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Praying Scripture: Deepening Your Devotional Life Through God’s Word

Combining two spiritual disciplines. For many Christians, the simplest and most common advice for spiritual growth is to “read the Bible and pray.” While both spiritual disciplines are essential on their own, they become especially powerful when combined into one discipline: praying Scripture. This ancient yet often overlooked practice brings life to our prayers and grounds them in God’s Word. What is praying Scripture? Praying Scripture means using the words of the Bible to guide our prayers. This can involve reciting biblical prayers verbatim, personalizing passages, or praying through biblical themes and stories. Professor Evan B. Howard defines it as “ordering one’s time of prayer around a particular text in the Bible.” Whether it’s a psalm of lament, a passage on love, a proverb, or a call to holiness, Scripture gives voice and shape to our deepest desires and needs. Think of prayer as a conversation with God, which He

Patmos World Bible Attitudes Survey: What 90,000 People Reveal About the Bible Today

Patmos Survey: What 90,000 People Reveal About the Bible Today

The Global Pulse on Scripture In a world where nearly everyone can access a Bible with a tap on a smartphone, a crucial question remains: What do people worldwide think of it? The Patmos World Bible Attitudes Survey—commissioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society and United Bible Societies and conducted by Gallup—offers the most comprehensive global snapshot ever taken on Bible attitudes, beliefs, and engagement. A Groundbreaking Study For three years, researchers gathered data from 91,139 adults across 85 countries, representing 3.8 billion people. In total, the project analyzed religious, cultural, economic, and political contexts across 150 countries to form a globally representative picture of perceptions and use of the Bible. By dividing the world into seven distinct “mission clusters,” the study reveals how context—sociopolitical, economic, or religious—profoundly shapes people’s engagement with the Bible. From secular Europe to vibrant sub-Saharan Africa, the Patmos Initiative offers rich insights into global attitudes toward Scripture,

Thirty Inspiring Bible Engagement Quotes

Inspiring Bible engagement quotes … Are you seeking inspiration to read the Bible or longing for a deeper connection with God’s Word? These quotes about the Bible from well-known theologians, pastors, and Christian thinkers will encourage you to open your heart to the Scriptures. Whether you’re new to Bible study or a seasoned believer, these insights and reflections will remind you of the Bible’s power to transform, nourish, and guide you. Here are thirty inspiring Bible engagement quotes to motivate and invigorate you to connect with the Scriptures and the One of whom they speak: One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is this: that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and censorious – J.I. Packer. God wrote His message in a book. He asks you to come and study that book for three compelling reasons: it’s essential for growth. It’s essential for maturity. It’s essential

Man using AI to help read and study the Bible

Using AI in Bible Engagement: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Path Forward

Connecting people with God’s Word. Using AI in Bible engagement … We’re rapidly and constantly building innovative artificial intelligence (AI). Bible-specific GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers) exist right now. They work with giant information databases to generate words, images, code, and more in response to prompts the user enters. Do GPTs excite or concern you, or are your thoughts and feelings neutral? Opportunities and challenges. AI is profoundly transforming how people engage with various types of information, including religious texts such as the Bible. With the progressive digitization of oral and written communication, connections to all forms of literature are being enhanced. Yet, many Christian individuals and churches appear ill-prepared to address the challenges and opportunities AI presents. The widening gap between Bible engagement and AI cannot be ignored. As the methodology for connecting people with the Scriptures falls behind the digital wave of knowledge and information, it creates obstacles to

Practical Tips for Parents and Teachers to help kids read the Bible

Practical Tips for Parents and Teachers: How to Teach Children to Engage with God’s Word

How to teach children to engage with God’s Word … Here are four practical tips: Connect. Children have shorter attention spans than adults, and the use of technology has inadvertently trained their brains to engage in multitasking behaviours. In a digital world of sound bites and reels, it’s highly unlikely that a child will read the Bible the way you read it. Children are also predisposed to visual and auditory learning. Sixty-five percent prefer to see pictures, and thirty percent choose to listen to stories and music. Seventy-five percent of children cannot read fluently, and about forty percent are non-readers. We should recognize that most children do not want to read the Bible silently or aloud in an online or printed format. If they are going to connect with God’s Word, we must help them see and hear it using videos, comic strips, illustrated or audio versions of the Bible.

Saturated With the Word

Saturated with the Word “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly …” Colossians 3:16. What an excellent directive! It’s a crucial verse of Scripture itemizing an essential aspect of Christian faith: To be shaped by the Word, we must be saturated with the Word. Saturated with the Word … Bible engagement should extend into every facet of everyday living, working and playing. So, how can God’s Word, in all its richness, fill our lives? According to the Bible Engagement Project, by allowing the practical, emotional and missional spheres of our lives to be heavily and positively influenced by the Word of God. Practical Bible Engagement Practical Bible engagement involves regular, disciplined interaction with the Bible, such as attending church services, participating in small groups or Sunday school, or having an accountability partner for Bible reading. It also includes personal habits like daily Bible reading, prayerful reflection, and memorizing

Jesus at the Center: Understanding God’s Story

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” Luke 24:27 (NIV). Understanding God’s Story … The Bible tells one big Story composed of many smaller stories in two testaments. The account begins with God creating the world and placing the first man and woman in His garden to tend and enjoy it. It ends with Him creating a new world as the final destiny for the redeemed humanity. Between these bookends, God connects with Israel and then with Israel and the world in Jesus. The climax of this grand narrative is Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. He’s not merely a character in the story but the long-awaited Messiah, the very embodiment of God’s love and faithfulness. His presence is transformative, redeeming, restoring, and liberating. Paradoxically, many Israelites rejected Him, making it possible for the outsiders (Gentiles) to become

How Do I Pick A Bible For My Child?

Are you wondering how to pick a Bible for your child? With so many options, where do you begin, and how do you decide which one’s the best? Here are three guidelines to help you pick the right Bible for your child. Assess your child’s reading level. Bibles have different reading levels. For example, the King James Version has a grade 12 reading level, and the New International Reader’s Version has a grade 3 reading level. If your child is in grade 3, the obvious selection is the NIrV. Determine your child’s learning style. Children gather information differently and don’t fit neatly into the visual, aural, reading/writing, or kinesthetic learning categories. If your child’s more of a visual learner, consider a comic-style Bible or colouring Bible. Select an age-appropriate audio Bible on Bible Gateway if your child is more of an auditory learner. Choose an age-appropriate Bible. Abridged Bibles are

Fractured Bible Engagement

In a fallen world, our interaction with God’s Word mainly takes the form of fractured Bible engagement. No one can completely embrace and engage with the full spectrum of God’s Word. The carnal human inclination, deliberately and instinctively, is to subvert God’s Story to shrivelled segmented versions that fit our theological and socio-political beliefs. As such, our interpretations of God’s Story end up, in greater or lesser degrees, distorting His message and undermining His mission. Denominationalism exasperates the problem. Churches select and teach the Bible stories and verses that advance their agenda. Both inside and outside the Bible, churches locate themselves in exclusive storylines. They choose the narratives that dovetail with their theological biases and socio-political agendas and then connect the pieces to create dogma that defines and directs their preferred outcomes. Fractured Bible engagement leads to fractured relationships. Fractured Bible engagement leads to fractured relationships. There are 2 billion

Sodom Had No Bible

Sodom had no Bible … British evangelist and author Leonard Ravenhill made a significant impression on me as a young Christian. Ravenhill was one in a thousand. He was an old-fashioned prophet, prayer warrior, and intrepid preacher of the truth. It was impossible to hear him speak or read his writings and remain indifferent. One of Ravenhill’s abilities was to create insightful spiritual maxims. He said many things about the Bible. Here are some of his observations from his book Sodom Had No Bible: Sodom had no Bible. We have millions. Sodom perished … The only reason we are not smoking in the fire-wrath of a holy God is mercy, m-e-r-c-y, prolonged mercy! In many parts of the earth, the Word of the Lord is being blamed, burned or banned … we have no apologies to make for the Bible. It is God’s final word to man. It is an

Let the Bible be the Bible!

Do we really believe we can exercise control over God’s Word? Can the extraordinary be reduced to the ordinary? Can we grasp what’s sacred with our minds? Can the Story that runs deeper than our stories be governed by us? Can those in the world order the Word that brings order to the world?

What Does the Bible Say About Reading the Bible?

Christians have many good reasons for reading the Bible, and many books and articles extol the merits of Bible reading. But what does the Bible say about reading the Bible? Here are ten observations.