It sucks to read the bible out of religious discipline, rather than a passion to get to know and grow someone.

It sucks to schedule a regular ‘prayer-time’, rather than living out a dialogue with your best Friend.

For me, reading the bible stopped becoming a religious discipline when I realized that Jesus actually God Himself in the flesh. Jesus perfectly represented the Father (John 14:9, Hebrews 1:1-3, Col 1:15, 1 Tim 3:16). In other words, I realized that if I wanted to understand how God would act, speak, and treat people, I could see it in the person of Jesus. I realized that God’s ways were no longer mysterious! 

This made me excited to read the Gopsels, I could actually see the way God treated His disciples, sinners, those who legitimately wanted to follow Him, and people who valued outward appearances over inward change. I could actually get to know His character, not just hear the same old ‘sunday school’ story of Jesus. 

And then I got excited about reading the Epistles when I first read Eph 1:3, “[He] has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”

I thought, “Shoot… I have everything?? I have everything but I don’t even know what ‘everything’ entails! I need to keep reading.” And that’s when I started going through the other letters, I actually wanted to know what was part of my inheritance as a son.

I got excited about reading the Old Testament when I realized that the old was a type and shadow of Christ. Everything in the Old was a foreshadowing of Christ. So I began to go through the Old Testament to find demonstrations of Jesus. I found Jesus as a Rock giving life to the Israelites, Him becoming the curse and put on a tree that gave healing to those bitten by snakes, the Stone that defeated the Goliath opposing God’s people, etc etc. 

I have never been bored reading the bible because I don’t see it as ‘reading the bible’, I see it as ‘discovering who Jesus is and who I’ve become because of Him’. 

When you live out of discipline you are admired. When you live out of passion, you are contagious.

Christianity was never supposed to be known for its disciplines, it was supposed to be known for its passions. - Bill Johnson