How to Overcome Bible Fatigue
Whether you’re brand new to the Bible or you grew up in the second pew, reading Scripture can at times feel confusing or boring. Understanding it properly almost requires reading it thoroughly (and even repeatedly), but who wants to read something they don’t understand?
Many people prefer to stick to the Psalms and Proverbs because those are easier to grasp. Or they start a Bible reading plan—usually at the beginning of the year—and launch out with ambition and zeal but lose interest by mid-February. This was me too! I’d read through Genesis fifteen times, but there was a big gap until Psalms and Proverbs, then another big gap until the Gospels. I was on track to becoming a Genesis scholar.
Some people are so perplexed by Scripture that they use a daily devotional instead because it seems easier to hear from God second-hand. Devotionals can be a great supplement, but many of the popular ones today only give us a snippet of Scripture and spend the rest of the time worshipping at the altar of self-help and false encouragement.
Maybe you’ve tried it all and you wonder if you’ll ever love reading an actual Bible or if you’ll always just feel intimidated by it? Are you tired of losing steam after six weeks?
My earliest memory is my mom teaching me John 3:16. But despite that early start, I spent much of my life feeling alienated from the very book I professed to believe. When I attempted to read through the Bible on my own, I’d often close it thinking, “What did I just read?” If you’ve been trying to make your way through Scripture—if you’ve wanted to read it all, or even just wanted to want to read it all—I’m hopeful that my mistakes and successes through the years can help you. I want to help you overcome the obstacles you encounter so that you begin to recognize yourself as a child of God who knows Him and is in an active, intimate relationship with Him!
Read in Chronological Order
You don’t need to go to seminary. You don’t even need a special Bible. Most likely, what you need is to read it—all of it—and see what God has to say about Himself in the story He’s telling. However, one challenging thing is that most Bibles aren’t laid out according to that story’s plot line. Most are assembled by category, like a library: books of the law, history, wisdom literature, prophecy, historical narrative gospels, letters, etc. What helped me tremendously in understanding the story of God was reading it in chronological order—that is, not front-to-back, but in the order the story happened. There are a ton of resources online that can help you do this!
Look for God, Not Yourself
I viewed the Bible as a big “to do” list, and if I checked all the boxes, then God would respond by fulfilling my desires. I read Scripture primarily to get application points so I could feel like a good person and use that sense of entitlement to convince God He owed me something in return. When someone suggested I read Scripture as a story about God—not me—it felt unnatural and hard. To help me find God on the pages, I started asking myself a few questions each day:
What does God say or do in this passage?
What does this reveal about what God loves?
What does this reveal about what God hates?
What does this reveal about what motivates God to do what He does?
In all of that, what attributes of God are displayed?
The questions we ask of the Bible impact the wisdom we glean from it. It’s an opportunity to behold the beauty of God and be drawn in by Him.
Consider Context
Before, it was like I’d been dropping down in the middle of a movie for five minutes, with no real idea of the storyline or who the characters were, and hoping to understand it. Not only is it impossible to understand something when you handle it that way, but it’s also impossible to love it. Context—both the literal context of where a passage falls in the storyline and the cultural context it was written in—are vital to a thorough understanding of who God is. I learned that I’d been claiming promises God never made to me and despairing over laws that didn’t apply to me. Context is key!
Be Patient
Since I was only reading for application and promises, I had no patience for passages I didn’t understand. I wanted answers right now. But relationships rarely work that way. We grow to understand people and their motives more as we spend more time with them. I hadn’t been viewing it as a relationship; I’d been viewing it as an answer book - and it was failing me! That’s a dangerous and short-sighted approach, and it rarely leads to loving God more.
For instance, it’s easy to read through parts of the Old Testament and conclude that God is angry and wants to kill anyone who disobeys Him. But when you zoom out and read the whole story, you’ll see a through-line of grace and mercy and rescue. Questions you encounter in Leviticus might not be answered until Hebrews. Hang in there! As you're reading, aim to hold your questions—and even your conclusions—with an open hand and continue to ask God to guide you in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.
Your mistakes in reading Scripture may be different than mine. Regardless, I hope you’re able to learn from my mistakes. Approaching Scripture with an aim to behold God, learn the context of His story, and patiently read the whole book has changed my life and my relationship with God and His word forever. I spent years trying to live my life around a book I hadn’t read about a God I didn’t really know because I wanted Him to point me toward what I needed to do to access joy and happiness. But now that I’ve read it and now that I know Him, I know that He’s where the joy is!
