55. What to do if the Bible feels boring

If you’ve ever struggled to stay focused, connected, or interested in the Bible, you are definitely not alone.

In this episode, Whitney talks about why the Bible can sometimes feel boring and what may actually be causing it. She walks through practical ways to make Bible study feel more personal, engaging, and transformational as a Christian woman.

You will feel encouraged to stop striving for perfection in Bible study and instead focus on building a real relationship with God through consistency and intentionality. 

If you have been asking questions like:

• Why does the Bible feel boring sometimes? 
• How do I stay interested while reading the Bible?
• How can I make Bible study feel more personal?
• What if I do not understand what I am reading?
• Do I need to deep-study every chapter?
• How can I enjoy reading the Bible more?
• How do I apply scripture to my everyday life?

Then this episode is for you!

Take the Next Step on Your Bible Study Journey:

1. Bible Study Made Just for You is a 6-week 1:1 coaching program with Whitney where you connect deeply with the Bible so it transforms your life as a Christian woman.

2. The Bible Study Made Simple community is where you learn about the Bible and make it a priority so your faith grows as a Christian woman.

3. The Bible Study Made Simple guide is where you learn what to do every time you read the Bible, so you actually understand it.

4. These are the best Bible study tools on Amazon that will help you start reading the Bible with confidence.

5. Follow Whitney on TikTok or Instagram @stepintoboldfaith for simple Bible study tips, encouragement, and practical help to grow in your faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So what are we supposed to do if we find the Bible boring? I know that this is something that I used to really struggle with, especially at the beginning of my journey when I had not read the New Testament, and then I went back and started in the Old Testament and tried to work my way through, and I gave up, I think, at numbers because I was just like, this feels so boring, so unapplicable. I literally don't get any of it. It's so hard to understand and just felt super irrelevant, literally boring. And I think that this is something that a lot of us don't even want to admit, or like we know internally, but we don't even want to like say it out loud. Like I feel bored by what I'm reading in the Bible. And I just want you to know that you are not alone. This definitely happened to me too. And so by the end of this episode, I'm really hoping to be able to shift some of your perspectives to give you some new thoughts around how to make the Bible feel less boring and hopefully really fun and great. 90% of the time when I'm reading the Bible, I truly enjoy it. I get something out of it. I feel like it's changing my life. It really impacts me. It's growing my faith. It's helping me become a better person. So I'm really hoping to help you do the same. So welcome to Step into Bold Faith. This is the podcast for Christian women who want to learn how to make Bible study feel simple so it transforms their lives and grows their faith. And I am your host, Whitney. I am a fellow Jesus lover, wife, mama, and your Bible study bestie. And I'm so glad that God brought you here today. And as I did this introduction today, I realized that during my last podcast episode, I don't even think that I said my name, which is so funny because this is now my fourth podcast, and you would think that I would remember my own name and introducing myself every episode. But here we go. Sometimes, even though you've done something a million times, it doesn't always go the way we think or that we even remember the right things. So I am now going to be doing this new introduction. I really like it. I think it's great. And I hope that you feel welcomed to the show. I'm so happy that you're listening today. So again, I just want to say how common this is for Christian women to feel like the Bible is boring. And a lot of times the problem is the Bible itself, because there are some parts of it that do just really feel boring and that are difficult to read and just feel very unapplicable. And I just recently got through that myself in the now fifth book of the Bible, which is Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy is really good, Genesis is really good. But man, I really struggled with Leviticus and I really struggled with numbers. And it felt boring to me. And so I was like, you know what? If I feel bored by this, but I'm not the only person that feels bored by it. And I am going to talk to my people and hopefully help them work through them feeling bored about this part of the Bible. Because not all of it is super fun and great. Like all the New Testament, I've loved it so much. Like I was so into it. I learned something every day. I felt like God was showing me all these things. And then I was in Leviticus and Numbers, and I'm like, this is a painful, but you know what? Sometimes it is just kind of, you know, it was written a long time ago. It was written for other people, right? Uh Jesus had not been on the scene yet. So we weren't saved. We didn't have all these things. So they had to go through all of these rituals and different things to be able to even be in God's presence, right? And encounter, you know, the promised land and all these different things. It's just crazy because we are so blessed now as Christian women that Jesus did come on the scene and we don't have to deal with a lot of those things. So a lot of it did feel boring and unapplicable. But that was just a temporary little blimp, in my opinion, of the whole Bible and all of the greatness that it has. So I didn't want to number one feel discouraged for myself to be like, just because I didn't love every single part of the Bible yet doesn't mean that it's not something that's still worth my time, right? And so maybe you've started in Genesis and you're trying to work your way through in that order and you're like, I have not had anything that I've been enjoying. I just want you to know again, you're not alone, and there are better ways to read it, and it can feel applicable and great and transform your life and grow your faith and do all those things. Maybe you're just in the wrong section, or maybe you're doing it wrong, or you don't have the right approach to it, or maybe you've been too inconsistent, or maybe you're putting too much pressure on yourself, or maybe you don't have the right study tools or resources. So that is what we're going to talk about today, is to really help you be able to move past it feeling boring. So hopefully it does transform your life and grow your faith and it becomes more meaningful and applicable to your personal and everyday life. So before we get into the actual teaching part of this episode, as always, talk about what tools you'll need. When you are trying to make the Bible feel less boring, you really want to number one have a physical Bible that you enjoy reading that you feel connected to. There are Bibles in my house, like my husband's Bibles, that I look at and I do not feel as excited to read them. They look boring to me. Like they look like boring male Bibles. And us Christian women, like we want a fun-looking Bible. Like I want my Bible to look warm and inviting and cute, right? Mine's got like little flowers on it, and it's this beautiful like shade of light pink, but not pink, purple, purplish blue. I don't know. It's just like a very warm and inviting color. I love the text. I feel connected to it. It's got devotionals in it where I read it and I feel connected to it, right? And so, number one, having a Bible that doesn't feel boring to you. Like you don't look at it and you're like dreading, reading it, just even looking at it, right? And then also making sure that you have a pencil to be able to take notes, to write down ideas, to write down takeaways, and also your Bible highlighters to really dig into the text to understand it, to make it feel less boring when it actually starts feeling applicable to your life and becoming more exciting. A lot of times that happens through having the right study tools and doing Bible highlighting and being more intentional in your time in the Word. And then also just having other study books and resources that you need too. So make sure to go check out the Bible study resources you need to buy on Amazon linked in the show notes. And that has my Bible that I highly recommend that I use in Love every single day. It has my highlighters that I use. It has a bunch of different things that are really great. So make sure to get out all the tools that you need to really help it feel less boring to you. And it feels less boring when you truly understand it, when you feel like it starts applying to your life, when it starts making an impact in your life. So make sure to have the right study tools before we dive in. Okay, so now we are gonna do some teaching. So today we're gonna be talking about five things to do to make the Bible feel less boring. So number one is starting with the right perspective. So one of the biggest things that I always do is I pray and I'll ask God and I'll say, you know, God, please reveal what you want me to know. Please make this fun and interesting for me. Please make this entertaining. Please make this applicable to my life, right? So start with prayer, connecting with God, having the right perspective, and opening your mind and really just allowing Him to give you what you need in that moment and to make it feel. If you want the Bible to feel fun and exciting, Lord, help me have the Bible feel fun and exciting to me, right? So just ask for what you need. You know, I think a lot of times in faith, we're not asking for what we need. We're not asking for the things that we're truly struggling with. And so if that's something you're struggling with, you need to ask for it and ask for it over and over again. Lord, like please help me feel excited and interested by the Bible and eager to learn more and eager to spend more time in it, right? So that's a really big one is starting with that right perspective, including prayer. So that is point number one. And then point number two, thing two, thing one, and I just thought about the Dr. Seuss. Thing one and thing two. Thing two. Thing two to make it feel less boring is to stop reading, just reading it, like just reading the words on the page and start looking for real life application. So one of the biggest reasons that the Bible might feel boring to you right now is because you don't know how it actually applies to your life. You don't feel like personally connected to it, you don't feel like it was made for you, you don't feel like it's changing your life or making any of an much of an impact. So what you need to start doing is noticing what stands out, seeing what applies to your life, looking for things that will help you shift your mindset, shift your decisions, shift your habits, shift your relationships, shift your emotions, right? And start asking, like, what is God trying to show me? What do I need to see today? What needs to change in me to be able to actually implement this? How can I live this out, right? And so the Bible becomes so much more engaging when it starts affecting your real life. And this really was so true to me in the New Testament. I started doing this when I started reading the New Testament from the very beginning, and man, did it work so well. And there are certain books like Leviticus and Numbers that are so challenging and so just different that this was very hard for me to do in those books. And so don't start with the hardest books first, you know, like work your way through them and start with books that feel more applicable. Like start with the gospels if you haven't read them already. That's Mark, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first of the four Gospels within the New Testament. Just like start there and start doing these things because, like I said, there's some books that are very challenging and some that are a lot more easy to read that are enjoyable to read. So start with the ones that are enjoyable if you haven't read the whole thing first. And then, so that was thing two. Thing three is to stop feeling like you have to deep study every single thing. If you are finding something in the Bible particularly boring and challenging, like I was in Leviticus and Numbers, one of the biggest things that I did was release the pressure of feeling like I had to sit there and study it. To be honest, not every single thing in the Bible needs to be perfectly studied. It doesn't need to be perfectly understood. A lot of times, we just need to read it once or twice in our in our lives and get it that it's there, it's happened, it's important, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to sit there and deep study it and put all this pressure on ourselves to make it something that it's not to us, right? Not every Bible study session has to be super deep and intense. Sometimes the best thing we can just do is to just read it, get through it, move on, and be like, I did it, I'm building the habit, I'm showing up, I'm still trying to read it and put in my best effort, but I'm not sitting here trying to deep study it, trying to unpack everything like I did in other books. I just didn't find that that was gonna serve me, right, at the level that I needed to. And truthfully, I just want to keep the momentum going. I just want to keep showing up. I want to keep reading the Bible. And so sometimes it's just more important to just continue the momentum and get through the really tough parts, like Leviticus and Numbers, just to be able to keep moving forward, right? Because there's gonna be books after that, like Deuteronomy was so good to me. I was in Exodus and then God brought me into Deuteronomy and I loved it. And so I'm like more than halfway through it already. And then that's already gonna be the fifth of the book, the fifth book of the Bible done for me, and then I'll already be on the sixth, right? And so you just gotta keep moving forward. And I'm not the only one that says this too. One of the books that I highly recommend that I learned a lot from is called Understanding Scripture from Crystal Sparks, and that's linked in the Bible study tools you need within the show notes. But within that book, she even says, like, there are certain books of the Bible, like you only need to read through them like once or twice in your whole life, and then you just leave it alone and just say that you did it, you know, because there are books that are super, super impactful for us and some books that aren't. And those for me were some of those books. So just remove the pressure. Like, if you're really in a book, like you're struggling so bad, you're like, I just, I just need to get through this. Like, just get through it then, because there's so much of the Bible that is so important, that is so impactful. Maybe that's just a book for you that you just need to read and release the pressure and just get through it and not overcomplicate it and make it more difficult than it has to be. Okay, so thing number four, I kind of mentioned this already, but it's really using study tools that will help you engage more deeply into the text. So a lot of times the Bible can feel boring if we're trying to rush through it or we don't feel engaged, or we're not really paying attention, or we're just skimming it, right? And so doing things like Bible highlighting, Bible journaling, writing notes, doing questions, doing study plans, these help you really slow down, pay attention, recognize patterns and themes, remember what you're reading, really get into the text and pay attention to line by line because some of those books that are the really impactful ones, like the Gospels or like some of the other ones in the New Testament, like all of them were so good to me. Line by line, there's like gold nuggets in each and every line of the Bible. And if you sit there long enough to actually slow down to read it, to do these study methods, it is not gonna feel boring. It is gonna feel like mind-blowing and so impactful, and it's literally gonna change your life. But you have to slow down enough to pay attention to it and even know that that's possible. And that goes into goes back into having even the right perspective for it, right? Like we have to know that the Bible can apply to our lives, that it can be so impactful, that it is worth our time, that I will find gold nuggets, that God will reveal, reveal things to me w as I'm in it, right? But we have to go in with that right perspective, going back to that again, too. But these study tools like really, really helped me slow down, pay attention, understand what stands out, what God's revealing to me. And so that was like one of the biggest changes was not just reading it. It was buying a physical Bible that I loved and then using these study tools on top of that. That really helped me move from just feeling like I was reading it to really truly understanding it and being super engaged with it. Okay, and then the last one, thing number five, is to stay consistent long enough to experience transformation. So a lot of women quit or fall off or get back on reading the Bible because they don't feel changed enough by it. They don't feel like it's actually making an impact in their lives, that it's not actually transforming their lives, right? And consistency a lot is the thing that's going to help us do this. Like I was talking to a friend about this today, and she's like, Yeah, I keep falling off and getting back on. I'm gonna make it a priority after I get back from vacation, or I'm gonna make it a priority then, and I'm gonna, you know. And so a lot of times, yeah, we do just need to make it a priority at a different point. But also when the Bible doesn't feel like it's actually transforming our life and we're not using it in the right way, it's going to feel boring. It's going to be harder to stay consistent, but we have to also stay consistent to experience that transformation, to be spending enough time in it. It's like the more we put into it, the more we're gonna get out of it. So it's a two-way street, it's a two-way vehicle. So you have to put in the time and the effort to want to learn it, to have that hunger to spend time with it. But then it will reveal things to you as you do that too. But you have to stay consistent long enough to experience that. And going back to what I was telling my friend was I was telling her, like sometimes it takes time to really get into the Bible. Like once I started reading it and doing these study tools and stuff, like it took me a little while to really have it be speaking to me, to really see what God wanted me to know, to really make it feel like I was super into it. It's like building a relationship almost. It's like sometimes you're like instant best friends, and sometimes it takes a while to get where you want to go and to see that friendship come to life, right? And so some books of the Bible, you're gonna be in there and you're gonna be like, wow, we are best friends. This is so fun. This is so great. Like we are at the mall, we're having a grand time, like we're getting Starbucks, like we're hanging out. And then some books of the Bible are just like, Can you get me away from this person right now? Like, this is like so painful. It's just the reality. Like sometimes these books are gonna be boring, but like 90% of the time I feel like I'm with my best friend. But it took me a while to get there too, because relationships are built over time. So I really hope that this was helpful today. So again, we're gonna recap those five things that I just talked about to help it feel less boring to you. So, number one is having the right perspective of it. Number two was stop just reading the words and start looking for real life application. Number three is stop feeling like you have to deep study every single thing and just get through certain books when you're really struggling. Thing number four is to use simple study tools that help you engage more deeply in it. And number five is stay consistent enough to experience real transformation. So tomorrow I want you to pick one of these five things to start with. And I hope that this was so helpful and that you loved it. I have just been really into this podcast. I am so excited over all the things that I am offering now to support you in making Bible study simple, to helping you understand the Bible, to helping you stay consistent in it, right? And making it feel like it was made just for you. So whether you're looking for a Bible study guide to know exactly what to do every time you open your Bible, if you're looking for a supportive community to actually learn about the Bible and prioritize it in your daily life, to have it grow your faith, or maybe you're looking to connect really deeply with the Bible through personal Bible study that makes it feel like it was made just for you, where you can become transformed by the Bible with my help personally. There is a next step just for you. And you can find all the information right now linked in the show notes. So now that we have reached the end of this episode, let's end in our prayer. God, thank you so much for each and every woman listening to this right now, Lord. I just pray that they find the Bible more fun and exciting and feel enlightened by it and like it's changing their lives and making a true impact, Lord. And right now, in the name of Jesus, I hope that they break off anything that makes it feel boring or or like invaluable, and that they are just able to fully dive into your word, Lord, to feel your presence, to feel connected to you, to feel like Bible study is really transforming their life and that they find so much value from it. And we just love you so much, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. So until next time, thank you so much for coming along the journey with me and let's keep stepping into bold faith together. Bye.