This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.
The Right Mindset in Reading the Bible This Year
In this podcast Dr. Uche Anizor discusses how to overcome some of the common challenges and difficult mindsets we may find ourselves in when it comes to reading the Bible, such as difficulty in understanding the Bible, feeling that it is irrelevant, or viewing reading it as performative and not a genuine practice. Dr. Anizor has a thoughtful and grace-filled approach to overcoming these challenges to viewing Scripture as a gift from God.
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Twenty warm, engaging readings, based primarily on Psalm 119, encourage regular meditation on God’s gifts in Scripture—including blessedness, hope, and peace—as well as warnings and wisdom that bring repentance.
Topics Addressed in This Interview:
Matt Tully
Uche Anizor serves as professor of theology at Talbot School of Theology, at Biola, and is the author of a number of books, including The Goodness of God and the Gift of Scripture: 20 Meditations from Crossway. Uche, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.
Uche Anizor
Thanks for having me.
Matt Tully
We’ve just started a new year, and that means that many of us are probably taking stock of our spiritual lives and maybe we’re noticing things about our lives that we want to grow and that we want to see some progress in. And one of those is probably, for many of us, something related to our Bible-reading habits. We often view it almost like eating our vegetables, because it’s good for us but it doesn’t necessarily taste good. I’m just wondering if you have you experienced that. You’re a professor, you teach the Bible all the time, but do you ever have days where it feels like that for you as well?
Uche Anizor
Yeah, I definitely have days where I think I am performing something that I know I should do, it is good for me, and because it’s good for me, I’ll stay faithful in it. And the reality is there are lots of things like that in life. There are so many things we do in the course of our lives that we do out of a desire to be faithful, out of a desire to be healthy, and not just sort of live on our whims and on our emotions. And so as we do that, we grow into healthy, disciplined kinds of people. I guess my concern, when it comes to Scripture, is that if that’s always our posture towards Scripture or if that’s the predominant way that we engage with the Bible, then I don’t see that as being long-term viable for the Christian. There are of course going to be lots of seasons where we’re just sort of grinding it out and we’re trying to be faithful, because things are not always going to feel super awesome. But it can’t always be that. I’m fairly convinced.
Matt Tully
And I think one of your emphases in this new book that you’ve written is that one of the reasons, and maybe the main reason, that we can often struggle to feel like this is something that is really enjoyable and good for me is because we don’t view Scripture as a gift in the way that we should. And that’s the big idea with this new book that you’ve written is that Scripture is a gift that God has given to us to enjoy and to benefit from. Before we get into the many ways in which it is a gift to us, and you’ve got all these meditations looking at different ways that God’s word is a gift, I wanted to just explore a little bit more why it is that we often struggle to view it as a gift. Few of us, as Christians, would probably come out and say it’s not a gift. We would say it is, but we just don’t experience it as a gift all that often. And the first one that came to my mind was just that sometimes when we think of Scripture, we just feel guilty because we think of all the ways in which we’re not reading Scripture the way that we should. So speak to that a little bit and how that can prevent us from viewing it as a gift.
Uche Anizor
As with many of the spiritual disciplines or means of grace, we always know we could do better. Prayer is a privilege. Evangelism is a real grace. The church is a wonderful blessing to us. All these things we should be more deeply engaged with. We know that and we simply don’t do it. Similarly, with scripture we feel like we should be engaged deeply with Scripture and we’re not, and so we feel guilty. But this doesn’t negate the fact that Scripture is a gift, but it blinds us from being able to feel it as a gift because it feels like this overlord that is constantly calling out to us and saying, More, more, more! Give me more, more, more! And we’re like, I don’t want to give you more, more, and more. It can feel burdensome. And so there’s no silver bullet in terms of turning our hearts to not feel it or experience Scripture that way. But what I’m trying to do is just paint a picture of the many gifts that God gives us through Scripture, so that we’re better able to get to a place of receiving it as gift rather than seeing it as, again, like this master or this overlord thing.
Matt Tully
Maybe that is part of the answer to that question. If we’re struggling with that, if we feel this sense of shame and guilt when we think about the Bible and reading the Bible because we’re not doing it enough, maybe the answer is to just take a moment and reflect on how good the Bible is and why it is good for us. And again, that’s what you’re helping us to do in this book. But before we get there, that’s another reason why we might struggle to see Scripture as a gift is because maybe we find it intimidating or confusing or hard to understand. What would you say to someone who’s in that spot?
Uche Anizor
I think, to some degree, that that’s a fair concern. There are parts of the Bible that are harder. There are parts of the Bible where we do need explanation. There’s a reason why commentaries exist. There’s a reason why teachers exist. And so there can feel like there’s a barrier to receiving greater depths of knowledge from the Bible. And so we may feel sort of adequate to get the basics from the Bible, but then the basics get boring. And so then in order to get deeper, we need other kinds of knowledge. And so there develops this barrier in our brains of, Okay, I’ve already attained basic knowledge of the Bible. What’s left? And what’s left is stuff that’s beyond us. And so just approaching the Bible in a way where it feels like it’s this ever-giving fount of goodness is just hard for us because we do rightly surmise that there are aspects of the Bible or depths of the Bible that we haven’t plumbed and are harder to plumb.
Matt Tully
And it strikes me that sometimes the way that we talk about the Bible in church—maybe in school context, seminary context, or college context—can maybe subtly reinforce that idea that the Bible requires a certain level of knowledge that most people don’t have. Do you think that’s possible?
Uche Anizor
To me, it’s undoubtedly the case. Right. Just speaking as a theologian and maybe not so much as a biblical scholar. As a theologian, the categories we tend to think of the Bible in are categories related to revelation and categories related to truth. We’re trying to make sense of the Bible from a theological framework, or we’re trying to sort of defend the Bible in light of modern critiques of the Bible. And so what ends up happening is that the Bible ceases to be the thing that it fundamentally is. It’s interpersonal, covenantal communication from a God who loves us and who’s trying to woo us and draw us into ever-deeper relationship. That’s what it is fundamentally. But we lose that because of the battles that we’re in. Because we’re in those battles, we’re talking about it a certain way, but that can distort the average person’s conception of what the Bible is. And I think similar kinds of things happen when we talk about how you need to know Greek in order to grasp the Bible—things like that that sort of distance the average person from the Bible. There are good reasons why we talk about Greek, why we talk about doctrinal sort of concerns, but if we just land there, then we’re doing a disservice to the average Christian.
Matt Tully
Another thing that can sometimes prevent us from viewing Scripture as a gift is it feels kind of irrelevant. I was just recently reading through a little bit of the book of Numbers, and there are just long stretches in there that are counting up different tribes of Israel, and it is a little hard sometimes in different portions of Scripture to see how does this actually help me. How is this God meeting me in my life today with all the concerns I have today? So, speak to how that can be a hindrance to us and maybe how we should reframe our thinking about what the Bible is.
Uche Anizor
I think a reframing is necessary. I think a lot of the issue, when it comes to Bible reading and our disappointment with Bible reading, is we come to it with certain expectations. If I’m approaching the Bible for my devotional reading, then I’m expecting some devotional magic to happen when I sit down and read the Bible, right? And so then there’s not going to be a lot of devotional magic that’s going to happen when I’m reading through a genealogy or I’m reading through various kinds of feasts and festivals in the Pentateuch. It’s simply not going to happen the way that we want it to happen. But if we reframe our expectation and we say, *Okay, what God is doing through Scripture is he’s trying to form me so that I understand his ways and the way that he’s related to his people and then how that relates to me then in the way that he relates to his people. But that’s not going to come from me reading my four chapters of Numbers or my three chapters of Leviticus in a devotional reading. It’s a longer term project that we have to be patient with. God, by his Spirit, is forming us, but we have to sort of rethink our expectations about each devotional encounter with the Bible.
Matt Tully
You used two words there that just really stood out to me. Expectations. For all of our lives, if we have the wrong expectations, that’s what leads us to frustration and discouragement. But then you also mentioned patience. Speak to the role that patience should play as we think about the work that God intends to do in us with his word. How should we calibrate it with that expectation of patience?
Uche Anizor
I don’t know when it was in my spiritual life where I finally made the shift from viewing my devotional interaction with God and with his word in terms of it’s an event, where the Spirit’s going to do this sort of thing in that event, rather than seeing it as slowly and over time, what God is actually doing is he’s reframing my vision of life, reframing my vision of the world, reframing my vision of who I am, reframing my vision of who he is. But the reality was that kind of reframing, because I’m a person who (like all of us) is stuck in in particular ways and in particular ruts, it takes time for God to sort of shift us and shape us and move us. And so as I think about patience, I’m just thinking about the fact that God, in his wisdom, places us as creatures in time who can’t get to where we want to get to immediately. And so it’s over the course of weeks and months and years of being a Bible-saturated Christian that God forms you into a wise and godly person. We wish it would happen instantaneously, but nothing of lasting value happens instantaneously. And so I think it’s the same as we think about the Bible.
Matt Tully
That’s such a good reminder and may be encouraging for those of us who, when we look at our lives, we don’t see the change happening as quickly as we wish it was. I think of my kids. I can’t see their growth because I’m seeing them every day and it’s so small each day. But when friends and relatives come visit who haven’t seen them in a while, it’s very obvious to others. Do you think that’s true for our spiritual lives, that other people see it better than we do?
Uche Anizor
I think that’s a brilliant analogy. I think that’s exactly what happens. We’re not the greatest judges of ourselves, and sometimes it’s not even the best question to be asking. I don’t know what the better question is, but I’m not sure if it’s the best question to be asking it on the daily—Am I growing? Well, probably. If you’re walking with the Lord, you’re in his word, you’re with his people, and you’re seeking to love him and walk faithfully, you likely are growing. But are you going to be able to see that. Even if you tried to chart it in on a month to month basis, it’s going to be really, really hard because spiritual growth isn’t a linear path. It’s a little bit more complicated than that.
Matt Tully
One last thing that can prevent us from viewing Scripture as a gift, and you actually draw out this one in the book, is just that we can sometimes perhaps view it as not as good as God says it is. We can view it as something that is ultimately generally restrictive for us and even repressive. It’s going to condemn us constantly, it’s going to call me out, and so I feel bad about myself after I’ve spent time in it. And we don’t always trust that it’s actually the best for us. Can you speak a little bit more to what you were getting at as you were drawing that out and why that can be a stumbling block for us?
Uche Anizor
What I specifically actually had in mind when I was writing that was I was thinking about youth that I think wrestle with Scripture largely because Scripture says things that are contrary to what they’re imbibing culturally about gender and about what it means to be a human person. They’re well-intentioned Christian kids, but Scripture sort of grates against what they’re constantly feeling and hearing and taking in. And so there can be this passive resistance to the Bible because the Bible is so counter-cultural, and it can feel like it’s being repressive and cruel. I do think there can be a resistance to it. And so what I’m trying to get at with the book is I’m trying to say at the end of the day, the only way to really know that Scripture is good, especially when you doubt Scripture’s goodness, the only way to know is by tasting and seeing. And so you actually have to walk with Scripture, follow Scripture, and then trust that the things that Scripture says are for our good are actually for our good. And then see and experience that they actually prove to be good. As these students are wrestling with the cultural narrative versus Scripture’s narrative, it’s just two live options that feel equal. And one’s obviously more attractive; the cultural one is more attractive. But if they could actually have victories, in a sense of like small glimpses in their own experience of the goodness and the truthfulness of Scripture in their own lives, then I think that that would sort of start to shift them from this place of seeing scripture as sort of theoretically good to seeing it as actually really good
Matt Tully
And you’re in the classroom with students every day, right? You’re actually walking along with students coming out of high school, coming into college, and coming into the real world, with all these influences and voices speaking into their lives. I think oftentimes we think in terms of theological categories and doctrines—the inspiration of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture. And you teach theology, so I’m sure you’re teaching those things. But sometimes we can focus on getting all those doctrines right and getting someone to be able to articulate those things correctly, and we can maybe neglect giving them a taste, giving them that experience of the doctrines and of, and in particular, the goodness of God’s word. So just speak to the play between knowing the truth about these doctrines about Scripture versus experiencing the truth of Scripture and the goodness of Scripture.
Uche Anizor
That’s a great question. I think what’s typically happening among my average student is I think they have a settled sense that Scripture is truth, it’s God’s word, whatever that means. It may not be a sophisticated articulation of the doctrine of its inspiration or revelation or whatever, but they believe that Scripture is truth and it’s God’s word. That’s sort of settled. What’s not settled in their hearts is the goodness question. That’s why if I were to write a book on Scripture, I would have the goodness of Scripture almost like a doctrinal category, because I think it’s fundamental for how we’re presenting an incomplete picture of Scripture if we’re only operating in truth categories. There has to be a goodness and beauty sort of category for what Scripture is. And I think the only way to see the beauty of Scripture is not by loving the beauty of the literature or the narratives or the poetry. All that stuff is beautiful. But it’s only by experiencing it. you have to experience God in Scripture in order to really in your own heart be convinced that it’s more than just bedrock truth that I’m supposed to believe, but it’s actually truth for life. It’s good, and it’s good for my life.
Matt Tully
Maybe this gets at that from another angle. One of the things that you said in the book that stood out to me and I wanted to ask you about was you say that oftentimes we speak of Scripture and reading Scripture as a means of grace. There’s a long, robust theological tradition of using that language—a means of God’s grace to come to us. But you want to say, yes, it is that, but also it is grace as well. Scripture itself is grace to us. Unpack that. Why would you want to maybe push back a little bit on the language that we often use?
Uche Anizor
And maybe it’s not so much a pushback. I think Scripture is a means of grace, so don’t hear me saying it’s not. What I’m just trying to sort of push a little further is the fact that because Scripture is uniquely God’s self-disclosure and Scripture is uniquely God’s verbal but very real presence in the way that other things simply aren’t. The church is a place where Christ manifests his presence. Christ mediates his presence through the church, but the church isn’t Christ’s presence. But Scripture, uniquely, is God’s voice speaking. And so if it’s God’s voice speaking, it’s God’s presence in a unique kind of way. And if it’s God’s presence in a unique kind of way, that’s grace to us. So, it’s God giving himself to us. It’s grace in the sense that it’s the grandest of gifts, because it’s God himself in words.
Matt Tully
I know one of the critiques that sometimes you hear in the church among some Christians is just the warning against some kind of Bible idolatry. Some Christians, and maybe we all know them, love to study the Bible and they may be even seem to love studying the Bible and reading the Bible more than they love God himself. Do you think that’s a danger? And how does that relate to what you just said about viewing Scripture and viewing God’s word as grace itself, God himself, in some sense?
Uche Anizor
I’ve heard the charge of bibliolatry many, many, many times over. And if I’m being really honest, I’m not convinced that bibliolatry is our greatest danger as Christians. As evangelicals, I’m just never convinced of that. However, if I grant that there is a danger to bibliolatry, I’ve always found Psalm 119, the very center of this book, I’ve always found it to be the ultimate counterargument to the overstated claim regarding bibliolatry. Bibliolatry could exist. Maybe. It can exist. Fine. But when you read Psalm 119, what you see is someone singing a song to the law or about God’s law, but as he sings about God’s law, it’s never separated from God himself. And so he just flits back and forth between praising God, praising God’s word, praising God, praising God’s word. And it’s almost synonymous. And so what I would want to say is as we think about Scripture, if we’re going to be u faithful to how Scripture depicts itself, then we need to see that God and his word are really inseparable. They’re really, really inseparable. The Bible is not God. The Bible’s not the fourth person of the Trinity or something like that. But the Bible really is a form of God’s presence, so that when I read the Bible, I am actually engaging God. Because if I believe that the Bible is the God’s speech and that the Spirit inspired it, then I really am engaging God’s thoughts. If I’m engaging God’s thoughts, I’m engaging God. Now, this doesn’t mean there doesn’t need to be a more interpersonal, prayerful dimension to all of our Bible reading and Bible studying, but I’m just trying to push the point that Scripture, if it’s really the word of God, then if it’s the word of God, it really is God speaking. And if God is speaking, I’m hearing and interacting and engaging with him and not just a book.
Matt Tully
It’s amazing. It’s amazing when you actually start to stop and think about it. I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and sometimes these doctrines, this idea of the Bible as God’s very word, it can just become a little bit cold and just a little bit familiar. But when you take a step back, it’s mind blowing that God would give us this. In the book you go through a few different ideas or themes or topics that help us to flesh out the ways in which God’s word is a gift to us. And you open with this idea of blessedness. That’s kind of an old fashioned sounding word, but we see it all throughout the Bible. Blessed, blessed, blessed everywhere. As you said, you’re looking at Psalm 119 primarily. As you think about that psalm and this idea of the blessed life, how does understanding what David is saying in Psalm 119 help us to better understand this theme, especially as we think about our own lives and the things that we’re concerned about, the things that we view as markers of a good life?
Uche Anizor
It seems like if you take Psalm 1 and Psalm 119 and you see Psalm 119 as an expansion of the overarching theme of the Psalms, which is blessed is the man who effectively meditates on the law of the Lord day and night. And so that blessedness is effectively fullness, full happiness, the fullness of life that someone can have in communion with God. That’s what it means to be blessed. And so what the psalmist is saying, both in Psalm 1 and Psalm 119 is that the blessed life doesn’t come in a vacuum; the blessed life comes through God’s means. And what’s God’s means? It’s going to be God’s word. And in the case of Psalm 119, it’s the law, which is amazing when we think about it because we think about the law as just repressive rules. But he’s saying the law is the very means through which, if I meditate on a day and night, that I can actually experience the fullness of life in communion with God.
Matt Tully
Obviously, the world views the good life, the blessed life, we’ll say, in certain materialistic ways that we would quickly say that that’s not what the good life is ultimately about. It’s not about having a bigger house. But even for the Christian, when you think about Christian subculture, what are the substitutes for true blessedness that we often might go to that would run counter to what we see in Psalm 119?
Uche Anizor
I don’t think within the Christian subculture it’s any different than a secular frame. I think Christians will tag themselves as a hashtag (#blessed) when they’re talking about material blessings and achievements and things along those same lines. And none of those things are bad, and those things are, in fact, blessings from God. Every good gift comes from God. I think Christians can as easily be swept away into this notion that true blessedness is worldly accomplishments. Or it’s worldly accomplishments within the spiritual Christian world. Getting on a book list, getting this award, getting this job, getting this speaking engagement, or being on this speaking circuit.
Matt Tully
Those may be true spiritual accomplishments and good things.
Uche Anizor
All good things, but is that the Bible’s fullest account of what it means to be blessed? I’m convinced that the way that that Christ frames it in the beatitudes is that blessedness is like this richer category. Blessed are those who aren’t superstars, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are pure in heart, those who are peacemakers in the face war mongers, those who are persecuted, those who have their names dragged through the mud. Those are the blessed people. And so true blessedness is coming to those who are ultimately, and they might find themselves in these earthly circumstances that are really brutal and hard, but true blessedness comes from communion with God and being in God’s favor, both now and ultimately in eternity. To be truly blessed is to experience God’s ultimate, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Matt Tully
So that’s where you start, and then you go onto some other topics, and another one you hit on is purity and how the Bible brings us this gift of purity. Immediately my mind went to just how that word, in the broader culture but then especially maybe in the Christian subculture in which we all live, that kind of has negative connotations these days. There’s a lot of talk about the problems with purity culture. But I wonder if sometimes even that conversation and similar conversations have almost infected the word itself, purity, and how we think about what that means for us. So speak to that. How does Scripture offer us a more hopeful and holistic view of purity?
Uche Anizor
It is a real danger, in light of conversations surrounding purity culture, to throw the baby out with the bath water. And so there were certain visions of purity that might have been oppressive or difficult or maybe legalistic, as people talked about sort of sexual purity in the 90s and early 2000s. But the danger in saying that purity talk was bad is we end up thinking of purity itself as a bad category. You cannot read the Bible and come to the conclusion that purity is a bad category or a category to be avoided. It’s pervasive. It’s everywhere. In the Old Testament and New Testament, God’s desire is to present us as pure and blameless in his sight. So, purity is God’s ultimate agenda for us, that we would be pure people. And so Scripture then calls us to a life of purity, and it provides us with a path to purity. And the path to purity, as in all things, is going to come in communion with God. And that communion with God is going to be fostered and fed and nurtured in relationship to Scripture. And that’s kind of where I go in the chapter.
Matt Tully
Another topic that you address is the topic of shame. Again, we’ve already hit on this a little bit, but I think in general, maybe our assumption, certainly outside of the church but even within the church, would be that the Bible is going to add to our shame. It’s going to pile on us in some way or another. But you want to make the case that Scripture actually shields us, is protects us, and it can take away our shame in very meaningful ways. Speak to that a little more. How does it do that for us?
Uche Anizor
There is a kind of shame, and this is something that I’ve become increasingly convinced of, there’s a kind of shame that, for lack of a better term, is appropriate. We feel a certain kind of shame for a certain kind of wrongdoing, and that’s meant to drive us to God. We repent and we experience his grace. What Scripture presents to us is the good news that ultimately we will not experience shame before God. Because shame, in the same way as guilt, can be both here and now categories and eschatological end time categories. So in Scripture you’ll hear things like “those who trust in me will not be put to shame” or “I will not be ashamed of them at the judgment.” So shame is a judgment category too. At the judgment, you’ll be publicly exposed for who you are and experience all the emotions that come with that objective reality of your shameful behavior. But Scripture says no, to those who trust in the Lord, those who hold faithfully to him in his word, they will not be put to shame. And the main reason we’re not going to be put to shame is because we find ourselves hidden in Christ. How do we find ourselves hidden in Christ? Through words. As we respond to God’s words, the gospel primarily here, we find ourselves in the one who protects us from that eschatological shame. And even many times in the here and now, he even shields us from human shame.
Matt Tully
One final category that you highlight in the book is fear, how God’s word can give us a certain kind of good fear as a gift. That’s definitely not in the category that we would typically think of as a gift. Any kind of fear we would view as typically something to avoid and to try to tamp down. But in what ways does Scripture give us a good kind of fear?
Uche Anizor
At my church we just did a series on the Proverbs. And so at beginning of Proverbs, you have this notion of the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And later you’ll hear the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so then fear becomes this doorway to wisdom and understanding and knowledge. And so this notion of rightly and lovingly revering God is God’s doorway to knowing him and knowing the way the world works, for lack of a better term (if that’s how we’re thinking about wisdom). And so then Scripture is what furnishes us and engenders this fear, this rightful reverence for God in us in a number of ways, whether it’s through warnings, whether it’s through us seeing narratives that show consequences for sin, whether it’s judgment passages. Whatever it might be, the Scripture is able to engender this rightful loving fear for God which will then be the pathway to us experiencing greater dimensions of him and of wisdom and knowledge and understanding. So, it’s a convoluted answer, but that’s kind of how I’m viewing it.
Matt Tully
I’m struck by how there are all kinds of passages that as I read them, they will push up against my conceptions of God, and I’ll realize, This is a good reminder that God is much bigger, he’s much stronger, he’s got his own plans that go way beyond me and my life. And I think that can certainly engender in my own heart a humility and an awareness of God is a big God, and I’m a very small person compared to him.
Uche Anizor
And there’s just a goodness to exposing ourselves to the whole council of God. Unless we expose ourselves to the whole council of God, we’ll never have the large enough size picture of who God is. We’ll have this fragmentary vision of God. God is either all nice and warm cuddly, or God is just overarchingly cruel and distant, or anything in between. But as we read all of Scripture and all of its genres and all of its prophetic stuff and all of its narratival stuff, we come to this place of having this picture of God who really is, as you said, way bigger than we ever imagined, way grander than we ever imagined and way more powerful than we ever imagined, but actually way more gracious and loving than we could have possibly conceived of. And so Scripture is that means. If we would be willing to engage the totality of it, it’s the means through which we can actually know God as he actually is.
Matt Tully
It’s such an exciting vision. As we’ve been talking, it really does make me want to end this interview and go read my Bible for a while and just experience that and kind of slow down and not try to rush through or try to check a box, but just to enjoy God revealing himself to me.
And I wonder if you can speak to parents right now who might be listening. I’m a parent. I’ve got three kids. I know you’re a parent. And one of the things that we, as Christians, want most for our kids is for them to come to love and know the Lord, and to to do that through his word. We want them to love the Bible and want to read the Bible. How do we help our kids, both in what we say to them (how we teach) but then also even how we model this vision of the goodness of God’s word? Do you have any advice on that front?
Uche Anizor
I’ll at least make a couple of comments. I think it’s a really challenging thing to try and encourage Bible reading, especially as kids transition from the really young years, where they kind of just do whatever you’re doing. They might read their little version of the Bible or you’ll do a lot of family readings, and so they’re constantly being shepherded and exposed to Scripture. And then as they transition into the teen years, you really want them to start becoming self-feeders. But you quickly begin to realize that these teenagers are humans. They have minds and they have wills and they have desires and things along those lines. It’s not so easy to just say, Do this because it’s good for you or Do this because this is what we do as Christians. I’m beginning to realize that the primary driver for my kids reading the Bible is ultimately do they have like a relationship with God? Are they desirous to grow in a relationship with God? If that’s the case, then what what invariably happens, and I’m seeing this, is you’ll just be internally motivated to read the Bible. Again, they’re humans, so they’re going to go through their ups and downs or whatever, but they’re internally motivated because extrinsic and external motivation becomes less and less a thing. Parents can’t do what we used to be able to do, in terms of influencing them. So, that’s my first comment. They actually have to be in relationship with God. That’s going to drive the Bible reading to a large degree. But secondly, one of the things that I’ve been weak at and my wife’s been really strong at is she reads her Bible publicly. Not for show, but we don’t have a big house and so there’s not a lot of places to go. And so she’ll read her Bible, and she’s always studying the Bible. She’s constantly leading Bible studies and things along those lines. And so she’s able to model that reading the Bible is actually a joy. It really actually is a joy. I don’t do that as well because I’m more private. I’m in my or in my office when I’m doing my devotional kinds of things. But over years, she’s modeled a good peace-filled life is a life in which we’re regularly people of the word. But beyond that, the influencing of kids as they get older, they just have to be able to see for themselves, either by their own personal experience or by the experience of those close to them, they need to be able to see the goodness of the Bible. Because it can’t just be propositionally downloaded to them. It just doesn’t work the same way.
Matt Tully
As I was working through your book and thinking through all of this, it was convicting to me as some of it is our instruction, some of it is our example, but even just the way I talk about the Bible in front of my kids and to my kids. If I would exude a level of excitement about what I’m seeing and how God is working in my heart through that, it’s one of those things that I think is so impactful. I can think of people in my life who have done that. They’ve exuded an excitement about God’s word that’s pretty contagious. But it can be hard in the everyday stuff of life.
Uche Anizor
I can imagine that for some people, if they’re like me, I’m not a constantly verbally expressive person. I probably live more in my head than I should, and so I might be thinking these things, feeling these things, been living these things for thirty years as a Christian, but they don’t sort of bubble out of me. I just kind of keep them contained. Not because they’re not real, but I’m just not that kind of a person. There might be some people listening who are like, I’m just not that much of a verbally expressive kind of person, and so what do I do? And I guess my counsel is we have to grow in that. At the end of the day, I’ve got to grow in it. You’ve got to grow in it. If you’re not a verbally expressive person, you’ve got to be verbally expressive, at least somewhat, because it actually has benefits for those around you.
Matt Tully
Yeah. Absolutely. Uche, thank you so much for talking with us today and helping us think a little bit more biblically about the Bible and about what it is that God has given to us in his word and why it’s so helpful for us. We appreciate you taking the time.
Uche Anizor
It’s been a joy. Thank you so much.
