24 Ways To Benefit From Meditating on Scripture

How many times, on January 1, have you committed to reading the Bible through from cover to cover in a year? I have made that commitment too many times to count, and I have failed too many times to admit.

A couple of years ago though I used a one-year, chronological order, Bible reading plan. I appreciate this format because it weaves together both the prophetic books with the historical books. I learned a lot about the Old Testament just by following this plan. I also enjoyed reading the Psalms of David in conjunction with the historical narrative of his life.

This past year though, I did something very different.

​I read the Bible in chronological order of book authorship with this Bible Reading Itinerary. 

"Read with an earnest desire to understand it. Read with simple childlike faith and humility. Read with a spirit of obedience and self-application. Read Scripture every day." —​J.C. Ryle

Today we want to talk about 24 ways we benefit from meditating on Scripture, and I want to encourage you to think about reading through the Bible in chronological order of book authorship. If you haven't done that before, you are in for a real treat and we have the perfect Bible reading itinerary for you!

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A Tool for Chronological Order of Book Authorship Bible Reading

If you would like to read through God's Word in chronological order of book authorship, do what I am doing. I’m using this Bible Reading Itinerary. It begins with the book of Job. Did you know that Genesis is not the first book written in the Bible?

This lovely, 12-month, self-guided (or group-guided) Bible reading itinerary gently leads the reader on a journey through the Bible in chronological order of book authorship. If you haven't read God’s Word in this order, you're in for a real treat! The itinerary gives readers a unique perspective of the Bible. Make your plans to read through God’s Word by downloading this resource today! The itinerary is great for new believers and for those established in the faith as well.

DOWNLOAD YOUR BIBLE READING ITINERARY TODAY!

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24 Ways To Benefit From Meditating on Scripture

1. ​Prepare your heart before you read.  The heart is an instrument which needs to be put in tune.  "Prepare your hearts unto the Lord" I Samuel 7:3. Summon your thoughts together and purge out those unclean affections which indispose you to reading.
2. Remove the things that will hinder your profiting. These include: 1. The love of every sin. Let a physician prescribe whatever remedy, if the patient continues to take poison, it will hinder the virtue of the remedy. 2. Remove the thorns which choke the Word. These thorns our Savior expounds to be the cares of this world. (Matthew 13:22) What profit if while our eye is on the Bible our heart is on the world?
3. Come to the reading of Scripture with a humble heart. Acknowledge how unworthy you are that God should reveal Himself in His Word to you. God's secrets are with the humble.
4. Come to the reading of the Word with an honest heart. When men pick and choose in religion, they will do some things the Word enjoins them, but not others. These are unsound hearts that will not profit. "O", says the soul, "that the sword of the Spirit may pierce the rock of my heart."
5. Read the books of the Bible in order.
6. Read with seriousness. Some have light, feathery spirits. They run over the most weighty truths in haste. Read with a solemn, composed spirit. Seriousness is the Christian's ballast which keeps him from being overturned with vanity.
7. Read the Scriptures with reverence.
8. Give credence to the written Word.
9. Highly prize the Scripture you read. "The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver" Psalms 119:72. The Bible is the heart and soul of God. It is the library of the Holy Spirit.
10. Love what you read. Prizing relates to the judgment; love, to the affections. "Consider how I love Thy precepts" Psalm 119:159. We must not only love the comforts but also the reproofs of Scripture.
11. Labor to get a right understanding of what you read. The knowledge of the Scripture's sense is the first step to profit. Get what knowledge you can by comparing Scriptures, conferring with others and using the best commentaries. Without knowledge the Scripture is a sealed book; every line is too high for us; and if the Word shoot above our head, it can never hit our heart.
12. Pray that God will make you profit by the reading. Pray David's prayer, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law" Psalm 119:18.
13. Make use of Christ’s prophetical office. Christ must be our teacher. "Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures" Luke 24:45. Christ did not only open the Scriptures, but opened their understanding.
14. Let your thought dwell on the most material passages of Scripture. Though the whole texture of Scripture is excellent, yet some parts of it may have a greater emphasis and be more lively and pungent. "Mind the great things of the law" Hosea 8:12.
15. Take special notice of the examples of Scripture; make the examples living sermons to you. Observe the examples of God's judgments upon sinners. They have been hanged up in chains as a terror. Observe the examples of God's mercies to the saints.
16. Observe the perceptive part of the Word as well as the promissory. Such as cast their eye on the promise, with a neglect of the command, are not edified by Scripture, as they look more for comfort than for duty.
17. Compare yourself with what you read. See how the Scripture and your heart agree. See how your dial goes with this sun. Is the Word copied out into your heart? The Word calls for humility. Are you not only humbled, but humble?
18. Learn to apply the Scripture; take every word as if spoken to you. When the Word thunders against sin, think thus, "God means my sins." When the Word presses home a duty, think "God intends me to do this." When King Josiah heard the threatening written in the book of God, he applied it to himself; "he rent his clothes" (II Kings 22:11) "and humbled his soul before the Lord."
19. Take special notice of those Scriptures that speak to your particular case. For instance, 1. Are you in affliction? Consult these Scriptures: Hebrews 12:7; II Corinthians 4:17 2. Do you feel deserted? See Isaiah 54:8. "In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee." 3. Are you drawn away with sin? Read Galatians 5:24 and James 1:15. Thus, in reading observe those Scriptures which do touch upon your particular case.
20. Leave not reading until you find your heart warmed. Let it not only inform you but inflame you. Go not from it until you can say with the disciples, "Did not our heart burn within us" Luke 24:32?
21. Remember what you read. Satan would steal the Word out of your mind. If the Word stays not in the memory it cannot profit.
22. Meditate upon what you read. "I will meditate in Thy precepts" Psalm 119:15. Reading brings truth into our head, meditation brings it into our heart. The bee sucks the flower and then works it into the hive, and so turns it into honey. By reading we suck the flower of the Word, by meditation we work it into the hive of our mind, and so it turns to profit. Meditation is also the bellow of affection. "While I was musing the fire burned" Psalm 39:3. The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.
23. Set upon the practice of what you read. "He shall read in the book of the law all the days of his life; that he may learn to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, and do them" Deuteronomy 17:19. Christians should be walking Bibles. "It is a lamp to the feet" Psalms 119:105.
24. Tread often upon the threshold of the sanctuary. Wait diligently upon a rightly constituted ministry. Ministers are God's interpreters; it is their work to open and expound dark places of Scripture.

Adapted from How We May Read the Scriptures With Most Spiritual Profit by Thomas Watson (1874-1956)

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How We May Read Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit

Puritan Thomas Watson presents twenty-four very helpful directions to practice while reading Scripture. His aim is to help Christians get the most spiritual profit out of their reading. 

​A central theme is developing proper value, reverence, and love for the Scriptures.

​He proposes possible hindrances to reading and directions to prevent them. The importance of profitable Bible reading is undisputed: “Why else was the Scripture written, but that it might profit us? God did not give us His Word only as a landscape, to look upon.” —Thomas Watson.

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What's your favorite Bible reading plan?