Tag: bible

Are You Hungry for God’s Word?

This week I received an email with a profound question: what does it mean to be hungry for God’s Word and how can I feel this way? Most of us would agree that a hunger for the Bible is a healthy hunger. But what does this actually mean and how do we develop a deeper appetite for the Word of God? 

What Does It Mean to Have a Hunger for God’s Word?

A hunger for the Word of God is all about sensing our need for God’s truth. It is a longing to know God’s truth more so that it changes us. A hunger for God’s Word means we want God and his truth to shape how we live on a daily basis.

We see a hunger and a longing for God and his Word in the Bible itself, especially in Psalm 119. I’d encourage you to read the whole Psalm (it’s long but worth the read). Here are a few snippets that reveal a healthy hunger for God’s truth.

“My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.” (Psalm 119:20)

“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” (Psalm 119:97)

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103)

Notice how the author of the Psalm longs for God’s rules (his truth, his Word), he loves it and thinks about it all the time, and he finds God’s words “sweet”. They are good and nourishing to his soul. He knows and feels his need for God’s truth. He longs to know more of the goodness and delight found in God’s truth.

Ultimately, a hunger for God’s Word is a hunger for God. God has spoken to us through the Bible, his Word. It is the primary way we come to know him as followers of Jesus. Thus, a hunger for God’s Word should be a hunger to know and love God more by dwelling on his truth conveyed in the Bible. 

We want him. And we want to love him more. And we want to live his way. So, we come to the Bible and read it with open hands ready to receive whatever God might give us to satisfy our souls.

How Do We Grow in Our Hunger for God’s Word?

The reality of the Christian life is that we may not always feel a hunger for God’s Word. Developing an appetite for the Word can take time, and it may ebb and flow. Our hunger for God’s truth will have high points and low points. There is no magic strategy to make yourself feel this hunger. It comes to us from God himself and often grows or shrinks depending on our daily habits.

So here are four practices for growing your appetite for God’s Word.

1. Pray and Ask God for a Deeper Hunger

The first step to growing in a hunger for God is by praying and asking God for a deeper hunger for his Word. Ask God: Help me to long to read the Bible and find it sweet and good and lovely. Help me to love your Word and think about it all the time. Give me a deep yearning for you and your truth. 

Confess to God that you don’t often feel this way: God, I don’t hunger for you and your truth as I should. Help me to develop a fiercer craving to read and live out your Word.

2. Take Small Steps to Encounter God’s Word Every Day

Then, take small steps to encounter God’s Word every day. Set aside a time every day to read a small portion of the Bible. And small can be key. If you aren’t reading the Bible on a regular basis, start with just a few verses or a chapter. 

Turn off distractions (i.e., put your phone in another room) and spend a few minutes reading. As you read, ask yourself what this teaches you about God or how it might point you to who Jesus is. 

Make a start to developing a greater desire for the Word by reading the Word daily. Our habits shape our appetites, so make a habit of being in the Bible everyday.

3. Chew on What You Read

As you read God’s Word make sure you are “chewing on it”. That’s what “meditation” on God’s Word means. Meditation is concentration on God’s truth for the good of your soul, to satisfy your soul with God’s nourishing truth. It’s simply taking time to slowly think about what God’s Word means. 

Once again, asking good questions is critical. Chew on the Word by asking what it teaches you about God, how it might call you to change your actions, how it encourages you to trust in Jesus, how it leads you to confess sin, and so on.

4. Read God’s Word in Community

Finally, read God’s Word in community with other believers. Make every effort to be in church regularly to hear the teaching and preaching of God’s Word. Find friends who can hold you accountable in reading God’s Word. Ask a friend to ask you once a week: What was something God taught you through his Word this week? 

God designed us to read and hear his Word with others. Our hunger will grow as we seek God’s truth with other followers of Jesus.

These thoughts are just a start, but I hope they get you thinking about what you are hungry for. Are you hungry for God and his Word? Or are you trying to fill the emptiness of your soul with entertainment, relationships, money, or something else? Only God can satisfy your soul through his Son, Jesus Christ. Getting hungry for God’s Word starts with repenting of sin and trusting in Jesus Christ alone to save us and satisfy us. 

Are you hungry for God’s truth? Confess the idolatry of your appetites, trust in Christ alone, and get in the Bible to grow your appetite for the sweetness of God’s truth. 

Reading Slowly in a Hasty Age

“When I get a little money, I buy books, and if I have any left over I buy food and clothes.” I have always resonated with this statement from 16th century Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. I love books. Reading is one of the most valuable disciplines and joys in life. It is vital to feeding and clothing the mind and soul.

While I enjoy purchasing new books, I must also admit that I have many books on my shelves that I have not read—more books than I’ll be able to get through in the next several years. Many are for reference, some are beneficial for a quick read-through, and others need deeper thought and reflection. Add to this the hundreds of books I have digitally on Kindle or Bible software, and I have a wealth of books to feast on for many years to come.

With so many books to read and so little time, those of us who love to read can be sucked into valuing reading speed and reading quantity over reading quality. The goal can become to read a certain number of books a year, when it should be enjoying good books and being formed by the best books.

We can go so fast and pound our way through book after book, when we should be slowing down, reflecting, and chewing on what we’re reading. Especially as we read for learning and spiritual growth, we often need to slow down and read less, not necessarily more. We need to take time in our Bible reading to meditate on the text more than to meet a goal of reading the Bible in a year (as valuable as that is).

Thomas Brooks, a pastor in the 17th century, put it well:

“Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bees touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.”

If hasty reading was a problem for the Puritans, it is more so today, especially in our digital context. Our digital age conditions us for passive consumption more than active learning. It forms us to prize quick skimming and synthesis over deep thinking and serious meditation. The increasing ubiquity of AI may lead some to think that sitting down and reading a book for information and learning is an antiquated pursuit. We live in an age of speed and efficiency, where slowing down can seem impossible. But slow down we must, if we want to be formed through reading and not just gulp down books.

One way to slow down is to read physical copies of books and read minimally from a device. Purchase the print version before the digital version. For your Bible intake, grab a printed copy of Scripture instead of pulling out your phone. I own and use (and enjoy) reading on a Kindle, but for serious meditation and deep reading, holding a print copy usually forces me to slow down. I remember more of what I read. I can get a better sense of the whole book with a print copy and review it more thoroughly.

Reading a print copy also allows for better note-taking in the book itself. Digital note-taking is doable and some may prefer it. There are benefits to reading a digital copy and saving highlights easily. But once again, faster and easier are not necessarily always better for long term learning and growth. Physically underlining a sentence or writing a short note requires you to slow down and be more intentional instead of highlighting every interesting passage. It makes you pause, reflect, and think, not just consume passively.

There are certainly many times we should read quickly. If you skimmed this article, I don’t blame you. You still probably got the gist and maybe received some food for thought. At other times, we might read too slowly and too sleepily or sporadically that we gain little from it. Or we may read inferior books too slowly and miss out on better books. But when we read good books for growth, we all could benefit from slowing down a little. Especially when we read the Book God has given us, his perfect and inerrant Word, we must prize serious mediation over hasty reading.

To sum it up in the words of Mortimer J. Adler, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you—how many you can make your own. A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances.”