Changing Your Mind

"The beginning of a New Year is an an excellent time to try something new. As you make your list of resolutions and goals I want to recommend adding a simple four step process that could transform your life by, quite literally, changing your mind."

So begins a little post by Joe Carter on the Gospel Coalition blog which I recommend reading in it's entirety, not least for this quote by James M. Gray: "I saw something in his Christian life to which I was a comparative stranger—peace, a rest, a joy, a kind of spiritual poise I knew little about." Like, spiritual poise? I love old-fashioned Christians.*
However, if you're pressed for time, here is the method for changing your mind:
"1. Choose a book of the Bible.
2. Read it in its entirety.
3. Repeat step #2 twenty times.
4. Repeat this process for all books of the Bible."

I have been working my slow, sporadic way through the Bible for the last four years or so, and am currently in Luke. I struggle with slowing down to meditate or muse on the text-- as a reader I read to kill: fast and ruthless with zero patience for reading extraneous details, often taking in whole pages at a glance or two. This is a great method for breezing through fiction but it isn't a great method for mining the depths and riches of Scripture. I have been so appreciating already my second read-through of Luke; there are so many insights I missed, questions I didn't even think to ask, and details that slipped through my speed-reading fingers the first time around. It's a little early to say whether my mind has been changed, but I'm looking forward to continuing this journey.


*This is from his 1904 book How To Master The English Bible , available in a $0.99 Kindle edition. Linked through my Amazon Affiliates account.