Being an avid reader and a literary scholar, there is one thing I have learned about myself that is true for not all—but most. We don’t really retain what we read until we have to regurgitate it, and because most of us are not Bible teachers or scholars, this rarely applies to the content in those tiny print introductions inserted into our study Bibles (I feel like I just heard a hundred Bible scholars gasp… sorry guys).

Although those few minutes of gathering context can feel like a timewarp to your fifth grade English class, it is worth it and it doesn’t take too much time to complete. Luckily for us, there are in fact many Bible scholars who have done the work for us… we just have to engage with it and I would argue that we must do so before we attempt to extract the applicable meaning of the scriptures to our lives (and, especially, to the lives of others).

Give this a try. Pick a book of the Bible that’s not too intimidating or one you don’t really know much about (say, the book of Job or the letter of Jude) and use the Bible Reading Guide to Establish a Contextual Framework, take 15 minutes to learn the basic context of that book… and then read the first chapter. What about the context changes or informs your perspective?

Read the article and access the free Bible Reading Guide to Establish a Contextual Framework here: https://reagankathrynreynolds.com/2021/07/20/lets-talk-about-reading-the-bible-in-context-and-why-you-should-stop-being-a-lazy-reader/