Everyone who attempts to read the Bible will say that it is a tough project. Everyone!

It requires proper reading, interpretation, and application. It takes work, study, and knowledge to make the pieces come together. Through the years, I have noticed there are two distinct groups of people who are a part of the Church and try to read the Bible.

1. Those who say it is tough and dabble at reading.
   These people will tell you about how difficult the Bible is to understand and can give you a list of issues. The problem is that they never sit down and read the whole thing. Their intake of Bible consists of a verse or two here and there. They listen to an occasional sermon and hear some of the verses. They depend on books, often controversial writers, because they demonstrate the difficulties of particular topics or passages. The final place they are exposed to the Bible is the internet.
2. Those who say it is tough and keep reading.
   These people will agree that there are issues in understanding the Bible. Then they read it. Often, they have a plan to read it from cover to cover every year. They study and work through complex issues. There are things they don’t understand, but they keep working, and it a little bit every day.

Learning the Bible is like learning a foreign language. When I was in high school, I took German for a year, and all I know right now is a smattering of words. Other students threw themselves into the class and were almost fluent by the end of our time together. Then they signed up for German 2 where they took a summer trip to Germany when they finished. We both had the same resources available, but how we each handled them was vastly different.

What kind of Bible reader are you? It will not be easy to do, how you approach the difficulties says more about you than the scriptures.