Help Me Study the Bible Daily—and Actually Understand It

If you are going to get your cues for Bible reading from the Bible itself—and you should—then you would read it daily and diligently.

Undoubtedly, the most formative discipline in my childhood was not my own but my mother's: I remember seeing her, morning after morning, at a window nook in our living room with a steaming cup of coffee and an open Bible. She made a daily commitment to spend time with the Lord before her time went anywhere else.

Perhaps you long for a consistent, fruitful Bible reading discipline. Your reading habit may be sporadic or non-existent. It may be shallow or a slog. You may be frustrated at how hard the Bible is to understand sometimes. 

My goal in this article is to set you up with some simple Bible study habits that can help you begin or deepen your daily discipline of Bible reading. Here’s what I’m going to cover:

1. A quick biblical precedent for daily Bible reading

2. Three approaches to choose from

3. Some tips for forming and sticking to your habits

Why study? Why daily?

It may surprise you to know that the Bible does not explicitly command us to read the Bible every day. It doesn’t even explicitly command us to read it all. However, the implicit command is well established: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18a).

The simplest answer is this: do what works. The best plan is the plan that actually gets you in the Word of God.

If we are commanded to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, both of which are revealed in the Scriptures (Luke 24:26–27), then we must study the Scriptures diligently. The kind of life we are commanded to live depends on the renewal of our minds (Rom 12:1–2), which happens through Spirit-empowered study and understanding of Scripture. To try and live as a Christian without reading your Bible is like trying to live as a bodybuilder without ever lifting weights. 

But why daily?

Well, the Bible commends it: 

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night. 
(Psalm 1:1–2, emphasis mine)

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I hope in your words.
My eyes are awake before the watches of the night,
that I may meditate on your promise.
(Psalm 119:147–148, emphases mine)

If you are going to get your cues for Bible reading from the Bible itself—and you should—then you would read it daily and diligently. And there is a practical reason for doing this: it sets the course for your day and helps you interpret your day. To set your mind on the Word in the morning, before you set your mind on anything else, helps you to approach everything you do that day as an act of worship to God. This is why a daily habit of Bible reading is crucial. 

Now, how do you actually develop a Bible study habit? 

How to Develop and Deepen Your Study

The simplest answer is this: do what works. The best plan is the plan that actually gets you in the Word of God. Below I will outline three different approaches—reading, interacting, interpreting—with some recommended resources to help you in each one. 

Reading

If you’ve never read through the whole Bible, or if the Bible feels like a random collection of books that make little sense to you, then start here. Your goal at this level is to simply read through the text. 

I recommend you read through the Bible cover to cover in a year or two. To read it in one year takes about ten minutes/day; to read it in two years, five minutes/day. 

I also suggest you read with a study Bible, like the ESV Study Bible or the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (directed by the faithful and incredibly knowledgeable D. A. Carson). A good study Bible provides a one-paragraph summary of each book as well as an overview on the book's purpose, theme, historical setting, and how it fits with the whole story of the Bible. It also provides commentary on difficult passages.

You might also pair your daily Bible reading with a book like this, which offers a paragraph-long devotional thought for each chapter of the Bible. 

Finally, I commend to you BibleProject. They provide impressive and easy-to-understand, illustrated summaries of every book, as well as videos on major themes and genres of Scripture. They also have a podcast and Bible reading plans and tools you may find useful. 

One more piece of advice: just keep going. Especially on your first time through the Bible, a lot won’t make sense. Some of it will even disturb you. But the more you read the Bible, the more you begin to understand it. So just keep moving, and trust that the more you read, the more you’ll get out of it. 

Interacting

If you’ve read through the Bible before but want to go a level deeper, start here. Your goal at this level is to begin interacting with the text, not just reading it. 

I would follow one of two tracks:

• Do a BibleProject reading plan while watching/listening to its accompanying material. 

• Do a two-year Bible reading plan that incorporates some simple journaling and reflection. 

The first track is a middle ground between a Beginner and Intermediate approach. It will reinforce what you would have covered in the Beginner approach while offering some commentary to take you one level deeper. Each day you spend in the Word, write down just one thing you learned from the reading or BibleProject’s accompanying material. 

The second track begins to work your Bible study muscles, particularly the muscles of observation (“what do I see?”), interpretation (“what does it mean?”), and application (“how should I respond to it?”). Here are a few sets of questions you could ask of your Bible reading every day that will help you get more out of your reading by way of understanding and application. There are more thorough ways of moving through these categories, but at this level of your Bible reading, this is sufficient.  

• Observation: What do I notice about this passage? (Here, you are being broad and impressionistic, noting the main thing(s) that stick out to you, such as strong dialogue, a stern warning, repeated words, etc.) For example, in Psalm 1, you might say, “I notice that this is about two kinds of people: the wicked and the righteous. One loves bad counsel, and one loves God’s Word.”

• Interpretation: What does this passage teach me about God and especially about Jesus and his saving grace? What does this passage teach me about myself and/or others, especially about the need for the gospel?

• Application: What change does this passage seem to demand of me? How does it command my belief, emotions, and/or behavior? 

Ideally, you jot your answers in a journal, even if just in bullet-point form. 

Again, your goal at this level is to begin interacting with the text, not just reading it.

Interpreting

If you’ve read through the Bible several times and have a clear sense of the forest but now want to get to know the trees, start here. Your goal at this level is to properly interpret and apply a literary unit of the Bible. 

“Woah—literary unit? What’s that?” I’m glad you asked. The Bible is a collection of stories, poems/sayings, and letters. Each of those genres has different ways of working, but each one is made up of units. For example, the story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac is a unit, and that’s within a larger unit of the story of Abraham and Sarah struggling to have children even though God promised they would, and that is in the larger unit of the book of Genesis about the generations that came from Adam as a means of fulfilling God’s design for the human race to be fruitful and multiply. 

The main idea is this: deep Bible study is all about relating the parts to the whole—knowing what one sentence has to do with another, one line of poetry with the one before it, the movements of a story with the whole of the story, etc. Inductive Bible Study investigates the connections between those parts. 

So how do you do Inductive Bible Study? To be frank, this will take some work, but it’s worth it. Let me suggest two ideas:

1. Read some helpful articles, like this, this, this, or this. 

2. Read this book (my top choice), this book, or this book. Any of these would be greatly helpful in understanding the nature of the Bible, its genres, and how to interpret accordingly. 

My recommendation is to use your Bible study time to read these articles and/or one of these books. You might also download the free version of Logos Bible Software, which will help you quickly do basic Bible study functions, like look up cross-references or compare translations. 

Some Tips on Habit Formation

The best book I’ve read on habit formation is Atomic Habits by James Clear. Here are three tips from his book that can help you lock in your Bible reading habit: 

• Habit Stacking
  My favorite idea from Clear’s book is what he calls “habit stacking,” which is when you link a new habit to a pre-existing habit. For example, I have coffee every morning. No one has to tell me to do it. I don’t have to drag my feet to do it. The first thing I want when I wake up in the morning is coffee. I practically need it. That makes it a prime habit to undergird habit stacking. So, at the beginning of the year, when my wife and I wanted to get more regular about our morning Bible reading, we made a rule for ourselves: we only get to sip our coffee if we’re sitting down to read our Bible. (This also employs another common rule of habit formation, which is to reward yourself. Coffee was our reward for sitting down to read.)

• Environmental Support
  Another great piece of advice from Clear’s book is to set up your environment for success. Let’s say I want to work out in the morning. I’m much more likely to work out if I set out my exercise clothes near the door of my bedroom and have a protein shake waiting for me when I’m done. Or if I want to start eating healthier, I should empty my pantry of potato chips. Both of these are examples of placing tangible cues in your surroundings that promote your new desired habit.
  So for Bible reading, here’s what I suggest:

• Decide where you are going to read your Bible. Choose somewhere where you can focus and be comfortable. 

• Set your Bible (and potentially a notebook) in that place. For example, I set my Bible on the coffee table in front of the chair where I plan to sit and read. I leave it there all day—it’s “my spot.” 

• Eliminate other distractions. For example, don’t have your phone with you there, as it’s a portal away from your discipline. 

• Have a Plan
  Finally, one thing you need in order to form a habit is a plan. If standing in the way of you and your habit is the obligation to decide what you’re going to do, then you likely won’t do anything! Eliminate that obstruction by creating a plan and deciding to stick to it. Write your plan down. For example, right now, my plan is this: “Read the passages in my two-year Bible reading plan, then spend fifteen minutes in my 2 Timothy IBS.” Commit to follow the plan for at least six weeks, which is about how long it takes to form a habit. You can always iterate or adjust once your habit is formed.

So there you have it: the biblical precedent for daily Bible reading, three approaches depending on your familiarity with the Scriptures, and some tips for forming and sticking to your habit. May God bless you in your efforts to be in his Word, and remember that great grace awaits you in God’s Word. Spiritual disciplines and habits are simply human efforts to avail ourselves of God’s powerful, transforming grace.