my personal quiet time: Bible reading and memorization.

Quiet time is something that tends to go in seasons for me.  Sometimes, I will go days, or even (shhhh!) sometimes weeks without sitting down for intentional quiet time.  These are not shining stretches for me, but it is the truth.  In other seasons, I rarely go more than a day in between intentional, set-aside time in which to read the Bible, pray, and reflect.

Right now, I'm spending a lot of time focusing on growth in this area, and attempting to become more consistent.  There have been a couple of things that have really assisted me in daily consistency and more fruitful time with God.

Bible Reading

This Jen Wilkin talk on how your quiet time should change you, and this article (also by Jen Wilkin) on Bible literacy have been super helpful.  She really challenged me to not expect some kind of super spiritual experience every time I opened the Bible (which rarely happened, and it would leave me disappointed, unmotivated, and feeling like I'd failed), but rather to treat the Bible like a book.  We read books to learn, enjoy, and grow - and often, if they're great books, we read them over and over, and find ourselves continually influenced by them in new ways.  Now, the Bible is more than just a book.  But, as Jen says, it is not less than a book.  So I have chosen the book of John to read, front to back, over and over, for a few pass-throughs now and I'm finding the immersion in the same material for a long time is making my own experience with the book much deeper.

I'm also jumping in to this community as we read through the entire Bible, beginning today and going through May.  I love that there's a Facebook group for encouragement and accountability, weekly videos, and even an app you can sync with your Bible app so you can either read through or listen to the audio on your phone.  It starts today - anyone want to jump in with me?

Scripture Memory

Jen Wilkin (again!) says that the easiest way to memorize Scripture is to just read it over and over.  I think that is so insightful and challenging, and I would also like to add that I've found the opposite to be true, too: the easiest way to read (and know) Scripture is to memorize it.

A few years ago, my friend LisaGrace and I memorized the book of Galatians together, and while I don't still have it memorized word-for-word, I do still know that book better than any other in the Bible.  The themes, metaphors, specific stories, and references to the Old Testament are still mentally available to me in a snap - in essence, more than any other book of the Bible, I feel like I internalized the "point" of Galatians as I memorized it, repeating the words over and over to myself out loud, in my mind, and on paper to get it to 'stick.'  It helped me understand what it means to really meditate on Scripture.

So I have decided to start this exercise with John as well.  I'm not sure if I'm committing to memorizing the whole book (Galatians is only six chapters; John is 21!), but I'm starting and will see how far I get!


So, as for what this actually looks like daily: I typically get up around 8:00,  sit down and spend 10-15 minutes in intentional prayer (more on that tomorrow!), then I spend around 10 minutes reading a chapter of John and 5-10 minutes working on new Scripture memory.  While the new Bible reading plan will likely take longer to get through each day than I've been spending, it's still all very do-able, which is why I think I've been able to stay pretty consistent in these areas over the last four months or so.  Tomorrow, I'll show you more about my time in prayer, including some of the resources I've found most helpful!