I’ve been doing the same Bible-reading plan for years.

Quite simply, nothing has shaped me these last two decades like learning (and re-learning) to slowly work through the day’s assigned readings morning after morning, month after month, year after year. This particular plan has four short readings per day, and 25 days per month. It moves a reader through the full terrain of Scripture in twelve months. That makes for about fifteen minutes per day, at an average reading pace — which is too fast for Bible reading (more on that below).

Not that this habit of starting each day with open Bible (and coffee) is always clean and easy, but it’s far more automatic and enjoyable and fruitful now, twenty years later, than at the beginning. It’s amazing how a longstanding, daily habit can change you — not just in terms of psychological pathways and external actions, but also how a soul can be formed and conditioned.

We tend to overestimate how much we can change in the short run, and underestimate how much we can change in the long run.

Condition the Soul

Souls really can be conditioned, like bodies can be conditioned. In fact, our souls are perhaps all the more “conditionable” than our stubborn bodies (“brother ass,” as C.S. Lewis called the body). God made our minds and hearts to be trained and retrained. They are plastic, to borrow the term from neurology. You can train them in greed (2 Peter 2:14) or train them in godliness (1 Timothy 4:7).

“Souls really can be conditioned, like bodies can be conditioned.”

Among many profound benefits of starting each day with God’s voice is how this first-thing encounter with God through his word shapes, trains, and conditions our inner man. After years of Bible reading, I know I have a painfully long way to go, yet I don’t want to overlook the deep blessings and joys of early-morning soul-steeping in the word of God.

Why Not Check the Box?

Over the years, as far as I can tell, perhaps the single most significant “breakthrough” for me in daily Bible intake was learning to ignore those little boxes next to each of the daily readings. If you’re a box-checker, I cast no stones. I simply share my own weaknesses and flaws by testifying to the breakthrough. Silly as it may sound, when I stopped checking the boxes, something started to change in my attitude toward God’s word.

Why would I not check the boxes? There they sat, immediately to the left of each assigned passage — conspicuously empty, practically calling out to me to fill them. But what I began to own in my own soul is that ending each reading by checking a box was promoting or reinforcing the wrong approach in me. When the arc of my “time alone with Jesus” was moving ever toward checking a box, I was orienting on the wrong end. I needed to retrain myself, by omitting that final step, to reinforce in my soul that I wasn’t sitting in front of Scripture to accomplish the day’s first to-do. I wasn’t here to achieve. This was not labor but devotions.

“When I stopped checking the boxes, something started to change in my attitude toward God’s word.”

Later in the day, I might do the hard work of studying the Bible or working to produce some article or sermon. But for now, first thing in the morning, I had God’s word open first and foremost to receive, to see Jesus, to feed my soul on him. What my soul really needed to start the day was him, not some small sense of accomplishment. I needed to encounter and enjoy the risen Jesus, not cross off the day’s first task.

I know now that there is a little hit of dopamine in checking boxes and crossing items off a list. But in time, I grew unsatisfied with that. I didn’t want to confuse the joy of completing a task with the enduring depth and riches of finding my soul being fed, being genuinely made happy in Christ through his word.

In retrospect, I can see that learning not to check the boxes then led to several other dominoes falling.

Slow Way Down

At an average reading pace, it takes about 70 hours to read through the whole Bible. Break that up into 300 days (25 days per month), and you have less than fifteen minutes per day. When I was pressing to check boxes, I could knock out the day’s readings in ten or twelve minutes. And by the end of the fourth reading, I hardly could remember what I had read in the first or second, or even fourth, passage.

When I stopped checking the boxes, it helped me to remember that I wasn’t there to finish the readings but to feed my soul. This freed me to slow way down in my reading speed. I could read at the slowest, most deliberate pace I found enjoyable, and stop to re-read any sentence or paragraph that was particularly unclear, or especially sweet — and still the full time elapsed would be less than half an hour.

In the book Meditation and Communion with God, longtime seminary professor Jack Davis waves the flag for “a more reflective and leisurely engagement with Scripture” in our day (20). According to Davis, the nature of modern life, and the “information overload” we have through television, smartphones, and endless new media “makes a slow, unhurried, and reflective reading of Scripture more vital than ever” (22).

Off the Clock Devotions

Another domino that soon fell was learning to set aside enough time to be able to lose track of time. What some in the work world call “flow” I found to be immensely helpful for morning devotions. I needed to sit where I wasn’t staring at a clock, or hearing one tick, or checking the time every few minutes. The rest of my day so often seemed timed and on the clock. In these morning moments before the risen Christ, I needed to lose consciousness of time, to read slowly and re-read, to explore cross-references and rabbit trails across the canon.

Some days the first assigned reading met and fed me. Other days little to nothing struck me in the four short readings, and I would review them to find somewhere to linger and feed. But neither happened well “on the clock.” There was no reliable timeframe I could assign to genuine soul feeding. So I needed enough space to linger before God without rushing off to the next part of the day.

For starters, I’d recommend half an hour, with the glad expectation that it will grow over time as your appreciation deepens for these quiet, unrushed, morning moments over God’s word.

Move into Meditation

Finally, and most significantly, not checking the boxes freed me to move from slow, unhurried reading into meditation, and then from meditation into prayer.

As I would move through the day’s readings, I was on the lookout for some patch to pause and feed, to really press into my soul, a place to meditate over some particular word from Christ to me that morning. Such meditation is a lost art in our day — not Eastern meditation in which you empty the head, but biblical meditation in which you seek to fill your mind with God-revealed truth and seek to press it into the heart.

Meditation, then, can serve as a kind of “bridge discipline” between Bible reading and prayer. I used to finish reading the passages, check the boxes, and then pivot pretty unnaturally to praying through lists, for myself, my family, friends, ministry partners, and missionaries. Learning to move from unhurried Bible reading into a few minutes meditating on a particular paragraph or verse helped me to focus and feed on a specific divine glory for the morning, and then make that the springboard into and theme for my prayers.

Enough for Today

I won’t pretend that not checking the boxes is for everyone, but maybe like me you’d be helped to take some defiant step to remind your soul, “I’m here to enjoy Jesus.”

One last note: when I stopped checking the boxes, I no longer felt the pressure to “go back” and make up any readings I hadn’t completed the day before. This freed me to really focus on feeding my soul today, to “gather a day’s portion,” rather than try to make up for yesterday, or last week. I realize that for new Bible readers, it may not be quite so easy. You need context to understand verses aright. That’s important. But I would have you take heart that getting a more intuitive sense of the context grows tremendously over time, as you make the annual journey through Scripture, and supplement your reading with various studies.

As George Mueller (1805–1898) so memorably said, his first business every day was to have his soul happy in God.

Leaving the boxes empty has helped me with that.

Are you happy? Are you satisfied?

You tour the zoo with your daughter and peer into the glass with the gorilla. You stare at the gorilla; he stares back. Are your lives all that different? He lives one outdoor-time to the next, one feeding to the next — what is a jungle? You live one entertainment to the next, one bite of sin to the next — what is true happiness? It’s as though you live outside of your joy’s natural habitat.

Yet you are a man and not an ape; you can consider your cage, the prison of your own choices. But when you stop to think about life, you sink — is this really it? Perhaps life was brighter when you were younger. Perhaps you and the future-you were once best friends, but now you talk with less and less pleasure. He doesn’t know what you’re searching for either, and you both are running out of guesses.

Are you happy? Are you satisfied? No? Then why continue to search in vain?

Why?

This is not my question but God’s:

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,      and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Isaiah 55:2)

God translates your sighs: You are spending money for what is not bread, laboring for what does not satisfy. You chew on gravel; you reap the wind. So much energy, so much time, so much dedication to what isn’t working. You are making bad purchases, eating the undigestible. The God of heaven and earth asks you: Why?

Why do you insist on digging the desert for water? Why enter into the cave for light? Why the mindless living, the endless scrolling, the watching until your eyes hurt — have these ever flooded your soul with happiness? What are you getting from this life you’ve chosen for yourself?

Your decisions leave behind dry lips, a thirst preparing you for God’s invitation:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters;and he who has no money,     come, buy and eat!Come, buy wine and milk     without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)

Come, be satisfied. Come, be made happy. Come, God summons you. Simply come.

Wanted

The God of heaven hears your life of little whimpers and responds, Stop filling your mouth with sand; come to the waters. Stop intoxicating your heart with the world; come gladden it with my wine. Why labor for what leaves you hungrier? Will you not have real bread and water, wine and milk for free? Joy, life, substance, purpose — do these not interest you?

“Why will men not be happy?” we can almost hear one angel ask another. Why does the branch run from the tree, the egg from the nest, the fish from the water? You can answer from experience: you did not want this happiness if it is only found in God. Read the terms carefully:

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,     and delight yourselves in rich food.Incline your ear, and come to me;     hear, that your soul may live. . . .Seek the Lord while he may be found. (Isaiah 55:2–3, 6)

God can be your Uber driver and deliver the meal, but if it requires eating with him, well, you will see what you have in the back of the fridge. Pride speaks, Better king over your own unhappiness than a happy servant of your Creator. You will not “enter into the Master’s joy” because you cannot abide that word — “Master.” You will find another way back to Eden. You leave no cheap pleasure untried, and yet, a heaven stands open before you and you will not enter because the entrance is as low as a bow and as heavy as a cross.

In other words, We are sinners. God’s offer is not simply to the unsatisfied; it’s to the unrighteous.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;     call upon him while he is near;let the wicked forsake his way,     and the unrighteous man his thoughts;let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,     and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6–7)

We do not just need better pleasures; we need abundant pardon. Justice, not just your heart, needs satisfaction. The gospel addresses not merely your discontent in happiness apart from God, but your disobedience in seeking happiness apart from God. The Lord Jesus does not just extend forever ecstasies; he stays final executions. We are creatures not just wanting but wanted.

Genius

What does your past (or present) life of fornication, lying, gossip, anger, or drunkenness have to do with your search for happiness? Everything. Alone, you have no right to this blessedness. Justice disallows sinners from the inheritance of the righteous. Should you who have sown hell reap heaven? Should God be mocked? How can God make you happy? His mercy, not his wrath, begs for explanation in the next verses.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,     neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.For as the heavens are higher than the earth,     so are my ways higher than your ways     and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

Your thoughts of grace and mercy inch upon the forest floor; God’s thoughts of grace dwell far above the heads of the seraphim. His gospel ways of pity and pardon hang above us from crossbeams of rugged wood upon a hill. In other words, the gospel is not man’s genius but God’s. We had no clue how justice and mercy could kiss. Man couldn’t fathom a way for his own forgiveness; he couldn’t dream how to be adopted into God’s family. The happiness in God we never sought was given to us through a plan we couldn’t have imagined.

Joy

God’s plan features God’s Son. He would send his only Son to take on human flesh, live the perfect life you didn’t, die your death, and rise from your grave. He suffered the wrath you deserved so you could have the heaven Christ deserved.

God welcomed back a banished people through covenant, foretelling, “I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David” (Isaiah 55:3). And amid the promise, he turns to another and says,

Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know,     and a nation that did not know you shall run to you,because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel,     for he has glorified you. (Isaiah 55:5)

Hundreds of years later, one man rises to his feet to reissue God’s invitation to the thirsty:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37–38)

Jesus invites all who will to come to him. He is the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world. He is the man who, when lifted up by his Father, draws sinners to himself.

Whether you accept Christ’s happy terms of surrender, the promised bliss for God’s people will arrive. His word will not return to him empty (Isaiah 55:11). The consummation of this everlasting covenant will spill over creation. Mountains and hills shall sing for his saints; the forest and the trees applaud us. The curse of thorn and thistle shall be overturned, displaced by the fertile green of blessing (Isaiah 55:12). And the happiness of his people in a new heaven and a new earth will “make a name for the Lord” as an “everlasting sign that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 55:13).

Do you thirst? Come to the waters. He promises to forgive you, satisfy you, adopt you as his own treasured possession. Leave behind the pornography, the living for your own name, your unsatisfying affair with the world, and let the Lord usher you into fullness of pleasures forevermore in his presence. Your joy, to his glory, forever.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14778698/will-we-find-unity-before-christ-comes