You don’t have to have it all figured out to get started
If you’ve ever looked at the Bible and thought, “That’s a big book and I don’t know where to begin” — you’re not alone. Most people who follow Jesus have been exactly where you are right now. The truth is, getting into the Word doesn’t require a seminary degree or two hours of quiet time. It just requires a starting point. In Episode 209 of The Daron Earlewine Podcast, Daron and the crew get practical about how to read the Bible, where to start, and what you’re actually supposed to get out of it.
Where to start when you don’t know where to start
Start with the book of John. It’s one of the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life, and reading it as a way to get to know Jesus — not just check off a religious box — changes everything. From there, move into Acts to see how the early church got started. If you want something shorter, read one chapter of Proverbs per day — there are 31 chapters and most months have 31 days. Or pick a Psalm and read it as a prayer. These are short, accessible, and deeply practical. The bottom line: don’t start at Genesis and try to power through. Give yourself a better on-ramp.
A simple framework to make it stick
The episode introduces a four-part framework from the upcoming Follow Jesus discipleship book — built around the word GROW: Gather, Read, Observe, Walk. Gather yourself before you start — even a single deep breath and a quick prayer counts. Read it, or listen to it on the Bible app if you’re an auditory learner. Observe what stands out and write it down. Then walk it out — ask God, “What do you want me to do with this?” The goal isn’t information. It’s transformation. And it goes deeper when you do it with other people. Whether that’s a small group, a lunch with a friend, or a spouse — community is part of how this was always designed to work. Have questions about getting started? Reach out at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
If you’ve ever stared at the Bible and thought “this is too big, too scary, I don’t even know where to start,” this episode is for you. Daron Earlewine sits down with PJ Towle and Darren “Coop” Cooper to break down the simplest, most practical way to get into Scripture. No seminary degree required. No guilt trip. Just real talk about how three guys who all struggled with reading at some point built a habit that actually changed them. You’ll walk away with three solid starting points, a four-step framework you can use every day, and permission to engage with the Word the way God actually wired you.
Key Takeaways:
- Hearing the living Word of God is built on being saturated in the written Word of God
- God designed multiple ways to engage with Scripture. Audio, written, community, solo. There is no single “right” way
- Reading the Bible is not about gathering information. It’s a catalytic process for transformation
Connect with Daron on Social Media:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hey, if you’ve thought to yourself, “I should probably read the Bible, but it’s freaky, it’s scary, it’s big, I don’t know where to start,” then this episode is for you. We thought, you know what, let’s break it down. Super basic. Help you kind of get into where do I start reading the Bible? How do I read the Bible? What am I supposed to gain from it? We’re having that conversation in this episode. I think you’re going to find it informational and hopefully transformational. Let’s jump in.
Created on purpose and for purpose.
Hey, welcome back to The Daron Earlewine Podcast. Stoked to have you back with us. Daron Earlewine, your host, here again with the crew, the boys. What up, boys?
Guys, today I want to have more of a practical conversation.
I’m here for that.
This is not going to be like the super deep end of the pool that they have felt.
Correct.
If they’ve watched the last two with us, man, they’ve been swimming. Yeah, they showed up to this one with a Gatorade and a whole orange.
You said when you were recording that piece, “Maybe you need to take an orange slice.” And my candy-addicted brain jumped to those candy gummy orange slices. My dad used to love those. Maybe he still does. He would love those, but he didn’t ever want to share them.
Yeah, because we need them. They’re not really that good.
They’re decent.
No, what I was talking about is I remember playing football in junior high. I played soccer for one year and realized, nope. But during halftime back in the early eighties, I don’t know that even Gatorade existed. You had water, and then there would be the team moms. They would hand out a bunch of orange slices.
Team moms always for the win, man. For the win.
You’d have a couple of orange slices. And I’m like, let’s bring it back. They don’t do that anymore. Now you’ve got to have your Body Armor. I’m mad that we didn’t have orange slices here in between episode recordings. You know what? Put that on Asana. Julie, order orange slices for all podcast episodes. Due date the 17th. We’re going to get a bowl that just says yes, and we’re bringing back orange slices.
Anyway, less deep into the pool, a little more practical. Specifically around the idea of reading the Bible. We talk about a lot here on the podcast about what we would call the living Word of God. The Bible is also a living word, right? It’s alive. The Spirit is empowering it to apply it to our lives. But there are kind of two categories. There’s the written Word, which is the Bible, and then there’s the living Word. How does the Spirit communicate to you? We’ve done quite a bit on that, talking about prophecy for a while now, asking God the questions, “What do you want me to know about this? What do you want me to do about it?”
Here’s what is unbelievably important as a foundation. Your ability to hear from the living Word of God, hearing from the Spirit, is predicated on you actually being somewhat saturated in the written Word of God. However, I know for most people, the idea of starting to read the Bible is intimidating.
For sure.
Right. It’s 66 books in one book. Where do I start? What should I do? How much is enough every day? All of these are really practical questions. So I thought, let’s do an episode. Maybe some of you are new to the podcast, you’re new to faith. Maybe you’re not even currently a follower of Jesus. You’re just at a place where it’s like, “I’m curious.” If you listen to the podcast and you’re in that “I’m curious” category, listen, I am so, so glad you’re here. Everything we do with Blackbird Mission, our nonprofit, the podcast, the books I’m writing… by the way, there’s going to be an announcement coming soon about book two.
Not today.
Not today. This is the announcement of the announcement.
Correct. I’m announcing to let you know that I’m coming up with an announcement.
And then I will announce that the announcement is ready. And it will be quite the announcement.
But everything we do, it’s not just for people that are 20 years into this deal. We want to make this idea of following Jesus unbelievably accessible wherever you are. So this episode is key.
Okay, what I want to start with, guys, is we have been following Jesus for a while, but there was a rookie year for us all when we just started to get into it. So what I want to do is go around real quickly and talk about some of your first engagements where you realized, “Okay, this has to be regular. I need to be in the Word of God, the Bible, regularly.” How old were you? What were those rookie year iterations of being in the Word? PJ kicks off.
Oh my goodness. So, I am not a good reader. I just am not. If I’m honest about spiritual disciplines, reading my Bible is the hardest for me. Always has been. And I think part of it was, I have a little bit of a tracking issue with my eyes when I read. I’ll jump around and not be able to necessarily track what line I’m on. Glasses helped that quite a bit, but still, it’s always just been difficult for me. I’m a slow reader, and I get really distracted really easily. When I can’t say a word, I just get mad.
Especially what?
Dude, we’re the same person. I didn’t know anybody else had the tracking eye thing.
Oh yeah, dude. That was my “I hate reading” because of that reality.
I got glasses in third grade because of this. They were reading glasses. I’m a third grader with reading glasses. And then I think it was middle school, I had to start wearing them all the time. Anyway, so that was a thing. And maybe because of that, I have always been more of an auditory learner. And hands on. If I can hear something, I can typically regurgitate it a lot better than if I read it. I do not retain the same as when I read.
Yesterday was probably the day that I figured out I needed to be better at reading. And then the week before that, and the week before that. It’s an ongoing thing for me. But it was probably truly toward the end of college when I was like, “Oh, I’m getting into ministry jobs now.” Not that I need to know it and get it, which is why I love the Message, the Eugene Peterson translation, because it’s the spirit of it way more than it’s the words. So for me, that was probably really the big time, when I was like, “I need to spend more time and be better at it.” Which I realize is a very legalistic process, because this is my job, you know?
But there was an external motivator that was like, this whatever it was, was something that was like, okay, let’s move into this a little bit more. My wife and my son probably challenged me on this the most because they are both readers. Angie’s a librarian and Isaac just loves to read.
There’s a joke in there. Totally.
They challenge me in this all the time, because they’re both in it every single day. I know I’ve mentioned before, like Isaac had almost two solid years of every single day in the reading in the Bible app, that was on top of him reading his actual physical paper Bible. They challenged me in that all the time. And so even now, when I get into the discipline of being in it, a lot of times it’s open. I’m reading it with my eyes, but then I’m also listening to it at the same time. And I find for myself, if I’m in quiet space, set aside from other people, the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude, I hate them both, because I need the external things going on, and I love to be around people. So if I don’t make the plan for it, it doesn’t happen. And so that’s where I currently am in the moment.
Coop, what about you?
Yeah, mine started in high school some. It was very much, I went to a Christian school, so it was kind of like, sometimes it was homework, and other times you’re hearing devotions, devotions, devotions. You’re going to youth group, which I was very plugged in at, and you’re hearing devotions, devotions, devotions. A little bit, probably the beginning was, “God’s not going to love me if I don’t do my devotion,” for sure, for sure. That was probably the catalyst at the beginning. So yeah, probably in high school trying to get up and do that thing.
And then as we got into high school and as I got into ministry of my own and youth ministry and worship ministry, it was very much like just something that you had to do. So it very much started, “Let’s read the Psalms or let’s read the Proverbs every day.” Just start there. Had no idea what half of the stuff was saying. You read Proverbs, you read the Proverbs of the day, there’s so many things you could think about in the 30 verses or however many are in there. You’re like, “I don’t even know what to think about today.”
And then as I got into college, I really started to have that desire to just have that relationship. Worship ministry was a big thing. So you would mix worship music with it and reading, and that was kind of the foundational element. But I never really read the Old Testament because I was like, “Leviticus, no thanks.” I tried once and I fell asleep. To your point, PJ, I’m very similar in the sense of reading that way. Reading comprehension is very difficult. So when you’re already struggling with that, and then you add on, “Thus saith the Lord,” you’re like, “Oh man, what am I trying to do here?”
But there were so many times in that late high school, early college that there were some download moments, you know, where God just kind of shows up and you go, “What was that?” So you kind of start chasing that, right? These moments of just God speaking in cool ways. And so I think it might not always have been the purest of, it was kind of seeking that next thing a little bit, but ultimately that was the catalyst that kind of just kept me going through.
What I really like about both of your stories is, and I want the listener or the viewer to get this takeaway from this. Let me make my point first.
Sorry, I’ll get there.
It’s my show. You were just shut up. But, you are both creatives, both worship leaders. So you are wired for that, you know, for the auditory, for the worship side of things. And you’re not a librarian. You had physical challenges of “my eyes aren’t working.” Like in just the first time…
Can I just stop for a second? That’s the first time I’ve ever felt okay with the fact that, the way you just said that, you were wired that way.
Good night. I’m crying again. We’re not supposed to do this. We’re not supposed to be there, but that’s the first time I’ve ever thought or heard it that way. Really? Good. God dang. We’re done. That’s it. Thanks for joining this episode. Geez.
But no, I love that. I love that hit with you right now. It’s like, once again, our brain tells us, “God’s probably disappointed me because I’m not…” No, that’s the way he was inviting you to engage with him. It’s like, so if you’re auditory, if you love to read, you can’t be like, “Well, I’ve got it right. I’m better than these people.” No, it’s just the way God created you. And the whole thing is him going, “Hey, you’re going to find me along this journey.”
What’s the non-negotiable? You need, if you’re going to know what I’m trying to say to you today, you need to know what I’ve already said. This is the foundation.
So beautiful. For me, I don’t remember really reading the Bible as a habit through junior high and stuff. Maybe I did. I don’t have a recollection of it. After my freshman year of high school, I answered the call to ministry that year at church camp, and the speaker gave us a challenge of, “I want to challenge you to try to read the Bible every day for the next year. If you do, it’ll change your life.” So I committed myself to it. That next year, I think I got an Our Daily Bread devotional thing from church, which was, “Here’s your devotional. Here’s a scripture, little application thing.” I had it sit next to the nightstand next to my bed. So it was easily accessible right there. And over that next year, I’m sure I missed a bunch of days, but for the majority of that next year, I started a discipline of, I go to bed, before I go to sleep, I grab my devotional, I read it for the day. And I did begin to see my life change. From that point on, it has been a regular discipline of my life that I was going to read the Word.
I’m not a great reader either. I think in junior high, the first book I ever read was Where the Red Fern Grows. Cried my freaking eyes out. Any story with a dog. It was done. Was it Old Dan and what was the other dog’s name? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I remember reading that book and feeling accomplished. The struggle for me was my brother’s a big reader, and he read all kinds of stuff and he read all these Choose Your Own Adventure books, which I actually started checking those out. But he was super smart. He was straight A, read all the time. So there was a part of me, I think, getting into it, “I’ve never even finished a book.” Then I finished a book, singular. And I remember finishing Where the Red Fern Grows, and I was like, “I think I could read.”
So I started then, as I got through high school, my dad did a really great job of affirming my sense of call to ministry through high school. He would be like, “Hey, read this leadership book, lead…” And so I started to supplement that. As I continued to grow into that, I began to realize, this is where I meet God in a great way.
I think another way about the invitation is, I remember in high school and even through college, hearing people preach. At that point, I didn’t really understand. Like, I was supposed to be a rock star drummer. I didn’t know I was going to be a speaker. But I can always remember hearing really powerful speakers who had the ability to access all kinds of scripture as they taught. And I always remember being enamored by, “Man, if I’m ever going to speak, I want to speak like that. I want to know the Word like that.”
I can remember once I started preaching, when I was in my twenties, there’s kind of a theme here that we had these external motivator things, where this is lead worship for me, for me it was preaching. I remember in my 20s, maybe it was because I was prepping for a sermon, but I still had my regular disciplines. The way I prepped for sermons back in the day is, I tried to make sure I never wanted to say something personally that the Bible has already said. So I would spend six, eight hours prepping sermons, digging through the Word, trying to find things. I had big chunks of the scripture that I would read in my early sermons because, for one, I wanted to eventually be the kind of guy that could understand and command the Word that way. Plus, I didn’t feel like I had any authority to stand on my own. I was like, “Let me, if the Bible says it, then…” And what happened then, you do that for a decade, and at some point I woke up and was like, “Wow, I kind of know a lot of this.” Now, you know, it’s cool at 48. I don’t spend six to eight hours prepping a sermon anymore. I don’t have to go find where it’s at. It’s just kind of in here. And supercomputers help. But that’s where it started for me.
Hey, sorry for the interruption here in the podcast, but I wanted to take this moment to invite you into something. If you’ve ever been in a place in your life where you just felt stuck, you felt like maybe you’re just spinning your wheels, you’ve been thinking that there’s got to be more for me. I listen to the podcast all the time and I hear Daron talk about “on purpose and for purpose. I have to discover my purpose.” Well, that feeling is right. You do need to. And I want to help you. I want to help be a guide for you to step into who God created you to be. That’s the purpose in the design of what we do with Rogue Collective Coaching.
So if you’re curious, or you know, “Listen, I’m not curious. I know it’s time for me to take action,” here’s your call to action. I want you to go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. I want you to click the button that says Book a Discovery Call. I want you to jump on a 30-minute conversation with me. Jump on the phone. We’ll talk about where you are and if Rogue Collective Coaching is your next step to help you become who you were born to be. RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Book a Discovery Call. I can’t wait to chat with you. Let’s get back to the episode.
One thing that was absent for me, you talk about being in a youth group. The youth group at our church was my brother and I. Booming massive group.
So you had youth group every single day.
Every day. And maybe Damon and I, we were good at having good conversations. I know in college we would have good conversations about what I was doing in the Word and stuff. But that was a missing part for me that I think is key. If you think about the way understanding the Word and how it came to be in existence, it’s kind of crazy to think about. No one actually had a Bible for hundreds of years of Christianity. This was something that was originally, I think, designed to be done in community.
And I think we’ve missed some of that, where we’ve made this a very personal, “I need some time for my personal devotions where I’m reading the Bible for myself, applying to myself.” That’s where some of that spiritual narcissism can come into. This whole thing is about me being a better person on my own journey. No, this is, if we read this together, that’s where a lot of the growth comes. I missed some of that early on. That’s why it’s important if you are in a small group or have some kind of community where you’re engaging in the Word together.
And it doesn’t have to be a church community for that. It can be a group of people who are running after the same thing, who are trying to find the same thing. It could be through a group at school. It could be through a group at work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be…
Well, I would like to broaden the definition to its original and say, yes, it absolutely has to be a church group.
Okay…
But where two or three are gathered is a church group. Jesus is with them. Okay, like we both are saying the same thing. We are. I just wanted to put me in my place because I tried to jump ahead.
That’s not true. Embracing.
We are the church.
Okay, that’s fair. You cannot go to church. We are the church. It is not a place, right?
And I’m not saying anything’s bad about going to a building that is a church. I’m saying for someone who maybe you’re not involved in that yet or you haven’t had that step or maybe it’s not accessible to you right now, doesn’t mean you can’t have it anywhere you are with other people seeking out Jesus. You are the church. So that community part of it is key.
I like that there’s uniqueness in how we’ve all come to it. I do remember a season probably in my 20s, where I think I’d gotten into a habit where I was almost only reading the Word when I had to prep for a sermon. And what I began to notice, I don’t know how many years this was, I think it was years, could have been months, is I did begin to realize I was becoming distant from Jesus. He was who I worked for and what I was prepping to do. And I don’t remember, it’s probably through some books, conferences, worship, I don’t know. At some point I came to realize, “Oh, I’m losing the relationship.”
I remember, I think it was in my twenties that I would have a season where maybe for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, I would have time with the Lord, and I would notice it like, “Oh, this is changing me.” And then I would be off discipline and go back, and then I could feel it. I can remember during that maybe decade where I could feel the push and the pull of that, right? Eventually, maybe it took about a decade where I was like, “I’ve got to bring some discipline and structure in my life. I have to be connected here regularly, not because I have to, because of my job or whatever.” It was the kindness of the Lord, if you will, that led me to repentance, which was changing the way I thought. This is not something I have to. This is something I want to do, something I get to do. And this is something I need.
I would say probably for the past 20 years, I have a discipline and a structure that sustains me of being in the Word.
There is a difference in what you said there of just reading it and then spending time with God. There is a difference, because I know that I feel in my life that there’s a time that it’s a checklist on the things to do today, and I can get it done and I can check it off and go, “Good job.” But that’s not really spending time with it.
I think it’s okay sometimes. This week, busy week, up early getting kids out the door. The only time I really had was, because audible learner, I was listening to it to and from drop-off. So I can easily just make that like, “Oh yeah, listened to it, I’m good.” Or I can stop and go, “God, what are you saying to me? What do I need to know about this?” Those are two different things. Sometimes, probably more often than I would like to admit, it just is the thing to check off the list. That’s the battle.
I want to bring it to the audible part too. That’s the beauty of what technology has given us. I have listened to the New Testament, I think two or three times in the past five years. I have not read it three times, but I’ve listened to it. That’s something John Maxwell talks about, automobile university. Turn your car into your learning space, classroom. So I am usually reading or listening to about three books at the same time, because I can’t stay on task.
Overachiever.
Or I’m in the Word. Sometimes I’m listening to music, and sometimes it’s Christian music, sometimes it’s country music, sometimes it’s rock and roll. It’s everything. Sometimes it’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”
Only when I’m singing karaoke.
Oh, but just to give you permission to realize, like, listen, if you need to start, “Where do I find the time?” Okay, well, how long is your commute to and from work? Dedicate five minutes of that to, “I’m going to listen to the Bible.” There are tons of listenable, audible plans in the Bible app that are five, seven, twelve minutes long. There’s tons of stuff there. Resources.
Side note, my wife, this last year, life’s crazy for her with young kids. She’s like, “Man, I just got to get in. I just got to read my Bible more. Got to read my Bible more.” And she said that for probably almost a year, as she’s wrangling all these children. And I started this year. I was like, “Why don’t you just listen to it?” It was almost like a light bulb for her, because she’s a big reader, English teacher, that whole thing. I said, “You don’t have to sit down and study, study, but just getting it around you. Just listening to it in some way. It doesn’t have to be this amazing download.” And every day now, I hear, when she’s putting makeup on in the morning, or sometime at night when she’s getting ready, it’s on. And it’s now a discipline for her. I’ve watched as the conversations come up about different… “Oh, I was reading the other day about this.” Now all of a sudden it becomes part of her language.
It doesn’t have to be this crazy, “Sit and study the three-part sermon because I’m getting ready for Sunday.” It can be just, “Hey, it’s on.” And maybe it is a checkbox that I did, but there’s something, if we believe that it’s living and active, there’s something deeper to it. Just simply listening to it and being around it can actually change us as well.
Yes. So let’s get real practical of some decent places to start. I’ve always told people that if you’re looking to, “I’m curious about following Jesus,” okay, then it’d be good to know Jesus. So I would suggest, if you’re looking for “Where do I start?” I would suggest potentially starting in the book of John. John was one of the disciples and he was one of the three. Jesus had this inner core of three guys, right? Peter, James, and John.
It just makes me laugh because John’s the disciple that Jesus loved.
Correct. The beloved.
The beloved. He very much made it known that he was the favorite in his writing of the gospel. It’s like, “By the way, the disciple that Jesus loved.” Yeah. Who was me. Not like Peter. Oh, he shut his mouth off. And who ran faster to the tomb? It was me.
My 40 is impressive. And I beat Peter.
If you don’t know the Bible, you don’t know these jokes. Get reading it. You’ll know. It’ll be fun.
So start in John. And here’s what I would say. Don’t read the book of John as a way of, “I’m reading the Bible,” right? This is an account of Jesus’s life and ministry. Read it like, “I want to get to know Jesus.” So I think the book of John is a great place to start.
If you want to kind of walk chronologically through what happens, you could read the book of John, then you could move to the book of Acts, which is the beginning of the church and as things begin to spread, and you’d kind of see how that story went out.
Another place to start could be really cool is the Psalms. The Psalms are a collection of poems, songs, reflections. A lot of them written by King David in the Old Testament. It’s almost like his journal. Bono from U2 says that David was the first blues man. He’s like, “A lot of it, he’s singing the blues in a lot of ways.” But these are short little Psalms or songs that, what I’ve told people is, go back and read a Psalm, and read one and then read it as a prayer. It’s a good way to help you teach you to learn to pray as well.
Another super quick one is the book of Proverbs. There’s 31 chapters. Most months have 31 days. Go in and say, “Okay, I’m going to read, if today is April, what is it, the 17th? So I’m going to read Proverbs chapter 17 today.” Probably going to take you two to three minutes to read it. There’s a bunch of really good practical wisdom in that.
I mean, that’s what I was saying earlier. That’s basically where I started, because I didn’t know what else to do. So if you’re talking from a startoff practical standpoint, that’s where it’s at. And there’s all these different things. Then you go, “Which one stood out to me?” and then go read it again. And say, “God, what are you saying to me, and what do I need to do about it?”
Because a lot of times, like a regular book, usually you open a book, and you open it to page one and you start reading it. I’ve heard a lot of people, they start reading Genesis and they’re like, “Okay, whatever.” And then it’s like, all of a sudden they get into Leviticus and you’re like, “I’m lost. Where’s the Jesus part? I can’t figure that part out.” And then when you get to the Kings and the Chronicles stuff that line up, like one is the account and one is the history side, like, “Didn’t I just read this?” But like it’s different. And here’s seven chapters of names.
I would suggest you don’t start on your own at the beginning. There’s a little cheat sheet for that.
What I want to give you guys, as we come to a close, we’re working on a discipleship book and resource right now with Blackbird that will be available at the end of this year, in November. Working with a great friend of mine, Matt LeRoy. Matt’s writing this. It’s called Follow Jesus, A 40 Day Journey. The subtitle is The Call, The Cost, and The Commission. We’re working through the book of Matthew, and we’re designing this resource where it’ll be short three to five minute readings every day with some application and stuff like that. But we’re also going to record a podcast that goes along with the whole book.
So if you’re more auditory, and you don’t have a lot of time to read or you’re not used to reading, you can literally listen or watch us read you the passage and the application points every day. Follow Jesus will be coming out in November of 2026. We’ll have more information how to get that.
But in the Follow Jesus book, Matt has what he talks about, a simple guide for reading the scripture. I want to hit it with this and we’ll kick this around, and we’ll get done. He builds it around the word GROW. So it’s an acronym around the word grow. It’s Gather, Read, Observe, and Walk. So gather, read, observe, and walk as a kind of structure of, “Here’s how I’m going to get in the Word.”
So the first one is Gather. He says, “Begin with intentionality. If you’re engaging in this with another disciple, gather for intentional time together and pray for one another. If this is a personal scripture reading, gather yourself by intentionally preparing your heart. Settle in, don’t rush, take a deep breath, ask the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart, mind, soul, and body through the Word.”
So gather, potentially get another person or two and say, “You know, at lunch, let’s read a scripture together. Let’s get together.” Maybe it’s a one-day-a-week kind of thing. But the idea of community, if you don’t have it, I love what Matt’s saying here, is gather yourself. Breathe for a minute, focus in. Even if it’s just, “I’ve got three minutes, I’ve got five minutes, I have a minute,” start small, get the momentum. But that first idea is gather. You guys want to kick anything in on that?
I think that’s even simply how I was saying earlier today or earlier this week. I was flying, jumping in the car and doing the thing, and I just hit play and I listen, and I stop it, and I make it a checklist thing. If I just stop for a second, even, it doesn’t have to be long, just a moment. “Hey God, I’m about to engage in this. Speak to me. Help me to take a breath.” Simply just taking a breath and then stepping into it. That’s kind of an eye-opening thing to me right now. “Idiot, just stop for a second.” Just say, “Okay.” That’s a powerful moment to set the stage for the rest of it.
Angie and I did The Bible Recap a couple of years ago. Great resource. But when I had the same issue and it was my checklist, I always got to the end of it going, “What did I just listen to? What did I just watch? What was I supposed to read today?” But when I would sit down and be like, “Oh no, I’ve got the space to breathe and to think this through and to pray first,” like, those were the ones that then you’d actually take in.
It’s kind of the same in a personal relationship with somebody. If you’re just constantly doing the same things, doing the routine, you don’t intentionally spend time…
I’m glad you said that. We have to also understand, vertical, we’re talking about a vertical relationship with God. But I would say nearly 100% of our horizontal relationship principles apply vertically. And so you’re thinking, “I don’t struggle to really connect with God.” Okay, take God out of the vertical and apply every horizontal earthly relationship you have. Think about your best friend, your wife, whatever it is, your husband. It’s like, if your relationship was, “We talked for five minutes on the way to work, and I’m kind of listening, but I’m trying to make sure I don’t wreck the car, and I’m like, man, there’s some distance,” yeah, because there is.
Like, learning to, when you speak to someone, “I’m going to make eye contact. I might do some active listening. I’m hearing you say this. Tell me more about that.” These same things apply going on a date night. What might that look like with God? Well, maybe it’s like breakfast by yourself with your Bible, gathering with him, tying in. Going on a prayer walk.
I don’t know why I did air quotes.
I heard somebody say one time, to your point, like, if the vertical, if you’re struggling with the vertical with God, then think about Jesus, the horizontal. Because he was here. He was a person. And you can go super Christianese with it, “And he reached his arms out with arms wide open, as the band comes up.”
So I mean, that’s exactly what you’re saying though. It’s the personal piece. It’s the personal piece. Daron, you’ve brought up in even some of the contemplative prayer stuff in the last few months as we’ve talked about it, that idea of going, “Hey, in your mind, where’s your favorite place to be? The beach or the back porch or whatever. And then where is Jesus with you in that? Mentally sit him next to you, or you mentally just doing that.” That kind of changes that vertical horizontal piece. I’ve been trying that recently, and it’s like, oh, it takes him out of the ethereal, like heaven out there somewhere, and puts him right next to you. Even if you’re driving in the car and you just kind of visualize him sitting there next to you, you know?
I’ve done that when I’m driving and I’m trying to figure something out, and I imagine Jesus sitting next to me and just talk to him. “Lord, got this. What do you want me to know about that?” Just listen, and it works.
Isn’t it so good? I know we’re talking about scripture and Bible reading, but the Bible says pray without ceasing. It doesn’t mean get on your knees, fold your hands, do your penance, do all the things. It means communicate constantly. So if we can’t have a conversation directly any time, that’s when we’re not praying without ceasing. In this conversation right now, going, “God, what are we supposed to hear? What are we supposed to know? What are we supposed to learn?” That still is prayer communication with God.
100%. Love it.
All right. Gather. That’s the G. Here’s the R. Read.
Anything we need to say about that one? “In order to cultivate growth in Christ and bear the fruit of the Spirit, we need roots in fertile soil. We need to be planted in the living Word and have it planted in us. So we make engaging with scripture a central part of our discipleship path personally and together in community. We don’t gather to simply share our own ideas or opinions, but we intentionally are shaped by the power of scripture.” So you actually got to read it, right? Or listen to it. Be engaged in it.
Okay. I’m sorry. I’m over here dying. This is going to date me a little bit, the whole Tommy Boy thing. It’s called reading. Top to bottom, left to right. Group words together to form sentences. Tyler and I are off to read. Headaches might offer any cramps. That’s how I feel when I have to read.
If you know Tommy Boy, you just rattled that off so well. That was really well done. “It’s called reading. Top to bottom, left to right. Group words together to form sentences.”
I always, maybe that’s where I got it, but I would always say, “It’s okay. Once you learn all your letters, then you can form them together to make words, and then you’ll actually be able to communicate with someone.” But Tommy Boy’s way more fun. When you said, “Let’s unpack that,” I was like, that was the first thing to get in. “Just group words together and form sentences.”
Continue, though. There we go. Here’s “O.” Observe. Okay, “Go beyond reading and start seeing. Take a focused look at this passage and record your observations. Here’s some questions: What do you see? What stands out to you? What does this mean? What does this mean for us?”
One of the things that I love, I keep bringing it up, but the TV show The Chosen. Now when I watch The Chosen, I’m watching it because I know the story in the Word. I’m watching it and it’s coming to life in a different way than it ever has before. I guarantee you, there’s probably Bible studies available online, Google it, of “How do I read along by watching The Chosen?” I guarantee you there’s a script there somewhere where you can be like, “Episode one is in this passage.” You could read it and watch it. And you’re observing.
One of the key things that we have to remember about this too, I remember in college, they said that you always have to read the Bible over the shoulder of the first audience.
Ooh, that’s good.
Yeah, because it can’t mean something to you that it didn’t first mean to them. Now, that’s where you can actually get into some deeper observation and study.
The great part is, in ages past, you would have to go get some book or go get a degree from a college and get someone to teach you. Go to the library. Go to the microfiche.
Yes. Or the Dewey Decimal System.
The card catalog.
Anybody that’s under the age of 30 right now is like, “What are they talking about?”
The great part now is you have great studies and things you can get. Use ChatGPT, use Google, whatever it is, but to come in and say, Bible app, Chosen, just put the Chosen in. All kinds of things you can follow along with. So that could be a cool thing for you. “Man, I don’t quite understand this.” Whatever you’re reading, watch that episode of The Chosen. Now you can see it, you can feel it, you can observe it, and then apply it to your life.
But digging into some of that and being like, “Okay, Jesus is saying this. What did that mean to that first audience?” It begins to come alive in a new way. It can also help you from getting caught up in bad theology or bad understanding of God, because, “This is what this means to me. It’s my truth.” There’s only one truth. Doesn’t work that way. It can keep you from error in that.
I didn’t think I was going to bring this caveat, but I think I’m going to. I just had a meeting with a friend whose child is very separate from them right now. Really painful situation. And the way it happened was, this kid basically took a deep dive into TikTok. TikTok became their world, and a lot of philosophical thoughts about certain things. They got into that algorithm, and in a lot of ways, TikTok pop psychology became their truth, where you have people that you don’t know if they actually know what they’re talking about. They just sound good on TikTok.
Sound like they know what they’re talking about.
Correct. And then what you don’t realize is there’s a supercomputer set up to make sure you never stop watching that feed. And whatever you stay on for a while, the supercomputer goes, “Oh, I’m brilliant. You probably would like this and you would probably like this.” It’s really sad because what’s happened is, and I think this is true of the younger generation, if you’re in that younger generation, I want you to be cautious of who is discipling you. And you may even have people, “Well, this guy’s really good on TikTok and he teaches the Bible stuff.” Okay. But do you read the Word for yourself? Do you know how to actually compare and observe some of those things? Because just beware, you are being discipled in your life right now. Disciple just means learner. You are being taught and becoming something. Just be careful of what is that, because you can find yourself down some paths you don’t want to get down.
You can even say that for, like, you need to know the Word for yourself, even sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning. Right? The same rule applies to that reality. We can’t just go there. Now, often 99.9% of the time, Daron, you do say good things and we can follow it. The reality is, we need to not just hand off our theology and what God is saying to you to tell me. I need to be there and do that.
Yes. That’s what I hear you saying, even from the good standpoint. The TikTok thing, yes, that’s a real thing. Please be aware there. But also even just in the Sunday morning flow of, “I need to know these verses. I need to know what God’s saying.” The first pastor I ever worked for used to say that when you listen to somebody teach a message, you need to think about it the same way you eat catfish. Because catfish has all these little bones and stuff in it that you can’t just eat it and devour it and take it all in. You have to work around it and take it apart to eat it the right way. That has stuck with me. Anytime you listen to somebody teach, you need to pick it apart, study it against scripture, and then decide if you’re going to ingest and take that in or not.
For me, it goes back to the first, gather, is, if you’re new to this, if you could get around some people that have followed Jesus a little bit longer and pick out the bones and some things, “Hey, I had this question. What’s this?” Learn together. Because, yeah, I agree. If I say something on the podcast or I say something when I’m speaking, don’t just take it because, face value. Go read, see if it’s true. Because the crazy part is, I can look back over the past 25 years and I know I said some things in the past 25 years that I no longer agree with myself.
Aren’t you glad that, when you were coming up with all of that, it’s not all on the internet?
That’s true.
Yeah. Because now somebody can’t throw something back in your face because you’ve worked it through to process that out. But I think that’s one thing, as another word of caution to the younger generation: everything’s on the internet forever. We have to be careful and pick it apart and understand what’s there.
Yeah. So observe. Dig into it. What’s happening here?
Can I add one more thing to that with the observation thing? One of the things that works for me is when I observe it, I write it down. And if I’m processing through something like, “Oh, I wonder what this is about,” make a note in the edge of your Bible or write it in a journal. Or I’m praying through something. I can write it down, because then when I come back to it, it almost brings you back to where you were in that moment. And if you’re writing down prayers or things you’re struggling with, it’s also a really cool, like the old, it’s a chronology of seeing God work in your life. Those things work out in whatever way they do. So I would add to the observe, write it down.
I would say without question, one of the things that has helped me in my spiritual development as much as scripture is, I was, I think it was my sophomore year of high school. Mr. Schneider was my English teacher, and he made us journal that year. We’d be coming to class, and there’d be five minutes at the beginning of it, and we journaled that entire year. I’d never journaled in my life. Fell in love with it because it was like, my brain’s going 20 billion different directions and to have, “Oh yeah, I forgot I was thinking about that three months ago.” For me, it became a prayer journal, conversation with God. I’m looking back, and “Oh, if I didn’t realize that I forgot I was praying about that three months ago. And look, God answered that prayer.” Or like you’re saying, “God said this to me. I feel like this is what God’s saying.” So a big part of observation is gathering that observation. So a journal is a huge help in that.
Last thing is this. The W is Walk. “Discipleship calls us beyond observation into obedience. The Word sparks authentic transformation that moves from the mind and heart into action.” So what are my action steps in response to this? How will I obey this? How will I walk this out in my life?
Walk it out kind of goes back to the two questions we keep coming back to all the time in the podcast. You sit down, you gather yourself by saying, “God, what do you want me to know about what I’m reading today?” Read it. Observe. Maybe take some things. And then before you walk away, you say, “God, what do you want me to do about this?” Because getting in the Word of God and reading the Bible regularly is not about gathering information. It’s about a catalytic process to start transformation. This is going to actually begin to transform by the renewing of my mind, which is me putting what God has said. What God has said is true, where I can actually begin to repent, believe in that process. So there is a walking this out. It is meant to change the way we live, change the way we love, change the way we forgive, change the way we give. All of these things. Walk it out.
And all of that walking, I would say the vast majority of the time happens with other people. So you put yourself right back into gathering, which then replicates the cycle.
Yes. Absolutely. Beautiful.
So just some practical steps. If you go, “Man, I think I need to get into the Word. Where do I start?” This episode gives you a couple of handles. If you have questions, reach out. Email me, daron@daronearlewine.com. Would love to help you in that. If you’ve been growing and you’ve been hearing us talk about what we’re doing with Rogue Collective Coaching and all this stuff, go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. You can schedule a 30-minute discovery call with me. Talk about how we might be able to help you take your next step to becoming who you were born to be. Whether that’s, we help you get into a group where you can gather with people, understand a little bit more of who God is, but a big part of who God’s created you to be is another opportunity for you to check that out. And keep listening, because soon there’s going to be an announcement about an announcement. This is the pre-announcement announcement announcement about a book.
Hey, thanks so much for downloading this episode. Hope it was encouraging to you. Until we talk again, remember, God’s for you, not against you. He’s near you, not far. You were created on purpose and for purpose. We’ll see you next time on The Daron Earlewine Podcast.