Read to Remember

A friend of mine once told me about a student in seminary. This student said that he didn’t read the Bible regularly because he ‘already knew everything that was in it.’ I doubt that this man actually knew everything that was in the Bible – he probably didn’t have a photographic memory that allowed him to remember everything that he read. But even if he did, his failure to read indicates a deeper problem. He did not know the reason why we read the Bible.

Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” This is certainly true. While it is important to learn truth about God, it is much harder to remember the truth about God when we need it most. That is why daily Bible reading is about much more than ‘learning something about God.’ Primarily, it is about remembering what we need to know, so that we are prepared for the challenges of the day. In other words, we read to remember.

This is the solution to one of our most frequent mistakes in Bible reading. We often think that we need to learn something that is new and fascinating, something that will completely reshape the way that we think about God. We assume that if we haven’t learned something new, then our Bible reading wasn’t profitable. But while we sometimes enjoy these discoveries, Bible reading is more often…mundane. Most of the time, we are just reminded of things that we already knew. We are reminded that God is sovereign, that people are sinful, that God is a savior, and that we are called to walk by faith.

If you remember these and similar truths as you read your Bible, then your Bible reading is successful. These are the truths that will change your life, if you can just remember them when you need them. They are profound, but they are not always glitzy. But you don’t need what is glitzy. You need to brush the sand off the bedrock, so that can continue to build your life on remembered truth.