Fueled By Grace

The LORD is my portion; I promise to keep your words.

This may surprise you, but there is a subtle danger in making it a goal to read the Bible every day. In our humanity, we can easily make consistent Bible study a way to earn God’s love. Instead of reading the Bible out of love and delight, we see this time as something to check off a spiritual to-do list. As a goal setter myself, I’m prone to finding my worth in what I achieve—and this bleeds into my walk with God.

For those of us who love making goals, the thrill of placing a checkmark next to an item on a list never gets old. The first time I read through the Bible in a year, I took great pride in what I’d accomplished. I began the marathon and miraculously finished it.

Goal complete—check.

The next year I decided to start again, but life’s challenges reared up and I quickly fell behind. My perfectionism shouted through a megaphone, “You’re failing at following God!” The glaring unchecked boxes on my Bible-reading plan discouraged me from continuing, and I gave up.

We must be aware of three dangerous heart postures when we approach Bible reading:

1. Our Scripture reading is motivated by pride. It becomes more about our own spiritual performance and accomplishments than about loving God.
2. Our Scripture reading is motivated by fear. We worry that God will love us less if we don’t meet a certain standard and stay up-to-date with our reading plan. We might read with the wrong intent—to be better and to accomplish more, rather than to know God more. The goal becomes completion, not knowing, communing with, and delighting in God.
3. Our Scripture reading is motivated by perfectionism. If we fall behind, our gut response is to throw in the towel instead of running to the throne of grace for help and mercy (see Hebrews 4:16).

The goal of reading God’s Word is not to puff up our souls or to place a big checkmark at the end of the year. It’s not to add to our “Christian résumé” or earn God’s favor. The aim is to know Christ and exalt him in our lives as we come before him hungry for truth and humbled by his grace. The goal is to glorify him through our fervent reading, joy-filled worship, and faithful obedience. And this is something that cannot be measured.

If you find yourself reading God’s Word with the wrong motivations or you’re tempted to quit when you miss a day or two (or even a month!), don’t let that stop you from pursuing the discipline of daily Bible reading! God gives more grace to those who draw near to him (see James 4:6-7). His words don’t have a return address; they always accomplish what he sets out for them to do (see Isaiah 55:10-11).

So make it your aim to read the Word each day in order to know God and delight in him. And on the days when your Bible remains unopened, don’t quit or listen to the voice of perfectionism shouting in your ear. Surrender your checklists to God, and seek to know him each time you open the Word. Anytime is the right time to read the Word.

Word before World The goal of reading God’s Word is not to check an item off your to-do list; it is to know God more.

Grow in Grace Pray Psalm 119:18 as you read God’s Word: “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”