Developing a Love of the Word: a conversation with Ralph Walker

If you have ever lamented your struggles to read the Bible more consistently or have struggled with difficult passages or have read, but felt like you never got past the stage of obligation and moved into having an enjoyment of Bible reading – this episode is for you.  Why do we find reading the Bible so hard sometimes?

Listen to Ralph and I promise you, he will help you learn to develop a love for the Word.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Transcript

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone.

One of my goals with this podcast is to introduce an audience I love to people I love.  I’d like you to meet Ralph Walker.  Ralph is an evangelist and one of the shepherds for the Henderson Boulevard congregation in Tampa, Florida.  Ralph has a way of putting you at ease immediately.  He makes new friends feel like old ones, and he is as comfort in a crowd as he is one on one.  He is a good friend and a fine man.

Ralph makes the Bible come alive.  He speaks with an easy manner and simplicity that makes it clear that the Bible should be read, but more than that – that the Bible should be loved.  I want you to know Ralph because to know him is to love him, but I also wanted to sit down with him so he could share his insights into how to develop a deeper love of the Word.

If you have ever lamented your struggles to read the Bible more consistently or have struggled with difficult passages or have read, but felt like you never got past the stage of obligation and moved into having an enjoyment of Bible reading – this episode is for you.  Why do we find reading the Bible so hard sometimes?

Listen to Ralph and I promise you, he will help you learn to develop a love for the Word.

Ralph Walker: I think, when we're in school, sometimes we read materials. I think there are three experiences we have. One is we read material that we read, but we don't think it's ever gonna really have much application in our lives, or it's so that we're read for the class and when we get done with it, we're gonna forget it.

Then some things we read and we love it. We love it from the beginning. We open it up, read it. The textbook just kinda speaks to us. It's where we are and and we devour it and we retain it. And years later we can still have a love for that. That was true for me with some of the books I had to read in English.

I thought in this English class I'm not gonna this book. This is an old book. And then I started reading and it just, I fell in love with it. And that's the third, the idea that there are some things we start out reading and we think this is gonna be a tedious journey. And then for whatever reason it speaks to me.

It's more intriguing than I thought it was gonna be. And I find myself saying, wow, I really like this. I think for some of us. We're at that first stage, we're reading the Bible because we're supposed to read the Bible. It's God's word and it tells me how I'm supposed to live and I'm gonna do it. But I gotta tell you, there's an awful lot of things in there I don't understand and we don't enjoy the experience.

And, if you don't enjoy it, you're probably not likely. Unless you're incredibly disciplined, you're not likely to keep it up. The second is we start reading and we just love it. We love it from the beginning. And I don't think there are very many people like that with the Bible. I think we may talk that way cuz we think the teacher and God wants to hear that.

But I don't think that we're really, just the first time I read the Bible, I was intrigued and I read it all the way through and it took me, four settings and I. I forwent food and work and quit my job, and I read it all the way through and loved it. And I'm all my second time around.

Not many people like that. What I think most of us would need to get to is I started reading it and I didn't really understand it, and I didn't get much out of it. We have to read it and it's important for us to do that, but then something happens and we fall in love with it.

And I would suggest there are two reasons why that can happen for us. And number one is to read the Bible, like it's a letter from God. I don't mean to make that sound trite. It may sound that way, and I don't mean it that way, but what I mean is the Bible is God's communication to us. With us. And so if I can read it with that in mind, it might be like going to the mailbox and there's a letter there and it's from a person I don't even know, but I open it up and when I start reading it, they know a lot about me and they say, I was a relative of yours.

I knew your parents. I care about you. There are some things about your parents, I think you ought know and some things about your family, you ought know. And I'm here to tell you those things and to tell you who I and why we should have a relationship. I intrigued by Absolutely. I, that's

bible that it with the understanding it is God's communication to me. And I can even get past some of the rough spots in it, some of the difficult spots, and we'll talk about those in the course of this, I'm sure. That will help me if I start with that premise. It's a letter from God. To us, to all of us.

And therefore it has particular meaning for me, not for a group, not for America, not for 20, 23, but it's for all time. God trying to communicate some things to me. I read then with a purpose that I didn't have before. 

Scott Beyer: I tend to agree with you that I think the average person doesn't just pick up the Bible and just love it right away. I think you have to grow into that love. And when you think of it through that vantage point, like you said, of a letter from God one, I had a older relative who would just always tell stories. And I remember as a kid going, what are these stories? Why is he even talking?

Ralph Walker: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Beyer: I got older, many of those stories came back. I was like, oh, he was telling those stories for a reason. He was passing down something that maybe I didn't get right away, but would stick with me over the years.

And some aspects of the Bible I think are that way too. Here's God, and let me tell you this story about these kings. And at first you think of what is, what do the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel have anything to do with me? But over time you realized there was a reason he said that.

Ralph Walker: Now I gotta say this to your listeners as God is my witness. You and I have not talked about any of the particulars. I've gotten a series of thoughts from you of where you wanna go with this, but that was my second point. 

Scott Beyer: Was it 

Ralph Walker: My second point was read the Bible as a. It's a story. It's not just a letter from God.

It's a story that God is unfolding for all of us. And if I can learn to read it that way, and again, there are going to be interruptions to that story. There are gonna be commercials like in a TV show, I'm watching it, and then there's this interruption, a commercial that doesn't seem to tie in at all, but I wait for the rest of the story.

There are gonna be some interruptions in the flow of that story. But the Bible is one story about redemption from beginning to end. So if I can read it that way, just like you said, if I can read it as story, it will have a value for me that it didn't have when it was just a bunch of regulations or B.

Bunch of disjointed.

Scott Beyer: Yeah I agree. Okay, so with that in mind, so we're gonna start looking at our Bible as a letter from God. He has some things to tell you and a story that he's trying to unfold for you. What are some effective strategies or practices for developing, that love of the letter, that love of the stories as you're studying the Bible, hopefully more consistently.

Ralph Walker: Yeah. Yeah. The first thing I would say is and I'm sometimes asked this question, I'll I'll be talking about a part of a Bible story and somebody will go, I ne I never saw that before. I never, I've read that story, but I never saw that before. How did you get that? Or where did that come from?

They're not challenging that It's not there, they just never saw it before. Lemme give you an example to your listeners. And it may be that every listener there says, already knew that, but my guess is they're gonna go, I never thought about that. Some of them are gonna say, I never thought about that.

I'm back in Genesis chapter three and we're looking at the fall of man. And the story tells us, and I'm paraphrasing cuz your listeners may be walking or in a car or not near a Bible. If you got a Bible, grab it and look at Genesis three. But otherwise just think about this. So it says this, the serpent was more crafty than any of the beasts of the field.

And he talks to Eve. And you're reading through this story and sometimes we know that story so well. We just read quickly and we don't pause. I'm getting to a point in a moment that I hope will be helpful. So bear with me. He tells Eve, he says have you been told you can't eat of any of the trees of the garden?

She says no. Now of all the trees we can eat, but just of the one that's in the middle of the garden, we're not allowed to eat or touch. And so he says to her, oh, God knows in the day you eat that you'll be as smart as he is. Implication. He doesn't want that, but you can be as wise as God.

So it says she saw the tree, that it was good for food, that it was that it looked good and that it would make her wise as God. So she took in ate and she gave it to her husband with her, and he ate also. Now for most of us, I think we've bought into this picture. There's a tree. And we whether we've gotten this from a coloring book or Betty Lukins film strip flannelgraph series or however it's been depicted, a movie, a cartoon version, Superbook whatever.

It's that Eva standing at the tree and the serpent is coiled around the tree, talking to her right there. And the fruit is right there above her. And she, all she has to do is look at it as he's talking. Reach up, grab it, pull it down, eat it. And then she goes to find her husband and she says to Adam, this is really good.

You're gonna love it. And he eats it also. And that's not the picture at all. First of all. It says clearly when he asked her, can you eat of any of the can you not eat of any of the trees? She says, no. Of all the trees we can eat, but listen again, of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, we cannot eat.

Why would she describe where the tree is if she's right there at it?

She wouldn't do that. So here's the point. He's not right there at the tree saying, here it's touch. The, this one right here. She's away from the tree. So what does that imply, Scott? It implies that she had distance between her and the tree, which means the whole time she was walking toward the tree, she is planning her sin. This is not a compulsive impulsive act. It wasn't. He said, right here, try it. And she touched it and she didn't die. So she said, I'll eat it and I won't die. All right. Now we, that in itself changes the whole tenor of the story for

Scott Beyer: right.

Ralph Walker: because I'm reading carefully now. I see her sin in a way. I never saw it before, before I saw it as it's right there.

She just reaches up. She said, whether right or wrong we're not to touch it or eat it or we'll die she could reach up and touch it and see if she died. And if that's not true, then maybe it won't be true if she eats it. That's the way we see it. But that's not what was there. She's far from that tree when the serpent catches her and then she has to walk that distance all the way to the tree in the middle of the garden, not right there.

Not point to it. It's right there. It's right there. The tree that is in the middle of the garden is the one that we can't eat from. So she goes there. But there's one more thing about that's also intriguing. I've always thought, did she tell Adam, Hey, guess where I got this fruit? It's from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You gotta taste it because Adam might have said, Ugh, no way. I'm not touching that thing. Or did she just walk up to him with a fruit and say, Hey, you look hungry. Here's a piece of fruit. And he eats it without realizing, he goes, oh, delicious. Where'd you get this? Oh, this is a tree of knowledge. He spits it out.

But but he finds out, I, we didn't die. We didn't die as soon as we ate it. No. Notice what it says. And she ate and she gave it to Adam there with her, and he ate. He is standing next to her when you, and now again, If we are if the geography is correct and she's away from the tree, when the serpent tempts her, then she walks to the tree who's with her, Adam,

Scott Beyer: Right.

Ralph Walker: and I'm sure he's thinking, where are we going?

What are we doing? I'm going to eat of the treat. No, you shouldn't. I'm figuring the conversation at all. We shouldn't eat of that treat. No. Trust me, I think it's gonna be okay. I got good advice on this, whether she convinced him that it was good for her to eat or he saw her take it and eat it, and she didn't drop dead, therefore, he ate The point is she and he were together at the tree when this happened. When you take those little facts and they're very clear in the text, But many times we read through that so quickly and we don't get those details. Then what happens is we formulate a different story than the one that's actually there. Her sins pretty blatant. It isn't just a whim like, oh, I did it.

I know I shouldn't have done it. The moment I thought about it, I shouldn't have done it. But I wasn't thinking, she's thinking this is planned. This is meditated and premeditated, and then Adam's right there. He watches her do it. And what And when God punishes him, what does he say to him? You listened to your wife.

What? What is the point of that? No man should listen to his wife. No, it's point taken. It was your responsibility. You were the head. In fact, if you go back and read this story chronologically, when God gave the instruction about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, E Eve wasn't even there yet. It was given to Adam before Eve was taken from his side.

So the only way she knows that information is because he gave it to her, but he didn't enforce it. So now look at the lessons that just version out of that story. When you read carefully and you read Minutely, and I think that's what. For whatever reason I love that I'm able, not all the time, and people show me things and I go, I never saw that before.

When did you put that in my Bible? That wasn't there last time I read this. But I'm, I think I'm able to read and see this and I think the key is this, the key is feeling the story as you're reading it. You should be thinking, what would I do if I were in that situation? What if God said that to me?

How would I react? That brings the story to life, and when it brings the story to life, then it becomes real and it becomes exciting. And the more you find those little things, the more you think. This is a great book. Not just because it came from God. It's an intriguing story and it's the kind of thing could happen to any of us, and you can do that with the story of the fall.

You can do that with Kane and Abel in chapter four. You can do that with Noah in chapter six and 7, 8, 9. On and on. These stories, the people that Jesus encountered, you put yourself in the stories and you think, yeah, I think I would've reacted that way. I never thought about what that command meant when it was given. This is a great.

Scott Beyer: And to your point, the strategy, the practice isn't I need to read more or larger passages or it, the strategy is slow down Put yourself in the story. Ask critical questions When you run into something that seems odd because it probably seems odd because you're missing something.

Ralph Walker: that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. I like to say, just read deeper. Don't read faster. Don't read longer. Just read deeper. 

Keep getting back into that text. I wonder why God said that, that way. I wonder why that prophet reacted that way. Why did he do that? You won't have every answer every time, but it will become a way of looking at the scriptures that makes it alive for us. 

Scott Beyer: So one aspect of what causes people to not read their Bible as often is the idea that we don't have good habits and we're not reading deeply. Another is sometimes you've probably run into this too, where people just feel like the, it's too big, right? The Bible, we say it's a book, but it's really an anthology of books, right?

It's 66 books. It's huge body of writing, and it's not all in chronological order. Some of it is certainly more difficult than others. And it's easy for somebody to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by that. W what? What advice would you give some to somebody who's in that spot where they're feeling like, oh, this is just too much.

I don't even know where to begin. I want to but I don't know what to do first.

Ralph Walker: Good. I would say two things don't read the Bible like a novel. I know we've been saying it's story.

Read it that way. Read it as story, but don't read the Bible like a novel. That is, I start in chapter one of Genesis one and read through to Revelation at the end of the Bible, 22, and I come to end and I've read the whole thing all through chronologically, as you just said, it's not necessarily set up chronologically.

There are some books that are to the right of other books as you're turning in a Bible. That's assuming you're not Jewish, cuz it would be the exact opposite in the Hebrew Bible. But there are books to the right of books that you're reading and they're actually newer than, are older than the books that you're reading.

And so they're not necessarily in chronological order. It's not a total mishmash. It has some reason to it, but it's not necessarily chronological. And a lot of people get they just get caught. They start in Genesis and that's really narrative. And you kinda love it, but there's also some pretty scary and stark and brutal stories in Genesis.

But you get through that and you get to Exodus and now we're in the. A great section up till chapter 20 of what's happening with the freedom of the Israelites to go into Canaan. And then you hit chapters 20 following, and it's all these regulations about the tabernacle and you're feeling Oh, about this.

And then you hit Leviticus, Leviticus. It's just like a killer. It's

Scott Beyer: every yearly Bible program ends, Leviticus it's where every, I'm gonna read the Bible in a year and it dies in Leviticus every year.

Ralph Walker: Somewhere in February, it all dies. Yeah. It's like the Mount Everest of of reading. So my point is Leviticus valuable? Oh, it absolutely is. And we'll talk a little more about those things as we continue with our discussion. But it may not be best to read the Bible through a novel.

In fact, I'm convinced it's not. I think probably early on you ought to pick and choose some books. The gospels are so easier to read than Leviticus or even Ecclesiastes or one of the prophets. So I think first is the idea. Don't read it like a novel. Pick and choose what you wanna read.

Psalms are great to read because they're very meditative and you can read one a day and it's like a, almost like a spiritual vitamin. It can help you that way. Not all of 'em are as clear as others. And Psalm one 19 better clear some time before you read that one all the way through in one day. But that will work and that will help, I think, to realize it is a book.

But as you said, it's, it contains. Prophetic books, it contains biographical books, it contains narratives, it contains instruction. All of those things are found and not all of those have the same value, particularly to a new reader of the word. But the second thing I would say is I just today was reading an article about a man who lives in Iowa, some small town in Iowa, and the guy since the 1990s has been building match stick creations.

He started out taking match sticks, the old kitchen matches and cutting the sulfur heads off of them. So they were just sticks. And for years he was building little little things like buildings monuments things. He was, they were replicas. Small replicas of things that were real in the world.

And one day his wife said, instead of cutting off those heads, why don't you contact the match companies and ask them if they would sell you the sticks without the sulfur heads on them. And he had to buy really large quantities to do that. But he bought, and Scott the things this guy has created are incredible.

He has he's in the rips, believe it or not, records now.

And in his small town, this guy has created a huge tourist attraction. He has a museum of all of the creations that he has a dragon, two-headed dragon that sits like four feet tall. You can't imagine if you saw the pictures, you can't imagine it's made outta match.

But here's one thing he said. They say, how do you do this? How do you do this? And he said, one stick at a time. And I thought yeah, that's how you do it. It reminds me of the guy said, you know what, man? I'm so hungry, I can eat an elephant. And another guy says, how could you possibly eat an elephant?

And he said, one bite at a time. And I think the way to look at the Bible is not to look at it as, oh my goodness I'm turning in my Bible right now. I have to read has My version here. Oh the New Testament starts over and I'm a terrible mathematician. But 1,300 plus pages in the Old Testament plus another, another 700 or so in the New Testament that's daunting.

Yeah. It's, but you don't have to worry about it. You read it one section at a time, one page at a time, one chapter at a time, one verse at a time. You take it in the smaller increments and then it's not so impossible to do that.

Scott Beyer: I'm not sure how popular of an opinion it is, but I tend to agree that at least in the beginning, you do not need to dive into Leviticus and numbers or the prophets.

Just grab the gospels, start there and be curious, and you'll find yourself, there are things in the gospels that, that quote from Leviticus, right? So you might find yourself wandering over there because of it, and that's great. But it's more about doing it than doing it all, and certainly not all at once. And, you've already touched on this a little bit, but when we approach the Bible, the goal as Christians should be. For it to do something to us. Not just to read it. I want it to do something.

How do you personally make sure that your Bible reading is transforming you and helping you to grow to be a different person, say five years from now than the person you are now?

Ralph Walker: Yeah. And the first part of that would be to have I'm fine with a person who has as their goal. I'm gonna read through the Bible in a year. I,

Scott Beyer: I am too. I am

Ralph Walker: I'm fine with that. But I also know sometimes I've done that and I got to the end of the year and I thought, okay, what did I learn from that?

And I didn't learn much, but I'll say this, I love the, the, I, I remember a story about a woman whose son came to her and he said, I read my Bible every day. I read it every day, and then I come at the end of the year. I'm wondering what difference did it make in life? I difference. And she put a bunch of dirt in the sve and then she put the SVE down in the water and she let the water run through it. She said, now how much water are you holding in that sve? And he picked it up and it said, none at all. She said, yeah, but look how clean. It's I think there's a part of us that just reading it makes a difference.

We don't even see in our lives just reading it, just putting the word in our hearts, treasuring it in our hearts. It makes a difference even when we don't always see that. But if I read the Bible with the idea, there's something, there's a message in this for me, now we're back to the kinda the letter concept that I started with today. If I'm thinking God has something to say to me today, it's not miraculous. It's not. He's gonna put my nose in a text I've never seen. It's not flipping pages Bible and its open. Whatever it eyes stick my finger's wants. For me, it's not that kind. He has a message for me. But there is something valuable on every page of the Bible.

And what I wanna do today is I wanna read what part I'm gonna read, whether it's pal or whether it's a proverb, or whether it's the Gospel of Mark or the Book of Jude. There's something here today. Is gonna be valuable to me. I wanna read until it speaks to me. I'm gonna stay here until something speaks to me and I don't, again, I'm not saying that's miraculous, that the Holy Spirit will move in your heart to help you understand a verse you never understood before.

But I think we're back to the careful reading idea that I shared a few moments ago, and there's something of value. So it's a matter of staying there till it, it makes itself apparent to me and that the Bible is meant not just to inform me, but it is meant to transform me. It's meant to transform, not just inform.

And if that's true, then I find myself becoming. To the word I become informed and that transforms and I become conformed to the word. I become more like the word I'm reading, and so I think that's how the Bible becomes real to us, not just a task that we check off. Though again, I'm fine.

If somebody says, what I accomplished last year was I read all the way through the Bible I think that's a good thing and I would commend somebody for that. But just reading to be informed isn't the goal.

Scott Beyer: Yeah. And I would feel the same way, and I've done the same thing. I've made a goal in past years where I said, my goal this year is to read through all the Bible. It's not a bad thing to do that, but I would also push back as you have a little bit to say. That can't be the only goal.

Ralph Walker: Yeah. 

Scott Beyer: I like that idea of I'm gonna read today until there's something that grabs me.

And I say, oh, okay. That's something that has caught my attention, caught my heart and I can now chew on that through the rest of my day. How do you handle the difficult passages, right? So some of the passages that people are gonna deal with are are easier than others.

Like you mentioned the gospels, the narrative in the gospels is so straightforward and. That's part of what makes it beautiful. It's profound. It's very deep, but it's not particularly hard to understand. But you jump over to the language of Amos or you're certainly looking at the New Testament revelation.

These are harder things. The book of Romans, Peter even had some things to say about Paul. Paul wrote hard things and I, I always think it's funny when you have one apostle saying, yeah, that other apostle, he writes hard stuff. How do you approach difficult or challenging passages like that how would you recommend somebody handle those?

Ralph Walker: I think there's a couple of things again that would help us in that. First of all, the Bible, unlike books that we had in school. Books that were age appropriate. If I'm a third grader there, nobody's given me a book that has basic math and calculus in the same book.

The Bible contains milk and meat. It's got some pretty easy to understand things. It's hard to not understand. Thou shall not bear false witness, even in the old King James version. It's pretty hard to say to hear somebody. It's pretty unusual to hear somebody say, I don't even understand that.

We do understand that there are some things pretty simple, but there are some things that are pretty complex and Peter talks about desiring the sincere milk of the word. There's a point at which, you're not able to handle the harder things, so you need to make sure you're staying with where you are.

A baby can't eat steak, he can't gum it. And he needs milk, or she needs milk. But as you get older, then you can have harder things. And I think a person who's maybe just starting out or fairly new in the Bible needs to understand. I'm gonna run across things I'm not gonna understand. That's okay. In time I will, but right now I can't do that.

I just, I, so there are, there, you can observe the Passover. Sometimes, I'll move past this and I'll come back to it sometime later. Now if you find yourself doing that with every verse of the Bible, then it leads to the second thing that I would say, and that is work by sweat. Where, there is a point at which, again, the digging deeper, the staying in a text for a little while the putting yourself in the text.

How would I have reacted if I had been there? Wait, why does that word say that? Why does that repetition there, why does it keep repeating that same thought? Maybe there's a reason for all that. If I start developing that cognitive awareness that the Bible is trying to teach me something and sometimes in cryptic ways, then I can start reading deeper the deeper things and I can work by sweat and stay with it.

Stay with it. Again, I know that sounds contradictory. I thought you just said a moment ago, just didn't observe the Passover. You'll get a sense pretty quickly of whether this is something I can comprehend early or not. And one of the best things to do is to ask questions. If somebody says, if you said to somebody in your church I really wanna start a Bible reading program I wanna read, but I've done this. Read Matthew, because his is pretty easy to understand from the chronological array of stories and messages from Jesus all the way through to the end. It's pretty chronological. Luke does a similar thing. Mark jumps in and John's is a little more esoteric, but all of them, all four of them are good reading.

So maybe starting with something like that, nobody's gonna tell you, oh, you're a new ti, you're a new reader. Listen, you should start with Jeremiah and Lamentation. Those are great books. No not for a new reader that's not gonna work. So know there's no, there's meat, but don't give up on everything that seems difficult at first.

Stay with it a little bit and see if it doesn't start making itself.

Scott Beyer: So it, it's okay to give your permission, self permission to just move on sometimes

that this is a bit murky. I'm gonna move on so I don't lose the continuity of what I'm doing. But on the other hand, sometimes you can tie, try and wade in a little bit and maybe it's just a little bit of practice to figure out what times are the best to give yourself a pass and which times you should chew on it a little longer.

Ralph Walker: That's a,

Scott Beyer: Okay? Okay. One aspect that I have found and you can tell me if you disagree, but I found people who are good long-term Bible students. I don't like to use the word scholar cuz I

Ralph Walker: yeah. Yeah.

Scott Beyer: a scholar, but Bible

Ralph Walker: I.

Scott Beyer: Disciples of the word, they're consistent. One of the there's a consistency. They might miss a day here or there, but overall you would say, yeah, they're, they have a habit of regularly reading their Bible and it looks very different for different people. But that consistency and discipline has to happen at some point at least in my view But the trade off to that is it sometimes is challenging to maintain consistency and life is hard.

How do you cultivate that regular Bible habit? So you overcome the obstacles that will inevitably come.

Ralph Walker: A couple of things I think that might help Scott. One is, for people who say, I just don't have time I would say, why don't you go to your, go look at your phone and see what your usage was this past week, your phone usage. How much time did you spend with your cell phone this past week?

And I'll guarantee you it's hours and nobody's minutes, not for a week. So do you think you could carve out one hour of the telephone usage? Could you carve that out and reserve that for a study of the Bible? Because if you did that five days a week, you're talking 10, 15 minutes a day to, to study the Bible.

Now, is that where you wanna be ultimately? Is that where the people you're saying are good Bible students? No, they're beyond that. But that's a start. You don't say, I think I'm gonna run a marathon when they got one tomorrow. I think I'm gonna sign up for it. You don't start that.

You start out with, I can run a block and then I can run two blocks, and then I've done that for four weeks. Now I can run three blocks and four and five, and before you know it, you can run a marathon. I would start small. I wouldn't be too ambitious. That would be the first thing that I would recommend.

Secondly, I would recommend Bible read. And I'm gonna tell you this, and I you may disagree and some of your listeners, I'm certain will don't try to read your Bible daily off your phone. It's just not the best source for reading. You have to constantly scroll. You can't read sections. You're only, it's it's almost like reading the Bible through a paper tube where you have to constantly be moving the tube to get all of the words you want to read.

Whereas a page gives you context. You can see what was before it. You can go back and look at it again. And I don't have to touch it at all. I can just use my eyes and this scrolling, constant flipping up up. And depending on how good your eyes are, if you, if your font is huge, then it's even more often than that. It's not the best daily Bible reading source will it do? If I'm in an office, I'm sitting there waiting to see a doctor or I have an appointment. It's great to have a Bible on my phone. That is great. I can pull it up, I can do a little bit of reading and I can put it back off. That's great.

Kinda like the Kindle. You and I both have that. I like a lot for that reason, it's carryable manageable and I can store an awful lot of stuff on it.

Scott Beyer: The convenience is definitely something worth considering 

Ralph Walker: yes.

Scott Beyer: its own downfalls.

Ralph Walker: Yeah, it does. And part of that is the ease of reading. So I would say get a Bible that you can read. Easily. You can read it in the brightest light or even in dim light, get one like that. Some people want a Bible that has wide margins so they can make notes on it. Other people want one with a lot of help.

It does. I'm not saying one's better than the other. They all have purposes. But find a Bible that you'd say, this feels good. It's about the right weight. It's something I could carry with me. I can get it up in the morning and take it into the living room and I don't have to put it on a cart and get it there cause it's so big.

Whatever the Bible is, invest in a good Bible. And some people say, what do you mean invest? That sounds like a lot of money. Listen, is it too much to spend a hundred or $150 on the Bible that has the message from God for you, that you might use for the rest of your life? You might for the rest of your life.

That's. That's not too much to pay for God's word. But it doesn't have to be that much. It may be a $29 Bible with large print, whatever it is, get a readable Bible that won't strain your eyes and will help you to get through your readings on a regular basis. And I think that's the first thing.

And then the second thing, and you mentioned it, get in a routine. Just a routine. I don't know if you're an early morning person and you wanna get up and do your reading before everybody gets up. I've seen, I've been in many homes where I got up in the morning and my host is there at the kitchen table and they've got a cup of coffee and they got their Bible out and they're just sitting there crosslegged looking at the Bible and reading it, welcoming me.

Getting a routine where you do that. And it might be a commute to work.

 Something as simple as, I've got 20 minutes, 30 minutes every day commuting to work.

And you might say, I'll listen to the Bible. I'll just listen to it. I, you can buy the Bible and you can download it and listen to it. And somebody might say that's not as good as reading. I want to tell you something. Until well into the modern age, nobody had a bible.

only way they knew the word of God was by memorizing it and hearing it.

And if that's the case for them, that's also true for us. Let him who has ears to hear what the spirit says to the churches.

Scott Beyer: Yeah, so you've made an argument that I have I a hundred percent agree with you on because there a, any medium you get the Bible from, has its pros and its cons. Right. When I'm listening, the difficult thing is to go back, right? I'm listening and so I can't go back and reading allows an option, but people historically have listened to their Bible.

Much more than they've read it. I have an app on my phone and when I'm when I'm driving, I will often turn it on. And I have a Bible reading program. It's, I'm weird. I have multiple Bible reading programs going at any given time, but this is just like my car one and I just, whenever I'm in the car and I have some extra time, I'll hit play.

And there are definitely things that I have picked up because I heard it that I never would've picked up if I'd been reading it. So it does go both directions. There are pros to reading, but there are definitely, I think, pros to the audio audiobook style.

Ralph Walker: absolutely. I, yeah the listening to the word reveals things that reading cannot. You and I are preachers and I don't know if you've ever manuscripted one of your sermons, but I'll guarantee you if you gave someone a written copy of one of your sermons word by word, or they could listen to you preaching it. Most of them would say it came alive when you preached it. I got the information, but it came alive when you preached it. Because what I read is we shouldn't do this in the manuscript you pointed a finger and said, we shouldn't do this, and it had impact. So the hearing of the word, hearing of the word has a value that reading doesn't have.

Yep. You and I are on the same page of that.

Scott Beyer: So in that same vein, so you have these different tools. So now we start looking in the commentaries things that'll give you historical context. You can look at inner linears going to the original Greek and Hebrew.

How important is that once you start moving that direction and looking at those things? How important is that? Or not important is it for somebody who's trying to learn to love the Bible deeply,

Ralph Walker: I would make this comparison. My father was really good with crafts. He just, he was good. His hands were good at that. And he had a father, my grandfather, who was a carpenter and my grandfather had an incredible array of tools of all kinds old tools, alls wrenches and pliers and screwdrivers, bill lore.

And I would go to the store and I'd buy a six in one screwdriver. It's got six different heads and that's it. Can I accomplish with that, what I need to do on a moderate level in my home? Yeah. But can I do what a craftsman can do with all their tools? Not at all. So I would say early on, I don't know that I'd worry a lot about commentaries and AIDS books and all those other kind of extraneous things that tell me about the Bible.

I think I would probably invest in one of two or both things. One, I would get a good study Bible. Now that's not necessarily the one I would read from all the time, but a study Bible will usually have an introduction to each of the books of the Bible, so I can find out when it was written, a little bit about the author, a little bit about the times in which he wrote and what he's trying to accomplish with his book and how it relates to other books in the Bible.

So it, that's valuable to have that background in context. And then it will give me maps. So that when it says they went from Dan to Shiba, I can look at a map and go, oh, there's Dan way up north and there's Shiba way down south. Oh wow. That's like almost like from the top to the bottom, which is what the expression

means. Yeah. So a study bible would be helpful and frankly, there, there are all kinds of good study bibles, but I really like, even though I'm not an E S V user, I love the E S V study Bible. I've got four or five study bibles. That's the one I find myself going to more often than any of the others, to look at what it says by way of background and what it says by way of text.

I really like it. It's a good one. Now, some people, and my wife is one of these loves the Thompson Chain reference Bible, which is just a really good Bible that it's called the Chain Reference because it'll give you a word that's used in the Bible and then it'll tell you other places where that word is used and it connects you to all the uses of that phrase or term. Almost all of the Bible connected in great ways. Then it's got some wonderful helps in the back. To look at topics. It's a good, it's a good source, but again, it's a study Bible. It's a help bible. It's got the Bible itself, but a bunch of helps already in it. The only other thing I might would get would be some kind of introduction to the Bible that would tell me book by book some of the things that the study Bible would tell me, but maybe other things that might be equally valuable.

Beyond that, commentaries are helpful. If a commentary is not helpful, we don't need teachers. We all can just read the Bible. We can just read the Bible and it says what it says to us, and that's all that matters. So commentaries are just the thoughts many times of really good teachers. Of the word.

There's students who have studied enough to gain benefits from this and they, and then they share the benefits they found in the word with all of us. So they're valuable. Now, again, it depends on how good the commentator is. Just like you've had good teachers and bad teachers when you were in school, you can have good teachers and bad teachers of the Bible.

So recommendations are helpful, but I wouldn't read with a commentary on one hand and the Bible in the other. Cuz what ends up happening is I start looking more at the commentary, less at the Bible, and then all the things that you and I have been talking about for the last hour go by the wayside.

The reading deeply, the putting yourself in this story.

All I'm looking for now is, what does that verse mean? I don't know. Let me look at the commentary. Oh, that's what he says it means. Okay. I'll go to the next verse. Damn man. We lose a lot.

Scott Beyer: Yeah, the danger is we end up reading more about what others say about the Bible than reading the Bible. And that's a dangerous thing. But to your point, commentaries are just it's written down. Classes. So one good source in today's modern Age for commentary says if there are preachers that you trust as good Bible teachers and you're reading through a book, go listen to their class on it.

And that can be an, a helpful commentary without even, typically you don't have to buy anything that's, you can just go online to a lot of times and hear Ralph Walker teach on the book. There's a lot of tools, but to your point, be careful that the tools don't become crutches.

Ralph Walker: That's right. That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Scott Beyer: Ralph, I've already taken up a ton of your time and I'm so grateful for it. I guess my last question would be, if somebody was listening to this, they've not been a regular Bible reader, but that's bothered them.

Their conscience is pricked. I want to love the word and I want to read deeply, and I want all these things we've been talking about. So they're gonna finish this podcast and then they're gonna go do something. Give me a first step you'd give to that person who wanted to foster a genuine love for scripture Starting right now.

Ralph Walker: I think I would say don't let this be a New Year's resolution. You know how I've talked to people that work at the health clubs and the recreational centers and this I remember one time we joined the rec center first of the year, and it was so packed.

It was so crowded. The first couple of times Paula and I went and I said to the guy I don't know if this is gonna work for me, because there's a lot of people here, and I don't know that I have that much time to just wait for machines or equipment to come open. And he goes, give it a couple of weeks.

This'll all be easy because a lot of people make a start, but they can't finish. They don't keep it up. So I would say, first of all, don't wait for the new year. You can start reading the Bible anytime. If you read this, if you hear this podcast and you say, I wanna start, I'd say, good start tomorrow, get a Bible and start tomorrow.

Go to one of the gospels and start reading. Read a chapter a day if you can. If you can't read 10 verses a day. If you can only read a verse a day, go to Proverbs, read one proverb a day and see how it works for you. But start, and then number two is commit. Commit yourself. I'm not just gonna start it.

I'm gonna keep going with this. This is not gonna be a fly by night thing for me. And then I would just say, keep going. Just keep going. And on the idea of how to keep going and how to commit, I would suggest it really helps to have an accountability partner. Why don't you find somebody else? I. At your church, in your family, in your neighborhood at work, why don't you go to them and say, Hey, you know what?

I was listening to these guys on this podcast and they convinced me I need to read the Bible every day, but I don't do that. I'll almost guarantee you your friend doesn't read it either. And you could say, why don't we do that together? We'll read a chapter a day, five days a week, and we'll start with the gospel of Matthew and let's do that together.

And then every day, or at the end of the week, we can say, what one thing did you learn or what'd you gain from it? Having an accountability partner makes a big difference in whether you'll stay with it or not. That's my advice.

Scott Beyer: And it's good advice. It's true in every other thing, right? That we know that accountability makes a difference. And we, I've got several studies that go on a pretty regular basis with with people in the congregation and just knowing I'm gonna be meeting with And we're gonna be studying Hebrews seven. And he's gonna ask me, what did you get out of the chapter means? I gotta read the chapter. Even if it's at 1130 at night, the night before I, I'm not going to bed without reading that chapter. It does put your feet to the fire and sometimes that's what we all need.

Ralph Walker: I'll close with this, Scott. I, when I was living in Cleveland, Mississippi I, there was a place opened up downtown called the Coin OEA Coffee Shop. I thought there's probably a religious people that are gonna be there based on the name, and that was the case. So I happened to go in there one day.

I had done my bible study at the church building where I had an office, and then I decided I'm gonna go down there. I don't, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I'll get a soft drink. So I go in and I sit down at the counter and there's people all around and I'm at the counter and I ordered a coke, and I they give me the Coke and I, next thing I know there's a guy on the stool next to me and he sits down, he introduces himself by name and he has a Bible, and he slides it over in front of me and he says, tell me what God's been teaching you lately. Now, it just so happened I had been in the book of Hebrews and I said here's what he's been teaching me today. And I turned to that book in Hebrews to the book of Hebrews. I turned to the chapter and the verses and we started studying together and we studied for 15, 20 minutes. He goes, Hey man.

Thanks. I appreciate that. Now, do you think the next time I went into that Coin OEA coffee house that I went without having pre-read something, because that was the practice there. So there was an accountability even for a guy like me who's a preacher and lives by studying the word of God. That's what I'm blessed to do by the brethren who work with me.

Even in that case, I needed that accountability and it was really good for me to do that. So yeah, accountability helps.