Finding Ways to Engage with the Bible

In this episode, CCEF faculty discuss the common struggle of engaging with Scripture, especially during difficult seasons. They consider God's patience and gracious intent for our Scripture reading, what it means to engage with the Word even when we don't hunger for it, and creative ways to engage with Scripture, such as through art or memorization. The conversation emphasizes the long-term nature of engaging with the Bible and the significance of community in fostering a deeper connection with God's Word.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guests
1:41 God's Goal for Our Bible Reading
9:33 Navigating Engaging Scripture in Hard Seasons
16:09 Creative Approaches to Engaging with Scripture
21:38 The Role of Community in Engaging with Scripture
24:24 The Long-Term Relationship with Scripture

Hi, my name is Alasdair Groves. This is Where Life & Scripture Meet, a podcast of CCEF where we seek to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church.

Before the rest of our conversation, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our core classes that we offer at CCEF. It’s called Helping Relationships, and I think what is so powerful about this class is it looks to Scripture to answer the fundamental question, how do you talk to another person? All of counseling is about an exchange of words and it’s about how do you enter into someone else’s life, how do you walk alongside, what does it mean to be a blessing to another person in a depth of relationship that would focus you on the heart, on the questions of what’s really driving my life and how do I understand the sufferings around me? What is the Lord up to? So learning how to have the fundamental basic conversations that are the stuff of all counseling is at the heart of our course, Helping Relationships. And I mention that because prices will go up on May 5. So if you register for that course between now and May 5, you’ll have the opportunity to get a discount. But you can register after the 5th all the way through May 19. So if you are interested in checking that out, more information, registering for that, you can find the link at ccef.org/school or you can go and look in the show notes, which will have that link there as well.

Today I am joined by my friends Darby and Gunner. Darby, how are you this afternoon?

Enjoying the afternoon. It’s been a lovely day.

Glad to hear it. Gunner, what about you?

Yeah, I'm really glad to be here.

Well, a question today is something that's a pretty common experience that we've all certainly run into personally and in our counseling and friendships, which is the experience of not really wanting to read Scripture, not feeling especially motivated to get into the Word. And my question is, what do you do in a season like that? What do you do when you're feeling that lack of motivation? What have you guys learned in life and your own experience and counseling about this annoyingly common experience in human life?

When I first start thinking about this question, Alasdair, I think the thing that first comes to mind for me is honestly just the Lord's loyal love that despite how many times I've had that experience of feeling like my time in the Word is not what I wish it was or I wish I was responding better to it or getting more out of it or all the different thoughts that I can have, that the Lord has been faithful to me, patient to me, loyal to me to just continue teaching me, keep walking with me, keep showing me things through mentors or others and it just makes me really grateful because when I hear the question that relates to my experience, I just am so thankful for the Lord being consistent above that, if that makes sense.

I love how you're capturing that Gunner, because it really gets to, very quickly, the Lord doesn't care about your Bible reading as much as he cares about you. And I think that's just something we all need to be reminded of because we're never going to keep the standard that we think we should have. But that doesn't change the Lord's affection for us or his desire to spend time with us. So I just thought it's a really helpful way to think about it.

And his primary goal in us reading is not, he doesn't need us to rack up a certain number of minutes per day or per year that, you know, we're great. Now look how well my people are doing. He does it because he loves us, because he wants us to know him and to engage him. That's why we're called to read Scripture. That's what he wants from his Word in our lives.

Alasdair, I've heard you talk a little bit before about kind of the framework with which we approach time in God's Word and consistency in time in God's Word, and could you share a little bit about that here?

Yeah, sure. Well, basically my understanding is I'm just a total failure if I'm not in the Word every single day no matter what. No, I didn't have much of a significant devotional life for most of my growing up. I knew I was supposed to. My parents were good about encouraging it and I'd go through these brief stretches. I'd go for a youth retreat or something and I'd read my Bible, you know, four straight days in a row when I'd get back. But then it would be 6 am and I was in high school.

And so it really wasn't until I got to college that I started really regularly digging into Scripture, which had an enormous amount to do with the guy who was mentoring me and just the passion with which he approached Scripture and the way that he, yeah, it's just, this was a significant thing for him. And I was like, oh yeah, I want that, I want to be like that. But I remember, you know, still being a significant struggle in those early years in college to be sort of regular and disciplined and faithful in it. And I remember coming to the realization that at least for me, the dominant paradigm, to finally get back to your question, Gunner, the dominant paradigm was one of guilt and obligation. I am supposed to do this. I'm supposed to accomplish this spiritual activity. So if I don't, then I've done something bad about which I should feel guilty. So if I miss a day of reading Scripture, the instinctive response I would have would be, I did a bad thing, and either like I need to doubly try harder tomorrow or I need to make up for it or whatever. And I realized, sometime during my sophomore year, you know, I'd rather my reaction were actually to be hungry. If I missed a meal, I wouldn't feel guilty. I'd feel hungry. and I wouldn't be sitting there at four in the afternoon after missing lunch being like, man, I really should have had lunch, I'm such a lousy person. I'd be like, I could get a snack and that would be really helpful right now. And I want that to be the paradigm from which I approach Scripture. Not in the sense of there is no discipline to it, not that you only ever read when you feel like it. I mean, please read when you feel like it, but don't only read when you feel like it or you will not read nearly as often as would be good, just as you don't always eat only when you feel like it. There's something about the rhythmic-ness and the constantness of it that's good and important and not just a matter of, what am I into? But it was really helpful for me to realize how much I was operating out of a checkbox mentality when in fact the reality is, it's a nourishing-my-soul issue and I want to be hungry for it if I miss it. I want to be hungry for it when I don't miss it.

I think that's a great metaphor too, like to extend it is. Sometimes we don't miss it because we're not hungry because we're eating a lot of junk food. We're not eating what God puts in front of us as his Word. And there's so many ways that we can fill with other things. We fail to even notice that we're hungry.

Yeah, I was taking a road trip with my wife recently and it was about a 10-hour drive and I hadn't had much to eat. And so early in the afternoon, we stopped to get gas. And I knew that we had a dinner at this steak place later that evening because my son had just become a server there. So we wanted to go to his restaurant and experience him serving us. And we stopped off at this gas station and because I just hadn't eaten anything, I thought, well, I'll just get something to drink. And it was pretty cold outside, so I wanted a hot chocolate. And so I went to get a hot chocolate, because I don't really drink coffee. And the only, the smallest size they had was a 20 ounce. And so I just grabbed the 20 ounce and I start drinking this like Hershey rich hot chocolate. And I start to realize as I'm finishing up, which is like an hour, hour and a half later, it's so big, that I've really made a poor decision here because I have this steak waiting, but I filled myself up. And I think that's just an illustration for me that captures what you're saying Darby, that there are places where my appetite can be consumed by other things, even not sinful things, even good gifts from the Lord, but that actually steal away from my appetite for the Word. And it's good for me to step back and also reflect on if that's a contributing factor.

I was just gonna say, I'm really glad we're talking about Scripture and getting into Scripture today, Gunner, but I think this is an important intervention moment that Darby and I are gonna have with you about your lack of love for coffee. I think that's actually the important thing we need to talk. 

Sorry, I'm with him. I cannot stand the taste of coffee.

I know this about you Darby.

We need Esther to come in and be on Alasdair's side. Two on two.

Redeem, oh Lord. No, Darby, go ahead.

I just think there's something to also what you're saying, Alasdair, is wanting it to be something that we delight in versus a duty. And I think about even just raising my children, as they're growing and I'm launching them into adulthood, I don't want them to call me because they feel obligated, like I have to call my mom, I haven't talked to her in a week, I need to call my mom. I want them to want to call me and share their life with me. And I think that's the shift that you're saying is this is something I should do versus something I delight in doing.

I get to. Yeah. What have you guys found? I mean, Darby, you were making a comment earlier about, yeah, people who have been through especially hard seasons and often how that can impact this experience. We are here at CCEF because we have walked through especially hard times with people. Our goal is to get into the darkest situations with people and say, How, oh Lord, will you help? What do you find in those particular kinds of deep-end-of-the-spectrum, real incredible hardships, incredible struggles? How does that shape the way people experience Scripture, the hardness of reading Scripture? What kinds of things have you found be helpful to people in those especially hard moments? Any thoughts about that aspect of things?

Yeah, when I'm with people who are in a season of what I would call deep distress or anguish, I usually find them in one of two spiritual places that are unhelpful to them. And the first is that they have gone through a season of suffering and in the midst of suffering, they've clung to the Lord, they've read every passage. Oftentimes they'll bring me journal upon journal of all the ways that they've been engaging with the Lord and they feel that nothing in their circumstances has changed. And so they feel like, Why hasn't God helped me? He must be displeased with me, or I feel abandoned by him. And so they're coming to me in a season of, I don't know how to engage; I've done everything I know how to do and I'm not feeling cared for by the Lord in the midst of this.

Or it's the exact opposite of, I just feel so much guilt and shame or confusion that I'm not willing to engage with him at all. And so it's not that I've poured myself out and I'm trying to do it and not seeing results. It's that my situation doesn't map onto, I can't figure out how to connect with Scripture that speaks to where I'm suffering in this deep way. I don't know where to be in reading Scripture in a way that it feels like it's impacting me. It's too painful actually to sometimes read Scripture because it doesn't feel like it's applying to me or my situation. So I guess one sense is saying, God could do something and he hasn't. Or the other situation is God doesn't feel powerful enough and so I'm withdrawing from him.

Darby, what have you learned are helpful responses in those situations and what kind of counsel do you give to people in either of those places?

One I think is just to open the Psalms and to show them other people in extreme distress have felt similarly. And our goal then is to talk to the Lord about how they're doing with him, to kind of bring their relationship back into view, give them words to talk about what that experience is like, or even just asking him to help them feel connected to Scripture. And oftentimes it takes directing them to certain passages that I know are going to be relevant, that they're going to feel heard and known. But the goal is instead of having that conversation within their own hearts or with me is to actually just start having it with the Lord: “I'm not wanting to talk to you. When I open your Word, it's not feeling like it's doing anything.” Or “Give me a desire to be with you or to trust you.” So it's more addressing the relational aspect and asking him for help when they're feeling withdrawn.

It reminds me of a really difficult season I went through several years ago where I just felt completely spiritually, emotionally, relationally numb and was thoroughly burned out in life and ministry. And I remember right before I entered a season where I had some time off, I, ironically to me, got COVID. And the way that I learned I had COVID was I had dropped my son off at a basketball game for warmups. I was going to come back for the game to start, and I drove down the road to grab dinner at this little taco truck and I ordered these pretty spicy tacos. And I went to the stand to get my tacos and I took one bite and there was no taste at all. I could actually feel the heat from the spice, but I could not taste anything. And it was a pretty striking experience. And from then on, I went through a long period of time where I didn't have almost any taste at all and even now have a lot less than I used to. But during that season, God really gave me this living analogy for what I needed spiritually, which was despite the fact that I didn't have these physical taste buds operating the way I wanted to, I still needed food. And I would eat and I would actually, my family would consistently ask me, can you taste that? And I would say, my brain knows what it is because of the texture and because of me seeing it, but no, I can't taste it. But I still knew that it was important for me and good for me, and I knew what it was, and I knew what was in it. And I was so thankful as that time went on because I really needed to seek the Lord in a way that didn't result often in me feeling differently. But I knew that it was so important, and that being nourished by God's Word was so important and that it was going to have an effect even if it was invisible and unfelt to me during that season. And I really believe that that physical analogy that God gave me was instrumental for helping my faith continue and hold onto something that I could experience every single day as I chose to eat physically despite the fact that I couldn't taste it. And he was so merciful to meet me during that time and to continue through different ways to show me, “Stay in my Word, continue to come to me, continue to receive from me.”

I think that just highlights food doesn't need to taste good to do something good for you. It's the same thing, our feelingsm going to Scripture and not feeling, maybe I didn't feel close to the Lord in that quiet time or I didn't feel like I got anything out of it. God's Word’s effectiveness isn't based upon how we feel about it, right? It is so powerful that just ingesting it, we know that it's going to do something over time that is good for us.

Yeah. And I think about a particular situation where there was a woman I was working with in counseling and she'd been through some very, very severe things. She actually started to see me after being released from a multi-week stay in intensive care in a hospital, essentially as a result of depression and some other stuff in her life. Pretty rough spot to be coming into counseling. And there were lot of complexities for her even wrapped up with how she was experiencing the Bible and how fears and some pretty kind of whacked out stuff that had happened in her life and in her thinking and in some relationships had made it pretty complicated to get to it. So there's just a lot of, there were a lot of very reasonable hurdles in between her and just having a good access to Scripture as something helpful and life-giving and so on. And I think about any number of conversations we had, but probably two things that were especially helpful in that particular situation that seem worth mentioning. Number one, especially in the early days, rather than having her typically sort of sit down and read Scripture and pray as a response and so forth, I would ask her to illustrate some of her favorite Bible stories or Bible pictures or to insert herself into it. She had some significant artistic talent and enjoyed art, art was a happy place for her. If you gave me that assignment, I'm in trouble. But for her, this actually was a workable possibility. You could see what it was that she was drawing. And it was interesting to just watch her draw herself into the story of Scripture, draw herself into images of what the Lord is up to in various different passages. I found that to be an interesting, just there may be ways that someone in an especially difficult place could get access to an engagement with Scripture that's a little bit outside the norm and that even, yeah, if someone is a drawer, if someone is a writer, there could be some sort of fairly obvious connections there.

The other thing is, and this was a bit later in our work, where she's saying, I really want to get back to engaging Scripture in a regular way in my life as a discipline, but I don't know what to do with it. And it is still scary to me in some significant places. And I'm not quite sure how, and like, where do I even start and how do I read? And I think for a lot of people, especially if Scripture has been something that has either been wielded against you in a significant way with a wrong interpretation that was used to harm you rather than to bless you and lead you toward the Lord, or also just if you feel utterly distant from it, and reading the genealogies is not necessarily the key to spiritual vitality boot up. And so I just try to give her two questions. And number one was, okay, in any passage, you can always ask, Who is God in light of this passage? What do we learn about him? What he likes, what he is like, what is he doing? Just anything we can say about what God is like from this passage can be a helpful question to ask yourself as you're engaging. And then the second question being, And in light of that, what is the implication for me? And I've found those to be simple, helpful ways of engaging that can sometimes help you break past a sense of like, this passage is boring or this passage feels weird and convoluted, or this passage feels culturally distant and I don't know why I'm even bothering, and how does this story from a thousand, you know, two thousand years ago make a difference to my daily life? So those have been probably two things I've found helpful, particularly in places when what people have been through is difficult. The second being, you know, more so something I've given when people have voiced some level of, I do want to get back into this, I do want to do something with Scripture.

I think that's, you're actually introducing a really complex aspect of this, and that's when Scripture has been used to harm you, or it's been misused. That creates a whole different set of concerns, actually, when I've worked with people where Scripture's, like you said, been weaponized, and that often just takes some real intentional ways of getting into Scripture, where people can see God's heart is for them. And so, even like the questions you're asking, yeah, who is God in this? They might not be able to see that accurately. So another question I might propose if that's your story is as I read this passage, what questions do I have? And again, it's being honest about what's causing to happen internally if Scripture has been used to harm. I think it's worth talking about because it does happen more than I think we realize. But it does, in my mind, at least it raises a whole different set of concerns for someone, where actually opening Scripture feels dangerous or injurious versus engaging with it just feels hard and dry. And so, yeah, I think it's even a good self-diagnostic question is, Why am I not feasting on Scripture daily? There's probably a variety of reasons for us.

And you're both highlighting a dynamic where each of you are helping someone or multiple people think through their engagement with Scripture, and I think that highlights something important that I've heard you share about before Darby, which is that we really can learn so much about how to engage with Scripture and the feast of it, the discipline of it, how to continue doing it when times are hard, from other people, from mature, loving believers who can help us see the path. My father-in-law used to say that Christianity is more caught than taught. And he meant really the Christian life, that we learn to live it by watching, by rubbing shoulders with others, by asking those hard questions or sharing something we're struggling with, or even in a setting where we're not sharing what we're struggling with, just things that other people are saying or illustrating for us. We learned so much from that. And one of the best things I learned along those lines was a mentor I once had for a short time who I had tremendous respect for had served overseas in some very difficult contexts and had been very consistent there, a very disciplined man, and I was sharing with him during a really busy overwhelming time in my life that sometimes I felt like I might have these ten minutes in the morning, and one thing had led to another and squeezed me down to a short amount of time; I needed to get out the door and asking myself, How do I spend these ten minutes? And it felt like checking my email and doing a couple little things was the only thing I could really do because if I tried to read my Bible or spend time with the Lord, it just wasn't enough. It wouldn't be encouraging. I was too distracted. And he just said, Gunner, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. And that's always stuck with me. And I've realized on many occasions that I might have a short amount of time, I might not have gotten much sleep, I might not be feeling good at all about where I'm at, I might not be sure this morning where to turn to in Scripture if I'm not in the middle of a plan, but that coming to the Lord and allowing him to feed me, nourish me, and meet me through his Word is significant no matter when it takes place or how good it feels to me in the moment.

I remember that season too, having young children. It was just really hard just being a nursing young mother and thinking, I have a child I can never put down. I just had one child that just held day and night. And I remember some woman told me, well, she just put a book on next to her on a music stand. Again, it was just being in community, problem-solving, sharing, hearing something else. And she just said, Darby, if you can read two or three sentences a day, it'll make all the difference in the world. And it just, again, it really changed how . . . I knew what I needed, I just didn't know how to get to what I needed. And someone just gave me some basic problem-solving skills and it was just super sweet.

Yeah, I think for me too, it's been really helpful to push away from the instinctive goal of, I need to feel a certain way about this, that the point of having a quiet time is me feeling this wonderful sense of connection to the Lord. The goal—I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of those lovely times when you do have that moment where your heart just sort of opens up, where you feel comfort or you feel conviction or you feel a flash of insight and you make an exciting connection you've never seen before—I mean, those are lovely and I always want that, and I want that for all of you. But the goal of reading the Bible is not to feel something. It's not that you read so that you can have a particular emotional experience. The goal is that you would be in relationship with the Lord and you know Him better. The goal is that your heart would be nourished. Again, as you said, Gunner, in the COVID analogy, whether you taste it and feel it or not. And so I think releasing that sense of, I must have a certain kind of response or it hasn't succeeded and it hasn't been worth it or it didn't accomplish the thing I was supposed to come away with. Yeah, just the acceptance of, yeah, some days will be more, some days will be less, there's ups and downs, and that's appropriate, that's okay; we don't have to worry about that.

And at the same time, know you would say, Alasdair, and we would all say that there is this long-term cultivation of the affections that the Lord does through this, where over time there's that developing hope and trust and fear and gratitude and worship and intimacy that develops, but it's always going to have those ups and downs because of the human experience and because of us still living with indwelling sin, still living in a world that has thorns and thistles and things that cut us and harm us and all of those things. And so there's this long-term trajectory of what I know the Lord is doing in my heart through that time and through those many times. And at the same time, I don't measure my standing with him based on that day's experience, and I'm so grateful for that.

I think a great analogy for that is probably a poor one. But if you think about a marriage relationship, right, it's really about the longer term quality of the relationship. You know, two weeks ago, my husband was sick and we were just getting through and tasking and the quality of our relationship was just different. Ten years ago when I had small children, I'm homeschooling and I'm working, there were just different seasons. But if I look over the quality of my husband's faithful commitment and the quality of our intimacy, how that's changed and been consistent over 25 years. But if I were to look at any one week or any one season, it might look very different. And I think that's part of what we're speaking to is, it's just that reinvesting, choosing to reinvest and to reinvest, and to know what God says about his Word, that it’s living and it's active, it's not going to come back empty. So I'm just going to keep coming back. And over sometimes decades, that's where we're actually going to see how it's transformed and grown me. It's not going to be in a week or a month, six months or even a year. It's going to be measured in years. And I think that if we think about the quality of our own relationships, I think it's just really helpful. Or we all had a friend who was just such a bosom and close friend. We haven't talked to them in years for one reason or another. And then we get that one day where we can spend an hour with them on the phone. We feel instantly reconnected. And so I just think it's just, even when we think about how our relationships change due to the constraints of our time or our limitations. But what we're going for is that quality of that relationship over time. I think it's just a helpful way for myself to think about it.

I also think there's something to be said for just when in doubt, and I guess I'm hearkening back to our conversation about the particularly hard-end-of-life spectrum when you're especially wrestling. When in doubt, go to the Psalms. The Psalms are the most direct place where you have that picture of, this is what it looks like to talk to the Lord. And they are so full of people speaking to the Lord from hard places. And for several years I was having a devotional time in the morning. And then I just said, I'm going to read through the Psalms this year, and I'm going read a verse at a time, or if I have 60 seconds in between two things, I might just pull out Scripture and read a few verses of a psalm. I'm just going through during the course of my day, I'm not trying to block out enough time to even read a single psalm in its entirety, I’m just going to try to touch base with the Psalms a lot over the course of the year. And I don't think in any of the three years I did, I don’t think I ever got through the whole book of Psalms in that way over the course of a year. And that was fine and I’ve had to recalibrate expectations; I'm actually not even trying to get through the whole book here. But it was helpful. It was good to have that even just constant touch point sense with people who were speaking to the Lord. And there's just something about your own instinctive way of relating to the Lord that's going to get shaped if you're constantly tasting, here's how others speak. So if you're especially having trouble with reading Scripture, wanting to read Scripture, feeling distant from the Lord, especially if you're in a hard season, you could do worse than to grab the Psalms and even to let them happen in very bite-sized components. Yeah, there can be a lot to the depressuring of, I need to carve out time to read the Bible verses, even just, yeah, I have 15 seconds, it's here on my phone and the app's already open and I just read the next verse. There's something about that that was actually really helpful to me in that season. Maybe we'll kick back into that this year. It's March, it’s not too late in the year to start saying like, I'm gonna do that this year.

Yeah, the other micro-way to do that is actually, and I've asked this of the Lord, Would you bring Scripture to my mind? And so even like for me, it's often just Psalm 23. That's just a little tiny chunk that I have memorized and that's not me sitting down. I can just recall a verse of that. Like, what does it mean that the Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want? We don't actually have to have a Bible open. Sometimes we just, if there's one little verse that we have memorized or a couple little things that we hop to, if we're just asking the Lord to have those things come up in our minds, we can meditate on those things as well. And I've just found that to be really sweet. Sometimes it's because I have a little chunk memorized, sometimes it's because I have some beautiful worship music on and there's a verse in there that's alluded to. And I just go away with that verse and I think I'm just going to spend some time thinking about that verse. I would encourage people to think, ask the Lord to surprise you by asking him to bring his Word to you. I just have seen that with so many people that I talk to at my church. Women will say, yeah, he brought this verse to me and then I was talking to a friend and she brought it up and can you believe we sang that song on Sunday? It's just so comforting that in a season where I feel like I'm not wanting to engage the Lord, he's surrounding me with his Word. It's just giving me eyes to see his pursuit of me. And I just think that's another natural way out of this because he is so faithful and he wants to remind us of who he is.

Darby, I can't think of a better landing point for us than that. Amen. Well said, sister. And thank you guys for the conversation and thanks to all listening in for taking the time with us today.