Overcome Distraction
Digital addiction is one of the key issues as a barrier to consistent Bible reading. He notes, “From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, and every moment in between, we check our phones an average of ninety-six times a day, or once every ten minutes”. Even if we take the time to pick up our Bibles (or open a Bible app), our digital addiction makes it harder to concentrate on what we’re reading.
For example, David Platt has said once He hated seafood. He says, “I didn’t even like the smell of it.” Yet when seafood was served by his future mother-in-law, he pretended to enjoy it. What was the result of his convincing performance? “Whenever I ate with them, they would serve seafood. As a result, I now love seafood” (7). By analogy, Platt argues, Christians may only learn to love eating the meat of Scripture after they buckle down and do it for a while. That requires resisting the lure of easy dopamine hits from our phones and exchanging them for a more strenuous lifestyle of Scripture study.
Bible Reading as a Lifestyle
Here is MAPS
1) Meditate and Memorize
2) Apply
3) Pray
4) Share
Though these “steps,” it seems more helpful to think of them as habits. MAPS isn’t a checklist to follow in our quiet times. It’s a guide to practices that allow Scripture to deeply inform our thinking. A single workout doesn’t bring long-term benefits; those benefits come from a lifestyle of healthy diet and exercise. Similarly, these four steps produce value through the cultivation of patient practice.
For example, my best insights into Scripture rarely come while reading the text. As I turn the day’s reading over in my mind, Scripture works on me through the Holy Spirit. Meditation and, better yet, memorization are much more important than merely moving a bookmark a few pages in the Bible each day. Memorizing a verse (or whole passages) provides more to meditate on. The more I memorize, the more connections I see between Bible passages and the more my appetite for Scripture increases. Scripture is an acquired taste.
But Bible reading isn’t primarily a cognitive exercise. “It is about experiencing supernatural transformation in our lives” . That transformation requires application.
One of those applications is prayer. A healthy lifestyle of biblical intake and application naturally flows into “expressing our hearts to [God] as he hears from us”. The joy of that deepening intimacy with God pushes us to lead others “to experience intimacy with God in their lives” (81). Healthy disciples are disciple makers.