A Simple Way to Build a Daily Habit of Reading the Bible

If you’ve ever wanted to spend more time reading the Bible but felt overwhelmed or struggled with consistency, this episode is for you. In this second mini episode of my Habits series, I share a simple, doable way to build a daily Bible reading habit, even in busy or demanding seasons of life.

Learn why consistency matters more than length, how daily time in God’s Word shapes our faith and identity, and a 15-minute practice that has helped me stay grounded in God’s truth over the years (even with small children at home). You’ll also hear practical ways to make this habit easier to remember, easier to return to, and easier to sustain.

If you’re longing for a deeper relationship with God and want a habit that will support your faith and your God-shaped dream as a Christian woman, now is the perfect time to begin.

Get the Habit Tracker at merrittonsa.com/habits

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Transcript

Merritt Onsa:
What is something you could do today that would impact your God shaped dream and your ability to persevere in it for the long haul? 

Hi, I'm Merritt Onsa, your Devoted Dreamers host, and I am an authority on what it looks like to pursue a God shaped dream. And over the next several mini episodes, I'm going to be talking about building simple, small habits that will build into you confidence and the consistency you need to run your race after the dream God has given you. Let's build some new habits.

Today I want to talk about one of the most important habits that we as Christians can establish in our lives. And I know that you know what I'm about to say, but hold on. I'm probably going to explain this habit to you in a way that is new to you. This habit is daily time in God's word. How in the world are we to know how God sees us, who we are, how we are to live if we're not reading God's word. 

I became a Christian as an adult, and so establishing a habit of being in God's word was a really new and difficult thing for me. It's something that I desperately needed at the beginning of my Christian walk. And then as things became more common to me, as scripture became more known to me, as I had read the Bible more than once. And when I would read, I would be like, well, I've already read this. I don't read other books more than once. Why would I read God's word? 

Well, I think we all know the answer to this, that we need the reminder. It's one of the reasons that we gather on Sundays for corporate worship because the gospel comes in to our mind. Sometimes we allow it to penetrate our hearts and we walk out the door of church on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening, whenever you attend, we walk out the door and life hits you in the face. You struggle with traffic. You're battling your children. You're dealing with just the difficulties of life. And all of a sudden you have forgotten the gospel. 

I'm speaking for myself. Maybe you too, but daily word time, even the way that that is languaged: daily word time, I have to attribute to my friend Tabitha Bigby of Everyday Faith who introduced me to a very simple way to have a consistent habit of being in God's Word every day. Because for the longest time I thought, if it wasn't 45 minutes or an hour, then it wasn't enough, or it wasn't worth it, or I wasn't getting enough time. If I didn't have 45 minutes, well, certainly I was never gonna be able to read the Bible in a year. But daily Word time, this is a habit of 15 minutes a day, ideally at the same time every day that you would dig in, read God's word, trust the Holy Spirit that he will speak to you through the scriptures and to ask him to help you carry that with you into your day. 

And I love how Tabitha illustrates this practice. The prayer at the beginning is, Holy Spirit, I trust you. Speak to me through your word. And then she has lists of thematic verses of scripture that you could read about hope for an entire month or you could read about the Holy Spirit for an entire month. She has these month-long reading plans of just a few short verses at a time that you would read it, that you would write it out because when we write something different happens in our brain and we hear it we receive it differently and then that you would go through and ask yourself:

What are the facts? What are these verses or what is this verse saying that is factual? Like God is love. Identify and acknowledge those facts. I like to write them down. Even if it's repeating something I've already wrote; that is not wasted time, God's word never returns void. And then the second question is, what are my thoughts about these facts? And then you can expand this beyond 15 minutes if you happen to have that time in your day, you can think through or Google, you know, what other verses in scripture support these facts that I've read here or could inform these thoughts that I've had here. And then I like to write the facts down. I like to write the thoughts down and I like to write any corroborating verses, just the address so that I could come back to that later, if I wanted to remember, well, what was it that God showed me about reading his scripture on that particular day or about this particular topic that I was reading? And then at the end of your time in God's Word, the simple prayer is, Lord, help me to take this into my day. And then before you get up from your seat, make an appointment with yourself and with the Lord to do it again tomorrow. 

I'm the kind of person who has a bit of a tendency to want to overdo things or attempt to do things perfectly. So when I first started doing this, it felt almost wrong to me to say that my daily word habit was only 15 minutes. But as a mom of young kids for a couple of years, homeschooling, running a business, running a household, caring for my aging parents, sometimes 15 minutes feels like a privilege to have that much time to spend in God's word.

And I have found in this practice, some days I get longer, some days I get shorter, but the consistency of being in God's word is what supports me and uplifts me and gives me the strength that I need to continue to run after God and be reminded of him and his truth and his gospel on an everyday basis. If you don't have a habit of being in God's word every day, why not consider 15 minutes a day daily word time? I guarantee you that it will change your life.

At the end of each one of these habit episodes, I want to talk briefly about how to make it easy because building new habits isn't always easy, even if it's something that we know we want to do. And so with each habit we cover, I'm going to speak for just a few moments about particular ways we can make this habit a little bit easier to hold on to. Let's make it easy. Tabitha always says some minutes in the word is better than no minutes in the word. ⁓

I take that to heart. is so true. And so if you get some minutes, if you get five or three, it's better than no minutes. So if this is a habit that you want to pick up or that you know, you need to pick up this year, I urge you to do it in a way that's repeatable and easy to remember. I like kind of this at the same time every day or attaching it to something that I'm already doing, like guaranteed, I'm already doing it every day. Like I like to read the word while I'm eating lunch.

So that that is like coded into your brain, into your habit builder up there so that even if you miss it, like today I missed my daily word time, but there's still hours remaining. So the fact that I remembered it as I was recording this episode, I am going to stop right here when I'm done or you know, whatever it is that day, as soon as I can, as soon as I remember it, as soon as my brain triggers, I missed it today. Or my habit tracker told me that I haven't done it yet today. I pick it up again. It still counts. It still counts. Even if you do it five minutes right before you go to bed. 

And remember, this is not a check the box. Our relationship with the Lord is not a check the box. It's not, doing this because I think I'm supposed to. ⁓ What you're doing, the reason we read God's word is because we're building a relationship with Him and relationships take time to grow and flourish and become truly intimate. And we invest in that because He wants us to know Him and He wants us to know that we are known by Him and that grows through our time in the Word. So whatever you do, surround this habit with prayer that your time with Him would be joyful, that it would be conversational, that it would be building a relationship. And if it's not automatically or easily that way for you, there is no shame. It may not be that way for a lot of us, but what I urge you to do is just ask Him that he would help you grow to that, to the joyfulness, the conversational, the, I can't wait to spend time with my Father. 

I want to leave you with this important note today. You can begin a new habit anytime. And it's important because consistency builds courage and consistency is self perpetuating. This month, I'm asking you to consider one to two small habits that you could begin today that would give you that practice of building that muscle memory.

Pick something simple, pick something that's easy, pick something you want to do and something you can do quickly. Pick a habit that has an outcome you would be excited to achieve, to receive, to see that change in your life. So that even if you don't want to do it in the moment, you might be able to tell yourself, hey, it's only gonna take me a couple of minutes and this is something I said I wanted to do. And then track yourself. What you don't measure you cannot improve. The point is that if you don't have a gauge for how you're doing, how frequently you're doing it, what days you're missing, maybe even what stood in the way of you getting it done that day, it's impossible to know whether any change or shift has occurred.

That's why I'm giving you a free habit tracker to help you monitor your efforts in building new habits. If you're not familiar with what a habit tracker is, it's this simple little one page tool, in a PDF printable format. can find the free habit tracker at merrittonsa.com/habits, pick your habit, start tracking it, and see what God does with your consistency and perseverance to establish new habits.