Two Bible Study Ideas to Encourage Delight in God’s Word

Many of us who read the Bible daily look for various ways to change things up. We want to keep our meditations on God’s Word fresh. It is a blessing to search online “Bible reading plans” and see all of the creative ways God’s people come up with to encourage Bible study.

We long to love God and desire His Word as we know we should. Our prayer is to be like the Psalmist in Psalm 119 who expressed: “With my whole heart I seek you” (v.10), “In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your ways” (v.14-16), “My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times” (v.20), and “Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors” (v.24). Sometimes the way we study Scripture can encourage or discourage our delight.

Two approaches to daily Bible study have encouraged this delight in us this year. One uses commentaries, another a Bible overview. I would like to share these with you as options for future meditation on Scripture to encourage your delight in God’s Word.

Daily Bible Reading with Pastoral Commentaries

One practice that I use frequently for this purpose is to choose a book of the Bible or extended passage and find a couple of pastoral commentaries that are theologically and devotionally rich to complement. I don’t do this continually, but I find that when I do, I have been greatly helped by it.

This year I chose to study the Sermon on the Mount extensively.  I wanted to study Christ’s sermon recorded in Matthew 5-7 slowly for my own benefit and because I hoped to teach through it later as well.

I decided to take four months out of this year to study the Sermon on the Mount. The commentaries I chose were Martyn Lloyd Jones’s Studies in the Sermon on the Mount and A.W. Pink’s  An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. I also read selections from Alexander MacLaren’s commentary on Matthew. This was a truly spiritually enriching study.

This year I also chose to study Psalm 119 daily for six weeks. Two pastoral commentaries were chosen: C.H. Spurgeon’s The Golden Alphabet (Updated, Annotated): An Exposition of Psalm 119 and Kenneth Waldock’s The Guidebook for the Overcomer: A Devotional Exposition of Psalm 119. It has been such a help to walk through this Psalm section by section with encouragement through practical devotional application.

Many pastoral commentaries are available digitally, and classic books are often free or very inexpensive as well. This might be a good way to become acquainted with gifted classic Christian authors that have greatly strengthened God’s people in previous generations.

40 Days Through the Bible

Have you ever attempted to read the entire Bible in a relatively brief period of time? We took up the challenge to do so in 40 days after hearing about how God used that in the lives of others. It proved a real blessing to us to have done this, but there were some days when the plan was brutal—you can probably guess which books were read during those difficult days! I confess I skimmed through genealogies and did not attempt to absorb every detail about building materials of the temple…

This approach is not for the faint of heart. It does take real discipline and determination to finish in forty days. But we were very grateful for the bird’s eye view of Scripture that is enjoyed by reading it in large portions like this.

Tim Berrey’s 40 Days Through The Bible: An Explorer’s Guide to the Book of Books was a wonderful companion. His book provided the reading schedule and well-written summary of the content and themes of each section.

We certainly have a wealth of biblically orthodox resources to draw from for Bible study. Unfortunately, many believers don’t take advantage of these. These helps and commentaries are no replacement for the Bible itself, but God can greatly use them to open up the Word for us by having a Bible teacher at hand during our regular reading.