In a recent Aussie survey, 71% of people said they’d made at least one New Year resolution.[1] I’ve often joined them. I’ve also joined most people whose New Year resolutions have petered out by the end of January (if not earlier!).
Perhaps it was our new fitness regime that ground to a halt the moment life got busy again, or the healthy-eating resolution that crumbled over a third helping of pavlova at another summer BBQ.
Or maybe it’s our plan to read through the Bible in a year. We’ve responded to the call of those challenges to make 2023 the year we finally get past Leviticus. We were going strong. Day after day we ticked off those little progress boxes, but then came the day when we missed one, and then another, and another.
As the days go by, we feel more and more guilt. I really should read my Bible more, we say to ourselves. Weeks pass, and eventually, the guilt solidifies and we give up. Maybe next year we’ll make it to Numbers, or even Deuteronomy, we tell ourselves.
Now, this isn’t another article telling you that you really should just knuckle down and get on with that Bible-reading plan. I’m not going to suggest three practical steps you can take to read the Bible every day.
Instead, I want to talk about that sense of guilt we so often feel when we skip reading our Bibles.
If we feel a sense of guilt for not reading the Bible, it might indicate that we’re reading the Bible because we feel we should, rather than because we want to. This kind of guilt may reveal that we read the Bible out of duty rather than desire. And, if we are reading out of duty, we’re likely selling ourselves short of the joy that’s on offer in reading God’s Word (Psalm 19:7-8).
Duty vs Desire
There are two types of people who make New Year’s resolutions to get fit.
The first person feels compelled to. Adverts, TV programs and energetic people on social media tell them they really should be fitter. They don’t particularly want to, but they give it a go and by the end of January, their efforts peter out. This person operates from a sense of duty.
Then, there’s the second person. Maybe, their daughter is getting married and they want to ensure they are fit enough to walk her down the aisle at the wedding and dance all night long at the reception. This person wants to get fit. They are motivated by desire.
This second person may well falter here and there, but when they do, they don’t necessarily feel guilty. Instead, they see it as a missed opportunity. That missed gym session means they might miss a dance at the wedding reception.
Discipline will play a part in both, but it’s not all about discipline. More basic than discipline and far more decisive is the want to do it; the desire to do it.
If we only see Bible reading as something we should do, we will only operate from a sense of duty, not desire. We will see it as simply another task that confronts us alongside all the other tasks we need to do each day. But if we want to read our Bible–if we desire it–then that will be different.
This difference between acting out of duty or desire is a common idea in the Bible. We see one example of this in Paul’s writings: when Paul writes to his friend Philemon asking him to welcome a fellow brother called Onesimus, he says, “I could be bold and order you [Philemon] to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love…” (Philemon verses 8-9). Paul didn’t want Philemon to act out of force or obligation, but wanted him to act in a willing, voluntary way (Philemon verse 14). In short, he encouraged Philemon to want to act, rather than feel like he should.
Like Babies Crave Milk
My wife and I have a little seven-month-old boy. When he wakes up from a nap, he doesn’t feed on milk because it’s a task on his to-do list for the day, instead, he feeds because he desires the milk, he wants it. In a sense, he’s hooked on it!
In his first letter, Peter writes to a group of believers saying, “like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2). That word ‘crave’ is important. It speaks of intensity.
The Scottish Bible teacher Ian Howard Marshall wrote that Peter’s image here is less about children who eat food because “their mother has told them it’s good for them, and more like children who consume ice cream with gusto.”[2] Reading our Bibles is never simply a duty to be ticked off a list, it’s something to desire; to want to do.
Like anyone else, I find it so easy to fall into a habit of seeing Bible reading as just one of the many tasks in my day. But it’s so much more than a task. Reading the Bible isn’t a project to be worked through, it’s honey to be gobbled down (Psalm 119:103)!
The challenge then is wanting to read the Bible and less about having the discipline to do it.
So, how can our desire to read the Bible increase? At least one thing we can do is to remind ourselves of what the Bible is inviting us to.
Selling Ourselves Short
Reading the Bible is an invitation to experience joy in God’s presence. When Jesus commends Mary for sitting at His feet while Martha gets on with the chores, Jesus isn’t guilt-tripping Martha into spending time with Him. Instead, Jesus is showing Martha that she’s missing out on being in His presence (Luke 10:38-42).
When we don’t read the Bible, we miss out on sitting in the presence of our Lord; the Lord who gives rest to the weary, satisfaction for our thirst, and abundant, everlasting life (Matthew 11:28; John 4:13-14, 10:10). One Psalm captures the precious, surpassing beauty of spending time with God in one pithy line, exclaiming, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10).
We sell ourselves short when we miss out on dwelling with God in His Word. Remembering this, we may find our desire for reading God’s Word grows.
God Desires Time with Us
The desire for time with God is not one-sided, though. God desires time with us too.
God wants us to enjoy Him. He gives us the Bible not because He should – in fact, we don’t deserve the Bible! – but because He wants to. He’s a father who wants us to spend time with Him. When my little boy grows up, I hope he doesn’t call me to chat because he feels he should. Instead I hope, in God’s mercy, I’ll be the kind of father who he wants to speak to.
God doesn’t keep score. If we’re on a streak of reading our Bible each day, God doesn’t nod approvingly (even if we might feel a little smug). And, if we haven’t read the Bible in days or weeks, God doesn’t shake his head disapprovingly.
God’s like the father in the story of the prodigal son. As the prodigal son starts to express his feelings of guilt and perhaps remorse, the father interrupts by exclaiming how happy he is that his son has come home. The father doesn’t guilt-trip him. He doesn’t say angrily, “Where on earth have you been?” Instead, the father just welcomes his son home with exuberant joy (Luke 15:11-32).
If we haven’t read our Bible in a while, we can trust that when we pick it up again, God isn’t some mean-spirited manager who is going to comment on where we’ve been. Rather, He’s our Father who simply wants to talk with us.
Pray for Desire
Our desire to spend time in God’s presence, through His Word, will grow as we see the Bible as an invitation to joy and not a task to be completed. But ultimately, our desire will only grow if we ask God for help.
We can ask God to give us the kind of hunger that a baby has for milk, and to show us the feast that He sets before us so that we might taste and see that He and His words really are good (1 Peter 2:3; Psalm 34:8). Having tasted the richness of God’s Word, we’ll crave more like babies crave milk – maybe even like children who eat ice cream with gusto!
And when we actually turn the pages of God’s Word, we’ll find that we had no reason to feel guilty, for God is the one who “is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love” (Psalm 103:8).
Stephen Unwin is a writer and editor with Our Daily Bread Ministries. He has degrees in sound engineering and theology and is currently studying for a PhD on the theology of gift and gratitude. He’s married to Katy and they live in Melbourne, Australia.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-30/most-common-new-years-resolutions-2023-for-australians/101787132#:~:text=A%20survey%20of%201%2C013%20respondents,cent%20of%20baby%20boomers%20have. See also: https://www.finder.com.au/new-years-resolutions-for-2023
[2] Howard Marshall, 1 Peter, (IVP New Testament Commentary, Leicester, England, IVP, 1991), 63.
