from How to Read the Bible
by David Platt
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As we know, God’s Word is plentifully available in the West and within the church, yet too often the Bibles within believers’ reach go unread and unstudied, gathering dust on shelves or taking up space as seldom-opened apps on mobile devices.
Neglecting the treasures God has spoken to us through the Scriptures has deeply affected our culture and the larger world, leaving a scarred landscape of broken relationships, addiction, anxiety, discouragement, and more.
Ministry leaders who have seen these effects firsthand know there is a wiser way—a way that leads to deep love, everlasting joy, life-changing hope, death-defying courage, and never-ending peace. That way is rooted in spending regular, focused, engaged time in God’s Word. As a help in welcoming people back to the Bible with fresh eyes, pastor and author David Platt has developed a four-step MAPS approach: meditate/memorize, apply, pray, and share.
MAPS is calibrated in part to counter some of the reasons today’s professing followers of Jesus give for not reading the Word. Those include:
- “I don’t understand how the Bible applies to my life.”
- “I’ve tried, but I just don’t know how.”
- “Isn’t studying the Bible the pastor’s job?”
- “I just don’t have time.”
- “I just don’t have a desire to study God’s Word.”
The approach is also designed to redirect those who are prone to read the Bible from a more self-oriented perspective, perhaps viewing it through one of these distorted lenses:
- The Emotional Approach: What feels good to me?
- The Pragmatic Approach: What works best for me?
- The Spiritual Approach: What deep, hidden meaning is there for me?
- The Superficial Approach: What does this mean to me?
The common denominator in those questions, the word “me,” betrays a consumeristic mindset. By contrast, a much more dependable approach is embodied in the MAPS method. Let’s look a bit more closely at each aspect of the acrostic:
1. Meditate on and memorize God’s Word.
Reading the Bible can involve merely seeing or saying the words without pausing to ponder what they mean. The goal can become simply checking off a box and moving on to something else. But meditation is different. Meditating on the Bible involves thinking deeply about what we’re reading and reflecting prayerfully on what it means. God calls us not to just read his Word but to “meditate on it day and night” (Psalm 1:1–3).
Similarly, memorization is a practical way we can meditate on God’s Word. It involves repeating the Word over and over again in our minds, and sometimes with our mouths, until it becomes second nature. The psalmist wrote, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you (119:11). Memorization is the process of “storing up” God’s Word in a way that helps us walk with God in our lives.
2. Apply the Scriptures to every layer of our lives.
It’s possible to meditate on and memorize God’s Word yet miss the point. God warns, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). As that passage continues, God emphasizes listening and looking into his Word. But if we stop there, we’ll deceive ourselves and miss the point altogether. Of course, no one obeys God’s Word flawlessly, so we shouldn’t expect perfection. But for those who have God’s Spirit living in them, there should be evidence that the Word is gradually transforming their lives.
3. Pray the Bible with bold faith that God will give us what we ask.
This third step in experiencing intimacy with God through studying the Bible is vital for faith and spiritual growth. What makes it even more life-giving is the fact that neither prayer nor Bible study is a one-way street. As we prayerfully invest time studying the Scriptures, we hear from God, and this naturally (or better put, supernaturally) leads to expressing our hearts to him as he hears from us. That aligns with another scripture, Matthew 6:7–8, which warns against wordy, empty prayers because “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
4. Share the Word with the people right around us and around the world.
Finally, in Jesus’ parting command after his resurrection, we find him instructing his followers to go and make disciples, baptizing and teaching them in his name (Matthew 28:19–20). When some lay believers see the word teaching, they think, Since I’m not a preacher or don’t have a gift for teaching God’s Word, this is not for me. And yes, the Bible does talk about gifts and callings related to teaching God’s Word, but that’s not the only way it speaks of passing on his Word to others.
In fact, God says to all of his people, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7). These instructions from God in the Old Testament lay the foundation for Jesus’ instructions in the New Testament. Jesus is telling each of us to pass God’s Word on to others in a way that helps them know and obey it.
Ultimately, it remains vital to remind those in our congregations that studying the Scriptures is intended to be much more than a dry, scholarly exercise. God has sent His Word as a love letter to us, and as we engage it wisely and consistently, we will not only grow in knowledge but also encounter a life-transforming love—a love that is well worth giving our all to pursue.
About the Author:
David Platt serves as a lead pastor for McLean Bible Church and is the founder and chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations. David holds a bachelor’s from the University of Georgia and an MDiv, ThM, and PhD from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. His published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back. He lives in the Washington, DC, area with his wife and children.