How to read the Bible once you've already *truly* read the Bible

I've read the Bible cover-to-cover seven times. It averaged out to be over a 21 year period, so about once every three years I did a dedicated, complete reading. Though some of those readings were very fast, like once I read the Bible complete in 66 days. I was shooting for two months. Other times it took me a meandering 18 months or so. Seven times complete though, which was my overall goal.

Of course in-between the complete readings I read individual books and did all the other types of Bible reading one does. That's why I call the complete readings *dedicated* readings. Intentional cover-to-cover, with a goal.

I know some people read the Bible complete every year, or twice a year (or say they do), but if I did that it would be the only book I ever read. I also believe reading the Bible is like planting and growing crops. The metaphor, or analogy is big. One part of the analogy is I believe it is necessary to leave a field fallow for a season, or a year or so before planting it again. This is because our level of being (think understanding in general) has to develop alongside the complete Bible readings, otherwise we begin to keep pouring water into a glass that can only hold so much water and we get diminishing returns in terms of our understanding. The glass has to grow. It has to increase in size, so as to be able to hold more understanding. That is our level of being. So getting away from the complete readings and reading other things, and living life, is necessary. Then we can go back to the word of God and be able to get more understanding from it. The field that was depleted of its nutrients in its soil has, through some seasons of fallowness, regained what it had lost and is now ready to produce more growth.

With that being said, one thing that I experience having read the Bible as much as I have is the feeling of going over old ground. When each book and each part of each book becomes familiar to you it presents a problem.

One solution to that problem is just to read it. Take it in. Like you did at first. Allow it to work on you and in you. See it as living language that has effect in you without you necessarily being able to see or experience that effect in real time. The faith of the farmer that the seeds will grow in time and result in a harvest.

I think some people take another approach. They *drill down* into the language. They get atomistic with the text. They major on the different parts while minoring on the whole. Academic types do this. I think it's a shallow approach. A sterile approach. I also think it veils a skeptical orientation to the word of God overall.

Something I've been thinking about recently along all these lines is the necessity to go in the other direction. Instead of drilling down into the parts of the Bible, strive to see everything in the word of God from a high altitude. Meaning: striving to see the obvious that is so easy to miss. Or to forget.

For instance it's easy to forget and to not see that there are two Kingdoms, the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God; and between them there is no neutral ground. You're either in the one or you're in the other. And when reading the Bible you're either encountering the one or you're encountering the other. They both reside within the larger circle of God's sovereignty, yet in the theatre of redemption where we are all going through our lives it is one or the other. There is of course overlap between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, but that is in terms of conflict. Spiritual war. This is something you have to get up above the text of the Bible somewhere; get some altitude to be able to look down at a larger swath of the landscape to see. Drilling down into the parts of the Bible doesn't lend itself to such vision.

So my thought in writing this post was: if you have read the Bible many times and kind of feel like it is going over old ground now, there is still a way to read it to see obvious things we can miss and forget. Most people choose to drill down, yet there is also the direction of going up in elevation and getting the larger view which reveals the obvious things. Seeing whole parts of the forest rather than having our nose to the bark of single trees.

Of course seeing the parts in relation to the whole is a definition of understanding in itself. Systematic theology is supreme, when we have the Bible in us, in giving us that. Reformed Theology being the gold standard. We strive for that, Genesis through Revelation. I'm referring to seeing from a higher level what is going on in larger parts of the word of God itself, as we read it complete once again.