversation around Bible reading is riddled with guilt and shame. It shouldn’t be that way. It is good that we would know and love the Word of God! It is important that we, as Christians, be regularly engaging with the Word. That said, there are a number of ways that we can do that. Jon and Justin consider how we are called to know, love, and obey the Word in today’s episode.
Topics
- Episode focus: The Burden of Bible Reading
- For many people, reading the Bible can feel like a burden
- It seems that the whole conversation around Bible reading is riddled with guilt and shame
- It is good that we would know and love the Word of God!
- It is important that we, as Christians, be regularly engaging with the Word
Links
Transcript
Edited machine transcript. May contain errors. Select a timestamp to watch that moment.
Many people, when they wake up in the morning, there's this decision to be made.
Do I have the time, energy, or the desire to read the Bible?
And then the rest of their day, they either feel excited that they took the time or shamed that they didn't.
And it goes on, not even if they even understood or benefited from it, but they believe that the act of reading the Bible is mandatory for the Christian, and it often just leads to discouragement and shame.
Today, Justin and I want to have a conversation about the joy of scripture, knowing his word, and what does the Bible really want from us as far as engaging the word, specifically, reading it.
We hope this is encouraging, it's clarifying.
Stay tuned.
If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word.
It's called pietism.
Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy that you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you.
It's dread versus joy, really.
That's pietism.
Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.
And we have a little book for you.
It's free.
We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism, reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says,
Come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?
You can download it at our website.
Just go to theocast.org.
Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.
