The CS Lewis Institute published a sermon by Charles Spurgeon about getting the most out of reading one’s Bible. It’s directed to Christian ministers but can apply to any Christian.
Main point: “They [Christian ministers] must read much if they are to be profitable to others as preachers.”
More about it:
- Read to learn: “…he will be most fresh and original in his own thoughts who most diligently cultivates his mind by studying and pondering the thoughts of other minds.”
- Read to repeat: “He who never quotes, will never be quoted, and he who does not read is not very likely to be read.”
- Read and depend: “…to understand the word is not enough. We also need that He makes us to feel its power.”
- Read and meditate: “Reading is the gathering together of our food, but meditation is the chewing of the cud, the digesting, and the assimilating of the truth of God!”
- Read and apply: “…endeavor in reading a page of the Scriptures, always to see how much it belongs to you…seek for the application of precepts.”
- Read and practice: “The worldling’s Bible is the Christian. He never reads the book, but he reads the disciple of Christ and he judges the Christian religion by the lives of its professors! The world will learn better and will more likely be brought to know Christ when the lives of Christians are better, and when the Bible of the Christian life shall be more in accordance with the Bible of Christian doctrine!”
- Read and pray: “…we should pray over every passage in order that we may be enabled to get out of it what God would impart to us.”
- Read and test: “…the Christian should keep God’s Word near at hand and treasured in the soul, to test thereby all that he hears.”
- Read and repeat: “When you read a passage of Scripture and have any enjoyment therein, go to your sick neighbor [or anyone else, for that matter] and tell what God has said to you.”
Takeaway: Others can reveal truth: “…if He pleases to reveal a truth of God to another man, and I will not read that truth as it has been recorded by that other man, I have neglected the teaching of the Spirit of God.”